Nelson Piquet joined Williams for 1986 as a double world champion with number 1 status in the team assured him by Frank Williams. The incumbent driver Nigel Mansell – who’d won his first two grands prix at the end of ’85 – was assigned the number two role. The car they’d be racing, the Williams-Honda FW11, was comfortably F1’s fastest, with more power and more downforce than anything else. Piquet’s status suggested that in this car he’d be the dominant champion. But Frank Williams suffered his crippling road accident before the season began and Mansell flat refused to acknowledge the support role.
The opening race in Rio, Brazil was intriguing. Piquet won it and had been a couple of tenths faster than Mansell in qualifying, but the opening seconds of the race saw Mansell instantly past Piquet and challenging Ayrton Senna’s pole-sitting Lotus into the fast first turn, underbody sparks flying as they went wheel-to-wheel in macho fashion. They touched and Mansell spun into the barrier. Piquet, having watched all this unfold, backed out of a move on Senna on the second lap but timed it perfectly on the third lap, getting the slipstream from much further back, passing and going onto a comfortable victory. It suggested Piquet’s calm confidence would see him prevail over a desperate-looking Mansell. But at race 2 in Jerez, Mansell put Piquet in the shade, taking the lead from Senna and looking likely to stay there until a puncture forced him to pit. Despite this set-back he was soon back on Senna’s tail, gaining 19sec in 10 laps on his new tyres and crossing the line just a few hundredths behind. Piquet had been relatively anonymous in comparison before retiring from third with an engine failure. Game on between the Williams drivers.
Into 1988 Prost got to feel what it must have been like for Lauda in ’84 as a younger, more thrusting team-mate, Senna, joined him at McLaren just as the team had created what would turn out to be one of the most dominant cars in F1 history. At Rio for the opening race Senna qualified 0.7sec faster than Prost but suffered a gearbox problem on the formation lap, forcing him to take the spare car and start from the pitlane. Prost duly dominated the race. Senna, after scything through the field up to second, was later shown the black flag for changing cars. Senna’s qualifying advantage was evident again at Imola for round 2 and he duly controlled the race, always staying just out of Prost’s reach. It was just the beginning of their epic rivalry.
Hakkinene leads off Coulthard at Melbourne ’98
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Ten years later McLaren had again delivered the fastest car, the MP4-13. Driving it would be Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard who had proved reasonably closely-matched in their previous two years together when McLaren had been less than fully competitive. But it was as if with a fast car, Hakkinen stepped up to an altogether higher plane, looking once more like the driver who had out-paced Michael Schumacher in their rare F3 encounters. Hakkinen required Coulthard’s assistance to win the opening round, in Melbourne, as the Finn had pitted from the lead after mishearing a radio instruction. Coulthard agreed to let him back ahead so as to respect an internal agreement about the positions being decided by who led at the first corner.
In Australia Coulthard had qualified within a few hundredths of Hakkinen’s pole. But in Brazil for round 2, Hakkinen was almost 0.7sec faster. They cruised to a 1-2 finish in that order, but the superiority shown by Hakkinen in qualifying would come to be the norm and Hakkinen’s challenge to the title came not from Coulthard but his old adversary Schumacher. The first race had not been an accurate barometer.
Even before the first race of the new hybrid age in 2014, the huge superiority of the Mercedes was an open secret. Its drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were going to be the only serious title contenders. This was their second season together, with Hamilton having generally been quicker in the second half of 2013 once he’d adapted to his new team. But the margins were small.
Rosberg and Hamilton do battle in Bahrain – a portent of what was to come
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Melbourne 2014 suggested another close contest between them, but it was Hamilton who snatched a comfortable pole on a wet track. His race was ruined before it even started though, with a faulty spark plug connection, leaving the way clear for an easy Rosberg victory. Race three in Bahrain was going Hamilton’s way until a late safety car put Rosberg, on much newer tyres, right on his tail. It seemed inevitable Rosberg would win from there but some fierce defending from Hamilton kept him ahead to the flag. It would take a few races for Hamilton to overcome the points damage inflicted by that race one retirement, but the pattern of performance was clear.
There were days last season when Piastri had Norris’s number, but the momentum was definitely with the latter towards the end of the year and Melbourne last weekend continued that pattern. It’s one which Piastri desperately needs to break. History tells us that’s perfectly feasible. But this is a crucial moment in his career.