The crash that ended a championship challenge
Friday afternoon at Suzuka, October 1987. Nigel Mansell, 61 points to Nelson Piquet's 56 in the drivers' Meisterschaft, was pushing Hart in practice when his Williams-Honda FW11B snapped away from him through the Esses. The car hit the barriers Hart, and Mansell was left with a compressed vertebra and severe bruising. He tried to get back in the car on Saturday morning, but the pain was too much. He could not start the Rennen.
With Mansell withdrawn, Piquet needed only to finish the Japanese Grand Prix to clinch his third world Meisterschaft. The title fight that had simmered between the two Williams Team-mates all Saison — a rivalry made worse by the Team's internal politics, Piquet's mockery of Mansell in the Brazilian press, and Frank Williams' refusal to impose Team orders — was over. Not on the track, but in a hospital room.
Mansell's crash was the defining moment of the 1987 Saison, but it should not obscure what Piquet achieved. The Brazilian had scored consistently all year, winning three races to Mansell's six, and his reliability — combined with Mansell's occasional mechanical failures — kept him in the hunt even when his Team-mate was winning. In a Saison where finishing mattered more than any single victory, Piquet's approach proved decisive.
Williams-Honda: the class of the field
The 1987 Saison was dominated by one Team and one engine. Williams-Honda won nine of the 16 races, took 12 pole positions, and locked out the front row at seven rounds. The Honda 1.5-litre turbo V6 was the most powerful engine on the Startaufstellung, producing over 1,000 horsepower in qualifying trim, and the FW11B was a well-balanced chassis that coped with that power better than anything Lotus or McLaren could field.
Ayrton Senna, driving for Lotus-Honda, had the same engine but an inferior chassis. He won twice — at Monaco and Detroit — and was spectacular as always, but the mathematical reality was that Lotus could not sustain a Meisterschaft challenge over a full Saison against the Williams. By the time the paddock arrived at Suzuka, Senna was already out of the title Rennen. His first Meisterschaft would come the following year, 1988, when he moved to McLaren-Honda and began his legendary rivalry with Alain Prost.
The 1987 Saison is often misremembered because of what came immediately after. The Senna-Prost era was so dominant, so dramatic, that the year before it tends to be reduced to a footnote. But 1987 was the last hurrah of the turbo era's first generation, and Piquet's title was the last won by a Fahrer who was not Senna or Prost until 1994.
The race — Piquet cruises, Senna retires
The 1987 Japanese Grand Prix was the first F1 Rennen held at Suzuka since 1977, and the Strecke immediately revealed its character as one of the great tracks on the calendar. The figure-eight layout, with its demanding Esses sequence and the commitment required through 130R, was a proper test of Fahrer and car.
Piquet started from the front row alongside Gerhard Berger's Ferrari. He did not need to win — he needed only to finish — but he drove a controlled Rennen at the front, trading positions with Berger in the early laps before settling into a rhythm that protected his tyres and his Meisterschaft.
Senna's afternoon was short. Starting from mid-Startaufstellung, he was charging through the field when his Lotus suffered a mechanical failure. He retired on lap 15, his Meisterschaft hopes — already mathematically slim — definitively extinguished. It was a frustrating end to a Saison in which Senna's talent had been obvious but his equipment had not been equal to the task.
Berger eventually won the Rennen, his second victory of the Saison, driving a superb Rennen in a Ferrari that was no match for the Williams on pure pace but was reliable and well-driven. Piquet finished second, more than 27 seconds behind, but the gap was irrelevant. Second place was enough. The Meisterschaft was his.
The third title — and the last
When Piquet crossed the line, the Williams garage celebrated his third world Meisterschaft. He joined Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, and his countryman Emerson Fittipaldi as a three-time champion. Only Juan Manuel Fangio, with five, had more at that point.
Piquet's three titles came in remarkably different circumstances. His first, in 1981, was won in a Brabham that was nimble but underpowered, the result of cunning strategy and Gordon Murray's creative interpretation of the minimum weight rules. His second, in 1983, was the first Meisterschaft won by a turbocharged engine, again in a Brabham-BMW. His third, in 1987, was won in the best car on the Startaufstellung — a recognition that Piquet could win with flair or with consistency, depending on what the situation demanded.
The 1987 title would be Piquet's last. He moved to Lotus in 1988, where the car was uncompetitive, and his F1 career gradually wound down. He would later win the Indianapolis 500 in 1989 and the CART Meisterschaft rivals' respect, but in Formula 1, Suzuka 1987 was his final summit.
The Mansell-Piquet rivalry, unresolved
What gives Japan 1987 its lingering tension is that the Meisterschaft was not decided on equal terms. Mansell led the standings going into Suzuka. He had won six races to Piquet's three. He had been the faster Fahrer for much of the Saison. But the crash in practice meant he never got to fight for the title on the track.
Piquet was unapologetic. He had scored more points over the full Saison, and he had done so while dealing with a Team-mate who refused to accept number-two status and a Teamchef who sometimes seemed to favour Mansell. The Brazilian's view was simple: the Meisterschaft table does not lie, and his name was on it.
Mansell's view was equally understandable. He had been faster, he had won more races, and he had been denied the chance to defend his lead by an accident in practice. The injustice — real or perceived — fueled the Mansell legend and gave the 1987 Saison an aftertaste that no amount of Piquet's logic could wash away.
Why Japan 1987 endures
Japan 1987 endures because it is a Meisterschaft decided by absence as much as by presence. Mansell's crash robbed the Saison of its natural Fazit — a wheel-to-wheel fight between two uncompromising drivers in equal machinery. Piquet won the title fair and square, but the question of what would have happened if Mansell had started the Rennen has never been answered.
It also endures as a corrective. The 1987 Saison is frequently misremembered as the year Senna won his first Meisterschaft. He did not. Senna's first title came in 1988, when the McLaren-Honda MP4/4 won 15 of 16 races and the Meisterschaft became a private duel between Senna and Prost. In 1987, the Meisterschaft belonged to Piquet and Williams-Honda. Senna was a supporting actor — brilliant, dazzling, but not yet the leading man.
The Rennen itself, Berger's victory aside, was unremarkable. But the circumstances around it — Mansell's crash, Piquet's measured drive, the end of an era before the Senna-Prost storm — make it one of the most bedeutend races in F1 history, even if it is not one of the most dramatic.