Williams Dominate at Paul Ricard

 

Report:

What a surprise: if the Williams drivers do not try to kill each other, they score a good result for the team.

After the flooded race in Detroit, the sun was much more nice to the French Grand Prix: good weather was the motto of this race weekend and that played to the strengths of Williams-Honda. They controlled qualifying, with Ayrton Senna securing his fourth pole of the season. Fans and experts were expecting Williams to deliver strongly in the race.

Those expectations were not betrayed. From lap 1 of the race, the win was only contested between the two Williams drivers, Senna and Cassidy having another brutal duel. Thankfully, they managed to not eliminate themselves from the race. This paid off for Williams with a 1-2, Senna securing his second win of the 1987 season after managing to get away from Cassidy after the second and final round of stops.

Reliability was yet again a major problem, with the high-speed track asking for tributes from all turbo engines: all Alfa Romeo engines failed to finish the race, Gerhard Berger had to park the car in the middle part of the race and one driver had the heat get to him: Alain Prost made an unusual mistake and paid for it by getting stuck in the gravel trap.

As usual, when many cars fail, underdogs may strike. Since all Honda engines amazingly managed to get to the line, only sixth place was on the table and this time around it was the Lola-designed chassis of Philippe Alliot who made the most of his shot and scored a crucial point for his team. He finished 4 laps behind the fifth-placed Gauthier, who had to take a loss in the Lotus team battle.

Race:

  1. Ayrton Senna
  2. Brendon Cassidy
  3. Jérémy-Étienne Voeckler
  4. Derek Warwick
  5. Guillaume Gauthier
  6. Philippe Alliot
  7. Ivan Capelli
  8. Martin Brundle

Fastest Lap:

Jérémy-Étienne Voeckler – 1:09.733

Infinite Improbability Drive Of The Race:

Ayrton Senna – After two consecutive bad races in North America, such a flawless drive is unexpected.

Reject Of The Race:

Alain Prost – Avoidable mistakes do not help when your car rarely finish races as it is.