Monaco Grand Prix 1992

The first 5 races of the championship ended in victories for Williams pilot Nigel Mansell , the leader in the pilot championship by 26 points. His partner Ricardo Patrese was second with 24 points. Williams led the designer cup with 74 points, Benetton was in second place with 20 points, and their pilot Michael Schumacher was in third place in the pilot championship. World champion Ayrton Senna at McLaren had only fourth place with eight points. However, the Monaco Grand Prix has not been won by anyone except Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost over the past eight years, but Mansell wanted to achieve his first victory in Monaco by winning the previous five races. There were no changes in the composition of the pilots compared to the previous race, however, before the race, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo had to publicly announce the position of Ivan Capelli in the Ferrari team as a “reserve” in response to criticism from the Italian magazine Autosprint about Capelli 's recent performances. Autosport also announced Thursday before the race that Capelli was “about to replace” due to “Italian rumors,” emphasizing the fact that Gianni Morbidelli had spent most of his Ferrari testing at Imola before the race in Monaco. Ferrari issued a statement in response to Morbidelli's statement about the Ferrari F92A saying that Capelli was “on vacation,” but Capelli denied this fact. The Lotus team brought the second new 107th chassis for Mika Hakkinen to Monaco, before that there was only one 107th chassis for Herbert in San Marino.

The prequalification Thursday morning was warm and sunny. Michele Alboreto was the fastest in the session. Roberto Moreno took third place, ahead of team mate Andrea Moda in the qualifying session for the first time. Yukio Katayama slipped into a small pool of oil, and he managed to show only 1: 28,310, and then he had an accident in the turn of Tabac in the last minutes of the session.

On Thursday afternoon qualification took place in warm, but cloudy weather. Nigel Mansell won the session with a time of 1: 20,714, Stefano Modena, who qualified in the front row in Monaco 1991, showed only the 12th time, despite the fact that earlier in two races of 1992 he did not manage to qualify at all. After completing the pre-qualification of Roberto Morenon for the first time, Andrea Moda continued to show an improvement in time showing 1: 25,185 in the first twenty minutes of the session, this time allowed him to show the 11th result, despite the fact that he had problems with a power loss. Moreno was no longer able to show good results and by the end of the session slipped to 20th place on the basis of prequalification on Thursday. The weather on Saturday was sunny and without precipitation, but then it became cloudy during the day. On Saturday morning, Pierluigi Martini had an accident in the tunnel, damaging the chippers, which took 40 minutes to repair. As a result, the start of the qualification was postponed for 30 minutes. In qualifying, Nigel Mansell was even faster, his time was 1: 19,495, he took his 6th pole of the season. Mansell later called his circle “an absolutely clean circle.” Ricardo Patrese improved his past result and showed a second time, however, at one of the fastest laps, Bertrand Gacho held him back, so Riccardo then went to the boxing squad of Larruss and tried to hit the Belgian. Ayrton Senna finished 3rd qualification, despite the fact that he took a frantic risk to compensate for the shortcomings of his car, and in the turn of Mirabeau he skidded, he broke the suspension of the rear left wheel and the rear wing on the bump, the wing eventually came off completely and Senna somehow drove to the pits in a wrecked car. Stefano Modena was the victim of a drive shaft failure at the beginning of the session and was forced to transfer to a spare Jordan car. On a spare car, he was not able to improve Friday time, and therefore he took only 21th place. Modena became the only pilot who did not beat his Saturday time. After his accident, Martini continued to take part in the qualification on a spare car and took 18th place. Finishing Thursday 20th Roberto Moreno managed to improve his qualification time a bit to 1: 24,945, but rolled back to 26th place due to mechanical problems with the Andrea Moda S921 chassis . Eric van de Poel showed his best time in the last minutes of the qualification, but this was not enough to get ahead of Andrea moda Roberto Moreno , he was 0.036 slower.

The weather during the race was cloudy, but dry and warm. Pilots took to the track on Sunday morning for a 30-minute warm-up. The fastest turned out to be the pilot Williams Patrese, and his partner Mansell only 5th. Michele Alboreto was very strong on his Footwork and finished 2nd, and his teammate Aguri Suzuki was sent to the hospital for examination after his accident on his Footwork FA13 in the Tabac turn, later the Japanese was allowed to race. The warm-up lap started at 15:30 local time. 26 cars qualified, but only 25 went to the start, as Gianni Morbidelli was unable to start his car during the warm-up lap, he was forced to start from the pit lane.

At the start, Senna passed Patrese in the San turn. Devot, Schumacher also passed Berger in this turn. Morbidelli joined the race after a couple of laps, but after passing one lap, he again began to have problems with the gearbox, and this forced him to get out completely. Roberto Moreno broke into 19th place thanks to six overtaking in the first laps, but was forced to get on his Andrea Moda S921 in the 11th lap due to problems with the Judd GV 3.5 V10 engine . Patrese began to put pressure on Senna , but then he started having problems with the gearbox and he began to lag behind him a little. On the 12th lap, Schumacher tried to get around Alesi in the Leuvs hairpin, they collided, Alesi continued to stay ahead of Schumacher for 16 more laps, but the gap was small. But the damage to the electronics still forced him to go down on the 28th lap, thanks to which Berger came out in 5th place. Following Berger Brandl , made a mistake in the Nouvelle chicane and broke not only his front wing Benetton , but also punctured the wheel, which forced him to stop at a long pit stop, this allowed Capelli to go to 6th place. At lap 32, Berger stepped down due to gearbox problems. On the 60th lap, Michele Alboreto was mistaken, and he was deployed right in front of Senna's Maclaren , almost provoking an accident.

Ivan Capelli walked in 5th place, losing to the leader Mansell the whole lap, in the 61st lap in the turn, the Casino sharply went into the turn and damaged the steering rack on the barrier. When he drove through the corner of the pool, a broken steering rack jammed on his Ferrari and the car hung from the impact on the barrier before turning the Rascasse at a 45-degree angle. His gathering recalled the comments of the Ferrari team on the BBC channel regarding his future in the team, which were said before the race weekend. And now it became clear that he would not remain in the team. Nigel Mansell led the race by a huge margin on his Williams - Renault FW14B until the 70th lap, but then the wheel nut broke and he was forced to call on a long pit stop, meanwhile Senna took the lead. Mansell on fresh tires set a lap record, which was almost 2 seconds faster than Senna's best lap. Over 2 laps, Mansell reduced the lead from 5.2 to 1.9 seconds. This couple fought for 3 laps, but Mansell was never able to overtake Senna and finished two tenths of a second behind the Brazilian. This victory was the fifth for Senna in Monaco, on this indicator he caught up with Graham Hill . Patrese finished 3rd, holding back for most of the race Schumacher , who took 4th place.

The three winners climbed into the royal box to Prince Albert II of Monaco to receive their trophies and then went to a press conference where Tony Jardine asked questions. Senna admitted that he knew that the Williams car was "a few seconds faster" than his McLaren in the last few laps. Senna also noted that due to the fact that he drove the entire race on one set of tires, his last circles were reminiscent of "driving on ice."

Mansell expressed his disappointment at the undefeated race, but nevertheless called this second place most important in his life and praised Senna for his defensive driving style in the last laps: “I have to thank Ayrton because he guessed very well all my maneuvers that I tried to take an attack, and he had the right to do what he did, I think his aerobatics was fantastic and that’s why he won the race, and I came second. ”

Mansell also told the sequence of events, as a result of which a puncture was suspected on the 71st circle: “Everything started in the tunnel, I almost lost control, the rear axle went down sharply and I immediately realized that it was a puncture. The problem was that I still had to go to the boxes half a circle, I had to go very slowly, because the brakes did not work due to the fact that I was driving on 3 wheels. I think that I lost about 10-15 seconds only along the way to the boxes. We got a pit stop longer than usual, and when I left the pit lane I saw Ayrton passing by, and already then I knew that victory was probably lost, but you yourself saw that in the last 10 laps we did everything possible and even more, but his car was too wide to overtake him. ”

Despite initial reports that Mansell in the tunnel received a puncture on lap 71, Goodyear later denied this information. Williams team engineer Adrian Newey later suggested that perhaps it was a wheel nut.

In 1992, the Monaco Grand Prix was the only one when the team of Andrea Mod was able to qualify in Formula 1. Roberto Moreno retired after 11 laps due to problems with the engine, this performance was the best result of the team. In an interview in 2011, Roberto Moreno said that the qualification in Monaco on Andrea Moda S921 was one of his best memories of motorsport: “I will always remember how I went through the pre-qualification for Andrea Moda in Monaco. Tire in those days we had enough for 5-6 good laps. Due to the fact that we did not have good cooling, the engine began to overheat after 4 laps. The engine was warming and oil pressure was rising. I had to stop on the 4th circle, so as not to blow up the engine. But this was enough to undergo prequalification, and the first obstacle was overcome. In qualification, I went to the track at the very beginning of the session. In Monaco, you can always show a good time if you go to the track at the end of the qualification for the final round, but I took 11th place in the first 20 minutes of the session, that was all I could do. When I returned to the boxes, all the teams I passed by were clapping my hands, these days will remain in my memory forever. The 1990 Suzuka is obviously a bigger achievement for me, but qualifying for Andrea Mod is more important to me than you think. ”

On the BBC Formula 1 website in 2009, former Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker included the battle for leadership between Senna and Mansell in the last lap of Monaco 1992 in the top five oppositions in the history of Formula 1.

Prequalification

Qualification

• Nigel Mansell for 10 laps to the finish confidently led by a margin of the nearest pursuer - Ayrton Senna in half a minute. It seemed that the record sixth victory of one pilot from the start of the season was about to become a fait accompli, but His Majesty Chance intervened in the race. Nigel felt that the back of the car began to behave somehow strangely, and decided that one of the wheel nuts had loosened. Having a margin of time, the Briton turned into the pits. The leisurely mechanics of Williams changed wheels and let the pilot back onto the track - a few seconds behind Senna! The final laps of this race went down in the history of Formula 1. On the fresh tires, Big Nige was two and a half seconds faster than the Brazilian, and he attacked continuously in the last four laps in every turn. But Senna completely blocked all the possibilities for overtaking. On any other track he had no chance, but not in Monaco, with its narrow paths teeming with slow turns. As a result, Mansell once again missed the opportunity to win the most prestigious Grand Prix of the first Formula.

• The last three laps of the 1992 Monaco Grand Prix , YouTube video
• Monaco Grand Prix'92: Unit, white-red!