The current Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring is one of the better circuits on the calendar. Beautiful scenery, gradient, character and challenge. It is however a shadow of the circuit layout it sits within. The old circuit it replaced was mighty and fierce in the extreme.
This is the story of the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring. The last at this astonishing venue.
The 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring. The first Turbo era in F1 is at its absolute zenith. The grid is packed with legendary names which will go on to be whispered in hushed reverential tones. Prost, Senna, Mansell, Piquet, Berger, Arnoux, Patrese . . . many more. Unlike the drivers of the 50s, 60s and early 70s these guys are lucky in that they also have regular television broadcasts to record their heroics. This exposure, every fortnight, being beamed into people’s living rooms strikes with far more immediacy. The fans who had to rely on brief clips, the odd local broadcast, beautifully written race reports and lap charts are finally being serviced properly. It is one of the Sport’s golden ages, for many the most golden.
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It is also hugely exciting. Powerful cars and, in comparison with today’s cars, low levels of downforce. Big fat slick tyres and for the most part fully manual mechanical machinery (though the electronic revolution is coming on at pace, this was the year Lotus began experimenting with active suspension). It is round ten of 16. The 1987 season is developing into an epic battle between the two Williams drivers, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell. Alain Prost in the McLaren and Ayrton Senna in the bright yellow Lotus are also in the mix, though it is obvious that the Williams is the car to beat. Nelson Piquet leads the Championship with 48 points, reigning World Champion Alain Prost sits in fourth with 30. Between them lie Senna and Mansell. The Circus moves to Austria.
Starting Trouble
The first Austrian Grand Prix was held in 1963 on the bumpy and basic layout of the Zeltweg Airfield. This was less than a mile and a half from the current home of the race. That first running, a non Championship F1 event was won by Jack Brabham driving his own car. It was also the first ever F1 race of future Austrian World Champion Jochen Rindt. Jochen would go on to earn a corner being named for him at the Österreichring.
By 1964 the race had achieved World Championship status and was won by Lorenzo Bandini in the Ferrari, his only win in the World Championship. Nobody except Bandini enjoyed it much. The track was uninteresting and the bumps atrocious. Many drivers retired with broken suspension or half shafts from the constant pummeling. The World Championship never went back.
Austria wanted their race though and so they built something magnificent just a few minutes walk up the hill. The Österreichring was a fabulous track which nobody could accuse of being dull. A circuit of climbs and swoops with epically quick corners connecting straits which arced across the Styrian foothills. Some of those corners were outright terrifying, especially the awesome Bosch curve. This was a breathtaking downhill, banked righthander which wound back 180 degrees on itself. There was little runoff. A mistake would result in a massive accident. And the circuit was narrow, a beautiful tarmac ribbon winding in the hills. Battles were fierce and average speeds were very high.
Triumph And Tragedy
When the World Championship returned in 1970 it was evident that Formula 1 had a new, instant, classic. Drivers loved the challenge. Spectators loved the views and the drama. Such speed comes with a price of course and the Österreichring exacted its own tragic payment. The wonderful American driver and engineer Mark Donohue was killed in a qualifying accident there in 1975. He went off at Vost-Hugel Kurve, the incredibly fast first corner, into the catch fencing when a tyre failed. The car broke up and a marshal was killed by debris. One of the catch fence posts struck Donohue’s helmet. Donohue clambered from the wreck, apparently unhurt, with a slight headache. Tragically overnight this worsened and he collapsed the next day. He died in hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The response to this appalling incident was the installation of a new chicane at the first corner. This did little to dampen overall average speeds and the love affair between F1 and this magnificent circuit continued into the 1980s. The circuit couldn’t help but provide a thrilling spectacle, most notably with a barnstorming finish to the 1982 Grand Prix with Elio De Angelis holding off Keke Rosberg by the narrowest of margins.
Concerns
The 1985 race however would bring more questions. Teo Fabi had qualified his Toleman in a highly respectable sixth but stalled on the grid. He was hit at speed by Alboreto, De Angelis and Berger. The wreckage of these four cars blocked the narrow start finish straight completely and the red flag was thrown necessitating a restart.
The narrowness of this start finish straight, just over nine meters compared to the usual width of a Grand Prix standard circuit of double or even treble that, would play an enormous part in sealing the Österreichring’s fate. As if to emphasize these dangers Andrea de Cesaris went on to have an absolute monster of a shunt later in the race. The Italian ran wide at the fast left-hander, his Ligier hit a divot in the grass launching itself into a series of spectacular roles. The car was utterly destroyed in one of F1’s most visually spectacular wrecks. Somehow de Cesaris walked away uninjured.
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Unexpected Qualifying Hazards.
The battle for pole position at The 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring started with a bang during Friday qualifying. Piquet in the Williams came out of the Rindt curve and closed on Pascal Fabre’s AGS. The Honda power unit provided much higher top speed than the Cosworth in the back of the AGS. Piquet misjudged it and clipped the slower car with his left rear. Both drivers were fine despite the high speed involved and the cars were soon repaired. Such hazards are a normal part of racing. What happened next wasn’t.
Stefan Johansson was gunning his McLaren-TAG down the hill towards the Rindt curve when a deer leapt over the barriers and out in front of the Swede. The poor deer was killed instantly and did a colossal amount of damage to the McLaren, tearing off the entire front left of the car. Incredibly, Johansson escaped without injury. A very lucky man. 19 years later Brazilian driver Christiano Da Matta would have a similar collision, in incomparably stronger machinery, whilst testing a Champ Car at Road America. He would spend over a month in an induced coma and spend two years out of the sport.
Setting the Grid
In the second qualifying session Piquet resurfaced after his altercation with Fabre and was on fine form. He would swap times with team mate Mansell but it would ultimately be Nelson who would be fastest in the session by just over a tenth from his team mate. The Williams were followed by a mix of Ferraris and Bennetons, Berger, Boutsen, Fabi and Alboreto recorded the next fastest times.
Saturday’s qualifying was a session with intermittent rain, so Friday’s times were not to be challenged and, with the order set, Piquet took the pole with Mansell alongside. The stage was set for a dramatic escalation of the championship battle.
Chaos
The run to the first corner at the Österreichring runs sharply uphill and over a crest on the run to the Hella-Licht chicane. It was on this crest that the first start to the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix went wrong. Martin Brundle, starting 17th, was spending the season trapped in the miserable Zakspeed. This misery was to be further compounded when the car suddenly veered hard right at the crest and plunged across the circuit, nosing into the barriers and bouncing back into traffic,
Naturally chaos followed as those behind tried to avoid the wreck and in doing so tangled with one another. The casualties were both Tyrrell’s (Palmer and Strieff) and the Ligier of the terminally unlucky Piercarlo Ghinzani. Blissfully unaware of this carnage, the front of the grid tore around their opening lap, Piquet holding his lead. The racing at the front continued until the cars came around the last couple of corners to be confronted by frantically waving flags and a start-finish straight clogged with wreckage and recovery vehicles.
The second start would be worse. The 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring was about to make itself the last.
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The Last Straw
This time, when the lights went green, Mansell made an abysmal start. Dragging the clutch, the rest of the grid roared past him until both Cheever in the Arrows and Partrese in the Brabham both tried to dive around the sluggish Williams by taking to the grass on the right. They came together and another, far larger, pile up ensued.
Mansell got the Williams going and powered away from the scene of the crime, but in his wake lay the wrecks of much of the grid. Cheever, Patrese, Johannson, Caffi’s Osella, Capelli’s March, Fabre, Alliot in the Larrousse and this time both Zakspeeds, Brundle and Danner, Strieff again . . . The entire circuit was blocked by no less than 12 cars. Mercifully nobody was hurt this time either but it was obvious that the third start to the race would be with a much depleted grid.
Even the commentary on the day by James Hunt and Murray Walker focused, once it had been established that everyone was ok, on the unsuitable narrowness of the circuit.
The Last Race
Nearly two hours after it was originally supposed to begin, the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring finally got underway. Strieff was missing, Tyrrell having run out of cars. Other drivers were in the spare’s (this was the era when such things were allowed) but some of these were not in prime race trim. Indeed Brundle would be disqualified for racing the Zakspeed T-Car with illegal bodywork. Reigning World Champion Prost had to start from the pit lane after he suffered electrical issues on the warm up lap. He wasn’t alone, five other hastily repaired cars did likewise. Despite this, at last, an opening lap was completed without a collision.
What followed was a refreshingly straightforward race as Piquet lead from an inspired Boutsen who crawled all over the back of the Williams in his Benetton until he had to pit with a sticky gearbox. As he charged back to an eventual fourth place, Mansell managed to get the better of Piquet as they navigated lapped traffic and took the lead which he wasn’t to relinquish until he won.
Auf Wiedersehen
It was the Englishman’s 100th Grand Prix and it put him right back in the title race. Of course, fate would decide he wouldn’t win his World Championship just yet.
Fate had also decided on the circuit. Everyone loved it. But it was just too narrow to be safe. The 1987 Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring would be the last. It would be missing from the 1988 F1 Calendar and Austria would not host a Grand Prix again until 1997. The circuit that would hold this race would be the A1-Ring. The same circuit, widened of course and with expanded run off, but with the opening of the lap much cut down and the Bosch Kurve gone.
The Future
That circuit has since, with tweaks, become the Red Bull Ring (why Red Bull must brand everything is beyond me, but there it is). It’s a fine facility, still beautiful. And yet it is not what the Österreichring was. Despite the same scenery and location it lacks . . . something. An indefinable magic the old circuit had. I don’t think it’s just nostalgia either. If you have five minutes, search for the old track on Youtube and watch some onboards or some clips of cars screaming around Bosche. You’ll feel the same I’m sure.
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