1989 Hungarian Grand Prix

Senna's teammate and Drivers' Championship rival, Alain Prost , finished fourth, meaning that his lead over Senna in the championship was reduced to 14 points.

The Hungaroring had been changed from the year before; the tight, slow S-bends at Turns 3, 4 and 5 had been changed in character and bypassed. Turn 3 remained, but was now taken much faster as what were Turns 4 and 5 were bypassed, thus extending the straight now from Turn 3 into the new Turns 4 and 5; raising the circuit's average speed by 10 percent.

The AGS cars of Yannick Dalmas and Gabriele Tarquini were seventh and ninth respectively, while Zakspeed drivers Bernd Schneider and Aguri Suzuki , still hampered by their underpowered V8 Yamaha engines, were eighth and twelfth. Roberto Moreno was tenth in the Coloni , while his team-mate Pierre-Henri Raphanel was unable to post a representative time and was bottom of the time sheets in his last appearance for the team. Gregor Foitek was still unable to pre-qualify the new EuroBrun car, and was ...

Riccardo Patrese took a surprise pole position in his Williams - Renault , the first and only non- McLaren - Honda pole of the season, beating Ayrton Senna by three-tenths of a second. It was only the second pole of Patrese's career and his first since the opening round of the 1981 season at Long Beach . It was also the first pole position for the Renault V10 engine .

In another surprise, Alex Caffi took third in his Dallara - Ford-Cosworth , just six-tenths behind Senna, with Thierry Boutsen fourth in the second Williams-Renault. Drivers' Championship leader Alain Prost was fifth in the second McLaren - Honda , with Gerhard Berger sixth in the V12 Ferrari . The top ten was completed by Alessandro Nannini in the Benetton - Ford , Stefano Modena in the Brabham - Judd , Derek Warwick in the Arrows Ford-Cosworth and Pierluigi Martini in the Minardi Ford-Cosworth...

Nigel Mansell could only manage 12th in the second Ferrari, nearly seven-tenths behind teammate Berger and over two seconds behind Patrese, and later complained of traffic. After realising that he would not crack the top 10 in qualifying, Mansell instead used final qualifying to work on his race set up, something he hoped would pay dividends on race day.

Nannini exited the train when he pulled in to change tyres. This promoted Mansell to 7th, which he quickly turned into 5th by passing Boutsen and Caffi in quick succession. He then set about closing the 17-second gap to the leaders, and was promoted to 4th when Berger pitted for tyres. Having caught up to the leading group, Mansell passed Prost for 3rd. Patrese's Williams then began to develop a problem with a holed radiator, which slowed him and bunched up the leading group. Eventually, Patrese...

Mansell now began to pressure Senna, clearly faster but unable to pass due to the extra power of the McLaren's Honda engine. Meanwhile, Prost pitted for tyres and rejoined 6th, while Berger only inherited 3rd briefly before he retired with gearbox problems, leaving Senna and Mansell on their own. Eventually, the pair came up to lap Stefan Johansson 's Onyx . Senna caught him at an awkward moment, just at the accelerating zone out of turn 3. The Brazilian uncharacteristically hesitated, briefly l...

Many of the leading cars had problems with tyre vibrations - both Senna and Mansell complained about this, whilst Prost also had difficulties after picking up debris whilst going offline to avoid Patrese's oil. [ 4 ]