1986 Brazilian Grand Prix

The new season had seen many driver changes, the most significant was Piquet's arrival at Williams after seven years at Brabham, while Keke Rosberg left Williams to join McLaren and Elio de Angelis joined Brabham after several seasons at Lotus. Senna used his influence at Lotus to ensure they hired a driver that would not interfere with his campaign which left Derek Warwick out of a seat, although that would prove to be temporary. Williams was missing their team principal, Frank Williams who had had a car accident in pre-season testing that left him a quadriplegic.^[1]

Senna led from pole position but was soon under threat from the Williams pair. Nigel Mansell spun off the track on the opening lap after contact with Senna, but Piquet was in the lead by lap three. As pitstops began it started to look as though Alain Prost (McLaren MP4/2C) might pull a surprise by only pitting once and snatching the win away from the Brazilians^[1] but that came to an end along with Prost's TAG-Porsche engine just past half-distance.^[2]

There was no threat to the Brazilian pair after that with Piquet retaking the lead from Senna after the latter's final tyre stop. Behind Laffite was his Ligier teammate René Arnoux. Fifth place was taken by the Tyrrell 014-Renault of Martin Brundle for his first official points finish since his debut season two years previously (Brundle had scored several points in 1984 including 2 points on debut in Brazil and a 2nd placing at Detroit, but had lost all points when Tyrrell were disqualified for the season). Gerhard Berger finished sixth in his Benetton B186-BMW on the debut for the new team which had taken over the Toleman team during the off-season. Philippe Streiff in the second Tyrrell, Elio de Angelis (Brabham BT55), Johnny Dumfries (Lotus 98T) and Teo Fabi (Benetton B186) were the only other finishers in a day of high attrition where Mansell had been the only non-mechanical retirement.

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.