1986 Mexican Grand Prix: Berger’s No-Stop Win for Benetton

On October 12, 1986, Gerhard Berger won a Formula 1 race in a way the rest of the front of the field didn’t think was possible: he never stopped for tyres. At the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix, the first world championship race in Mexico City since 1970, the 27-year-old Austrian ran his Pirelli-shod Benetton B186-BMW for all 68 laps while the Goodyear runners behind him blistered their tyres, pitted and dropped back. It was Berger’s first Grand Prix win and the first for Benetton, a team that had been racing under that name for less than a season.

It was also the first win in a story that is still going. The team Berger won for in Mexico later took Michael Schumacher to two world titles, won two more with Fernando Alonso under the Renault name, and races today as Alpine from the same base at Enstone.

A Title Fight Comes to Mexico City

Mexico was round 15 of 16 in 1986, and the championship was a three-way fight. Williams-Honda team-mates Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet were chasing McLaren’s reigning champion, Alain Prost, and each other. Mansell arrived as the points leader, and a win would have given him the title with a race to spare.

The venue was a return as much as a decider. Since F1’s last visit, the circuit had been renamed the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, after Mexico’s racing brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodríguez, and rebuilt to current standards on a shorter 4.421km layout. The banked Peraltada survived, with less banking and more run-off. Despite resurfacing, the track was badly bumpy, and at roughly 7,500ft above sea level it was hard on drivers and engines alike. Teams were given an acclimatisation day before running began.

Track map of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez layout used for the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix, including the Peraltada — The 4.421km Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez layout used from 1986, with the banked Peraltada leading onto the main straight. Map: Pitlane02 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Benetton’s Speed Was No Secret

Ayrton Senna put his Lotus-Renault on pole with a 1:16.990. Piquet and Mansell lined up second and third, and Berger was fourth on 1:17.609. That was not a surprise. The Benetton family had bought the Toleman team in 1985, and for its first season under the new name the team swapped Hart engines for BMW’s 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder. The B186 had already taken pole positions at the Österreichring and at Monza, proof that the car, the engine and its Pirelli tyres worked at high speed.

The BMW engine was the most extreme of the turbo era. For 1986 BMW claimed around 1,400hp in qualifying trim, a theoretical figure because its own dynamometer could not measure beyond about 1,280bhp. What Benetton still needed was a race where that speed lasted to the flag.

How the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix Was Won

Mansell’s afternoon went wrong at the start. His Williams would not engage first gear, and by the time it moved, most of the field had gone past. He spent the rest of the race driving flat out, trading fastest laps with Piquet as he recovered.

Piquet took the lead from Senna at the first corner, with Berger third and Prost fourth. Prost passed Berger for third on lap 7. Then the tyres took over. It was very hot, and the Goodyear runners found wear a serious problem. Piquet led until just before half distance, when his slicks gave out. He made three tyre stops in all. Senna’s tyres blistered badly. Prost’s single stop was slow because a wheel gun jammed on a nut, and soon afterwards his TAG engine dropped onto five cylinders. He ran his second set to the finish rather than risk the engine not restarting after another stop.

Benetton had planned for a non-stop run from the start. At half distance Berger’s Pirellis were still wearing well, so he stayed out. As the leaders pitted, he took over at the front, and the Goodyear cars behind could not close on him. Berger won in 1:33:18.700, 25.438 seconds ahead of Prost, with Senna third, 52.513 seconds back. Piquet and Mansell were a lap down in fourth and fifth, and Philippe Alliot took the last point for Ligier. Piquet’s 1:19.360 on lap 64 was the race’s fastest lap.

Gerhard Berger’s 1986 Benetton B186 Formula 1 car on display at the 2025 Adelaide Grand Final — A Benetton B186 raced by Berger in 1986, displayed at the 2025 Adelaide Grand Final. Photo: Yu Chu Chin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why It Mattered

For the championship, the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix kept everything open. Mansell’s two points for fifth left him six clear of Prost and seven clear of Piquet with one race left. Prost’s second place, scored with a misfiring engine, was the result that kept him in it. Two weeks later in Adelaide, Mansell’s left-rear tyre burst on lap 64, Williams called Piquet in for a precautionary tyre change, and Prost won the race and the title. He became the first driver to win back-to-back championships since Jack Brabham in 1959 and 1960. A season settled by a tyre failure had been kept alive, a fortnight earlier, by a car whose tyres didn’t need changing at all.

For Benetton, winning the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix came in its first season under the Benetton name. The team that had started life as Toleman now had a race winner, a quick young driver and proof that its engineering could win on a day when the big teams faltered.

A Last Word for Pirelli and BMW’s Turbo

For Pirelli, it showed the value of tyre competition. Pirelli left Formula 1 at the end of the season and returned from 1989 to 1991. Its next win came with Piquet and Benetton at the 1991 Canadian Grand Prix, the first for a Pirelli-shod car since Mexico 1986. Its win after that did not come until the 2011 Australian Grand Prix, by which time Pirelli had become Formula 1’s sole supplier, the role it still holds.

For BMW, Mexico was the last win for the turbocharged four-cylinder that had powered Piquet to the first drivers’ title won with a turbo engine in 1983. A BMW engine did not win another Grand Prix until the 2001 San Marino Grand Prix.

Benetton B186 with BMW turbo engine on display at the BMW Museum in Munich — The B186 at the BMW Museum. Berger’s Mexico win was the last for BMW’s turbocharged four-cylinder. Photo: NaBUru38 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Lasting Effect: Berger, Benetton and Enstone

Berger moved to Ferrari for 1987 and won the final two races of that season, in Japan and Australia. He finished his career with 10 Grand Prix wins, driving for ATS, Arrows, Benetton, Ferrari and McLaren. He went back to Benetton for his last two seasons, and his final win, from pole at the 1997 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, was also the last win Benetton ever scored. The team’s first and last victories came from the same driver, 11 years apart.

In between, Benetton won 27 races. It moved to a new factory near Enstone in 1992 and won the drivers’ title with Schumacher in 1994 and 1995, adding the constructors’ title in 1995. Renault bought the team in 2000 and renamed it for 2002, then won both championships with Alonso in 2005 and 2006. The team became Lotus in 2012, Renault again in 2016 and Alpine in 2021. It has not always been a clean history. The same organisation was at the centre of the Crashgate scandal at F1’s first night race. But every one of those chapters goes back to a green car that didn’t stop for tyres in Mexico City.

The tyre lesson has lasted too. The 1986 Mexican Grand Prix was won by choosing a tyre that could do something its rivals’ couldn’t. Tyre suppliers fought the same way in the 2000s, as Michelin and Bridgestone did in 2003, and in today’s single-supplier era the call is about compound and timing instead of brand. It can still decide a race, as Red Bull showed when it won at Sepang on a tyre Mercedes didn’t pick.