Senna wins Monaco thriller
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from May 1990.
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The Brazilian steered his McLaren round the twisting streets of Monte Carlo in a winning time of one hour 52 minutes and 46.982 seconds -- and afterwards confessed he had been forced to coast through the final laps after his car lost power. It was his third win in four years in the Mediterranean principality and came after high drama when a crash on the first lap caused the race to be restarted.
"I went well until a few laps from the end," he said. "Then I started losing power so I had to cut back the revs and take it easy on the final laps. It was close at the finish but I expected it would be."
Senna eventually finished just one second ahead of second-placed Frenchman Jean Alesi, in a Tyrrell, and two seconds ahead of his own McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger of Austria. Belgian Thierry Boutsen was fourth in a Williams and Italian Alex Caffi fifth for Arrows with Frenchman Eric Bernard collecting his first point in sixth place for Lola. Senna's win lifted him to 22 points in the drivers' championship and gave him a clear lead over Berger, who is second with 16. Alesi is third with 13 and Frenchman Alain Prost fourth with 12.
Prost, the defending world champion, started alongside Senna at the front of the grid, but his bid to equal Briton Graham Hill's record of five Monaco victories ended in disappointment when he was forced to retire, after running second, when a battery failure upset his Ferrari's automatic gearbox.
Prost, however, had never looked like a serious threat to Senna during the opening 31 laps before he withdrew fromthe 78-lap race.
Senna led from the start with Prost, Alesi and Berger following. Briton Nigel Mansell, in the second Ferrari, moved up to seventh but was forced into the pits for a changed nose cone after a collision with Boutsen.
