1989 German Grand Prix

Championship standings

Prost leads Senna by 20 points at the halfway point of the season. Senna has retired from four consecutive races. Prost has won three of those four and holds a commanding position.

Previous race

At Silverstone, Prost won after Senna spun out on lap 12 at Becketts, unable to select third gear as he came down through the gearbox. Mansell finished second, Nannini third, Piquet fourth. The Minardis of Martini and Pérez-Sala finished fifth and sixth, scoring the three points that keep Minardi out of the pre-qualifying sessions for the second half of the season.

Between-race developments

A major management shakeup at Team Lotus: long-serving team boss Peter Warr, who led the team since Colin Chapman’s death in 1982, has been asked to leave and is replaced as team manager by Rupert Manwaring. Tony Rudd becomes the team’s new chairman.

The pre-qualifying list has been restructured for the second half of the season. Brabham, Dallara and Rial have scored enough points to escape the Friday morning sessions. Larrousse, having scored no points, joins the pre-qualifying group. Michele Alboreto has left Tyrrell following a sponsorship dispute and joins Larrousse, replacing Éric Bernard. Roberto Moreno joins his Coloni team-mate in pre-qualifying; Gabriele Tarquini joins his AGS team-mate Yannick Dalmas despite his sixth-place finish in Mexico, as Minardi’s Silverstone points dropped AGS below the threshold.