“A Painless Half-Nelson” – 1987 F1 season review video

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The 1987 season saw Nelson Piquet take his third title after a season-long battle with Williams team mate Nigel Mansell. The championship was decided when Mansell shunted in practice at Suzuka and injured his back.

The video highlights for the year are presented by the late Peter Ustinov and commentated on by Simon Taylor. Ustinov is entertainingly off-the-wall and Taylor is more engaging than he is in the 1981 review.

The film serves the season well from a historical perspective, charting the progress of the Jim Clark Cup drivers and Colin Chapman Cups (these were one-off championships for drivers and teams respectively with normally aspirated machines during the turbo heyday) and keeping an eye on major political developments and driver moves.

Not least of which being Honda’s defection from champions Williams to Lotus, who were never to win another race.

Williams’ domination of 1987 was such that the quality of the racing often suffered. This was emphatically not the case at Silverstone, which saw one of the great battles between Mansell and Piquet.

However, most of the major race (and pre-race) action is present, including even Stefan Johansson’s grisly accident with a deer in Austria. Johansson was fine, the deer was a write-off.

Best bit: At Silverstone, Mansell hauls in Piquet from half a minute back, and dupes him with a classic move at Stowe to take a thrilling win. The crowd go bananas.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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10 comments on ““A Painless Half-Nelson” – 1987 F1 season review video”

  1. Abdurahman (@)
    11th December 2012, 3:38

    I have seen and heard Peter Ustinov on another seasons review and he is fantastically witty and dry dry humorist!

    1. @abdurahman That was the longest wait for a comment ever :-)

      Yes Ustinov is at his eccentric best in this one. Pity he didn’t do any others, though I’m told his comedy Grand Prix of Gibraltar is worth a listen.

      1. Abdurahman (@)
        11th December 2012, 8:50

        I could have sworn Ustinov did commentary on one other review as well, but I believe you Keith.

    2. looks like @abdurahman traveled back in time to read this. What prompted u to read and comment on this?

      1. Abdurahman (@)
        11th December 2012, 8:54

        HaHa!
        Hmm, let’s see, because we are F1Fanatics bro!
        And any of us that haven’t gotten to see this review with the one and only Peter Ustinov is sorely missing out.

  2. @keithcollantine Is this F1F’s first article? Just read that F1F was set up in 2005. The year I started following F1 thanks to Karthikeyan

    1. @malleshmagdum Well when I set it up I put a lot of content up at once so there’s probably a few dozen things that can claim to be the first article. You can find them via the archive:

      https://www.racefans.net/2005/01/

  3. WOW! Was this page maintained in your server through eleven years?!?!?!?!……
    Anyway, the hystories of Piquet are ever great hystories.

  4. I have been eager to learn the identity of the music used in the intro

    1. J. Mark Taylor – Meltdown (1986) this is it!

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