Quote Originally Posted by Rollo
For you entertainment I present the end of the 1989 Italian GP...
YouTube - ‪1989 Italy GP - P10/10‬‏

Of particular note is what happens from 8:10 in this video. Prost drops his trophy to the crowd below, and on the afternoon that his win gave the Constructor's Championship to McLaren.

By way of background, this shows to the surface of the utter bile which would have been bubbling underneath. In that context the incident at Suzuka starts to make a lot more sense.

I will point out that this was the moment at which the championship was closed; that was of significance in 1989. (Who could predict the events of 1 year later?)

Going into the race the gap was Prost 76 (81) and Senna 60 (60). Had Senna not been DQ'd and allowed to win the race it would have been Prost 76 (81) and Senna 69 (69). It would have still been mathematically possible for Senna to win the World Championship at Adelaide (which was a shockingly wet race, at which Prost acted really petulantly). Would Prost have decided to withdraw? I think not.
I was voicing an opinion, for a change, which I still stick by: small potatoes. The only entertainment value in Formula One by then were the cutthroat politics behind the scene and childish antics of several of the drivers, especially a certain Brazilian. It mattered not a single whit to me whether it was Senna da Silva , Prost or Petunia the Pig who won the world championship that year. It still does not. I was -- and I still am -- utterly uninterested in F1 from that era. However, the lunacy of the politics were -- and still are -- rather fascinating. The "racing" basically was rather pathetic given that Senna da Silva and Prost held almost all the cards and one of them, not the French chap, was a nut case.

Your "petulance" remark regarding Prost is interesting given that he was probably the only sane person among the drivers that day by refusing to start, something which the conditions proved to be a good decision (I had to pull Autocourse off the shelf to see if that was the race I thought it was).

All this is simply personal opinion which is entirely separate from any sense of historical objectivity -- which really is not an issue given that I never intend to write about this era. That is, not the racing. The politics and the off-track nonsense, however, is another deal entirely. However, given that my list of projects needing to get done is already way too long, somewhat doubtful that much of anything from this era will ever get done.

As an aside, I have always rather liked Lauda's approach to trophies and could never work up much indignation regarding Prost's tossing the trophy into the crowd, which seem to still be able to get panties in a wad in certain crowds.