Qualifying
The McLaren-Hondas totally dominated qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix. Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost occupied the front row of the grid with times of 1:27.148 and 1:27.919 respectively. Their nearest challenger was the Lotus of reigning World Champion Nelson Piquet with a time of 1:30.500. All the more interesting was that Piquet's Lotus was powered by the same specification turbocharged Honda engine that powered the McLarens, yet he was over 3 seconds slower than Senna.
Nigel Mansell missed qualifying on the front row of the grid for the first time since the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix. He qualified his Williams-Judd in 11th place, five places behind team mate Riccardo Patrese in 6th. The fastest atmo car in qualifying was the Benetton-Ford of Alessandro Nannini who ended up 4th on the grid in front of the disappointing Ferrari of Gerhard Berger who, along with team mate Michele Alboreto, found the turbocharged Italian V6 engines down on power throughout. The claims of Berger and Alboreto were backed up by the speed trap figures. The fastest cars were the Arrows-Megatrons at 310 km/h (193 mph), with the Honda powered McLarens less than 1 km/h slower. The Ferraris were much slower at 295 km/h (183 mph), and were some 20 km/h (12 mph) slower than the McLarens over the start-finish line.
The EuroBrun of Oscar Larrauri, the Ligiers of Stefan Johansson and René Arnoux and the Zakspeed turbo of Bernd Schneider all failed to qualify while the Osella of Italian Nicola Larini was excluded after scrutineering after the cars engine mounting points were illegally changed.
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