1990 Formula 1 Season

The 1990 Formula One World Championship was dominated by the bitter rivalry between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, the two greatest drivers of their generation, now separated for the first time after years as McLaren teammates. Prost had departed for Ferrari over the winter, taking with him the resentment built up during 1989, and the two men resumed their feud across team lines. Senna, driving the McLaren-Honda MP4/5B, set the early pace, but Prost's Ferrari 641 proved a formidable challenger as the season wore on, and the title fight came down to a familiar venue: Suzuka, the same circuit where the pair had collided in 1989 to settle the previous championship in Prost's favour.

Senna took eight pole positions and won six races, but the season was defined less by individual brilliance than by the sheer animosity between the protagonists. Senna had never forgiven the FIA, and specifically governing-body president Jean-Marie Balestre, for the disqualification that cost him the 1989 title at Suzuka, and he carried that grievance into 1990. Prost, meanwhile, found a competitive home at Ferrari and won five races, keeping himself within striking distance heading to the penultimate round in Japan. The mathematics were stark: if both men failed to finish at Suzuka, Senna would be champion.

What followed became one of the most infamous moments in the sport's history. Senna, on pole but furious that race officials had refused his request to move pole position to the cleaner side of the track, declared beforehand that if Prost beat him into the first corner he would not yield. At the start Prost did indeed get the better launch, and Senna drove straight into the back of the Ferrari at the first corner, taking both cars out of the race at high speed and clinching the title on the spot. Senna would later openly admit the collision was deliberate, an act of premeditated retribution that remains one of the sport's most controversial title-deciders.

Beyond the Senna-Prost drama, 1990 confirmed McLaren-Honda's continued supremacy in the constructors' standings, with the Woking team taking its third consecutive constructors' crown. The season also marked the emergence of Williams-Renault as a coming force and saw the young Jean Alesi announce himself with stunning drives, most memorably his early-season duel with Senna at Phoenix. The year crystallised the moral and political tensions that had come to surround Formula One at the dawn of the 1990s, and the Suzuka collision cast a long shadow over the sport's image, raising uncomfortable questions about sportsmanship that lingered for years.