Sunday 15th June 1986
Nigel Mansell driving a Williams-Honda FW11 won the Canadian Grand Prix.
The death of Elio de Angelis a month earlier had created an opening at Brabham and the team hired Derek Warwick who had been left out of work after Ayrton Senna refused to have him as his Lotus team mate. Marc Surer was also missing having been very seriously injured while competing on the Hessen Rally in a Ford RS200. Christian Danner was hired by Arrows but because of contractual problems had to race in Canada for Osella and so there was only one Arrows.
Qualifying resulted in pole position for Nigel Mansell’s Williams-Honda with Ayrton Senna’s Lotus-Renault right with him. Nelson Piquet was third in the second Williams while Alain Prost was fourth for McLaren ahead of Rene Arnoux (Ligier), Keke Rosberg (McLaren), Gerhard Berger (Benetton), Jacques Laffite (Ligier), Riccardo Patrese (Brabham) and Warwick. Michele Alboreto was 11th in his Ferrari.
In the morning warm-up Patrick Tambay suffered a suspension failure on his Lola-Ford and injured his feet in the resulting accident and so he did not start.
Mansell took the lead and with Senna holding up those behind him, Mansell seemed to be in a very strong position. Behind Senna were Prost, Piquet, Rosberg, Arnoux and the rest. Rosberg soon overtook Piquet. On the fifth lap Prost finally made it ahead of Senna and the Brazilian went wide and was pushed back to sixth behind Piquet and Arnoux. On lap 13 Rosberg overtook Prost for second and four laps later the Finn took the lead. His fuel consumption was too much., however, and so Rosberg had to back off which enabled Mansell and Prost to close up. As they came up to lap Jones on lap 22 Rosberg left a small gap and Mansell took the lead again. He pulled away to win the race.
Prost retook Rosberg for second place but he then had a slow pit stop caused by a sticking wheelnut and dropped back to fifth. He spent the rest of the race charging back to take second by the finish. Piquet was third with Rosberg fourth having had to slow to conserve fuel in the closing laps while the troubled Senna was fifth and Arnoux sixth.
