1986 Formula One World Championship

The 1986 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 40th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1986 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1986 Formula One World Championship for Manufacturers, both of which commenced on 23 March and ended on 26 October after sixteen races. The Drivers' Championship was won by Alain Prost, and the Manufacturers' Championship was won by Williams. Prost was the first driver to win back-to-back Drivers' Championships since Jack Brabham in 1959 and 1960.

The 1986 championship culminated in a battle between Williams drivers Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet and McLaren driver Alain Prost at the final race, the Australian Grand Prix. Mansell's tyre exploded and Piquet was brought in for a precautionary pit stop for tyres as a result, leaving Prost to win the race and his second consecutive Drivers' Championship. Mansell, Piquet and Prost, along with Lotus' Ayrton Senna, dominated throughout the season and formed what was dubbed as the "Gang of Four".

For the first time, turbocharged engines were compulsory due to a ban on naturally aspirated engines. This ban would be rescinded in 1987, in preparation for turbos themselves being banned from 1989.

The Formula One cars of 1986 are the most powerful Grand Prix cars to ever have raced. There were still no limits on engine power, and some engines, including the powerful but rather unreliable BMW M12/13 1.5 litre single turbocharged straight-4 engine used by the Benetton, Brabham and Arrows teams, could throw out 1,350+ hp at 5.5 bar boost (79.7 psi) during qualifying; this would happen when the engineers took the boost restrictors off the engine. The power of the turbocharged engines was so great that it could not even be accurately measured until years later, when the technology was advanced enough. Purpose-built drivetrains had to be fitted to the chassis of each car for specific sessions – there were qualifying engines (as described above) that had unrestricted boost pressure, and qualifying gearboxes, designed to withstand the engine's extra power; these components would only last about 3–4 minutes (2–3 laps) during use. These drivetrain units were then taken out and then replaced with the boost-restricted engines and specifically prepared gearboxes for races (if too much power was used, the engines would be so worn that the combusting in the engine would burst right through the block due to the immense stress on the metal caused by the extreme temperatures of the combustions in the engine's internals, hence the nickname "grenade"). When these turbocharged engines were fitted to the cars, the whole package weighed about 540 kg (1,190 lb). For qualifying, the power to weight ratios were about 2,500 hp/ton+ for the Benetton-BMW and 1,850 hp/ton for the Benetton's race trim; compared to about 1,175 hp/ton for a modern F1 car – and all Formula 1 cars had manual stick-shift gearboxes then. A consistent problem for these new turbo engines that was somewhat smoothed over (particularly by Ford and Honda) over the years was the turbo lag. In the engines, which were mechanically turbocharged, the power would only come on all at once 2–3 seconds after the driver put his foot down; it would usually measure out from 100–300 hp for the first 2–3 seconds then the engine would go immediately to the top of the power range (usually 900–1000 hp). The nature of these engines made them very difficult to drive; drivers had to anticipate when the power would come on, so they would floor the gas pedal much earlier than usual to get the power on at the right moment. This was similar to what had gone on in American IndyCar racing in the early 1970s.

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