McLaren makes it nine wins from nine at the 1988 German Grand Prix

By the time Ayrton Senna won at Hockenheim on 24 July 1988, McLaren’s dominance had stopped looking like a run of form and started resembling the season’s operating condition. Nine races had been held, and McLaren had won all nine.

The MP4/4 combined Gordon Murray and Steve Nichols’s low-line chassis work with Honda’s turbocharged V6, but the car was only part of the advantage. Senna and Alain Prost formed the strongest driver pairing in the field, and McLaren’s race operation converted speed into results with a consistency its rivals could not approach.

The final season of the first turbo era imposed strict fuel limits and reduced boost pressure. McLaren-Honda managed both restrictions better than anyone else. The package was economical enough to finish, powerful enough to control the straights and balanced enough to remain competitive on circuits that demanded something other than engine output.

Senna closes on Prost

Senna started the German Grand Prix from pole, with Prost alongside him. The long Hockenheim straights placed engine performance and aerodynamic efficiency at the centre of the race, which suited the MP4/4 perfectly. The two McLarens were separated from the rest before the first stint had fully developed.

Senna controlled the afternoon and finished 13.6 seconds ahead of his team-mate. Gerhard Berger was third for Ferrari, more than 50 seconds behind the winner, with Michele Alboreto fourth in the second Ferrari. The result was another McLaren one-two and another afternoon in which the nearest rival had no realistic route into the lead.

The victory was Senna’s fifth of the season and moved him to within three points of Prost in the championship standings. Their contest was much tighter than the constructors’ race. Under the scoring system used in 1988, only a driver’s best 11 results counted, a detail that would later favour Senna despite Prost accumulating more points across the full season.

Nelson Piquet’s 150th Grand Prix start offered another milestone, but it lasted only one lap before his Lotus retired. The contrast with McLaren was severe. Even the reigning world champion, using the same Honda engine, could not make another chassis perform at the MP4/4’s level.

The streak still had two races to run

McLaren followed the Hockenheim win with victories in Hungary and Belgium, extending its opening run to 11 races. Ferrari finally interrupted it at Monza, where Berger won after both McLarens failed to finish. The Italian result prevented a clean sweep, but it did little to change the scale of the season.

Senna eventually won eight races and the drivers’ championship, while Prost took seven victories. McLaren finished with 15 wins from 16 Grands Prix, ten one-two finishes and a constructors’ points total that left Ferrari a distant second.

Hockenheim was therefore less an isolated classic than a central movement in an extraordinary campaign. It was the ninth consecutive demonstration that the rest of the field was competing for whatever the red and white cars left behind.