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From the archive: 1985 Portuguese GP

AUTOSPORT's from the archive feature makes a one-off return this week to celebrate the release of the Senna movie. The event in question? It had to be the great Brazilian's first grand prix victory, at Estoril in 1985. Enjoy...

To cast yourself onto a wet race track, along which grand prix cars are proceeding, is not truly the action of a thinking man. But if you were a Lotus mechanic at half past four last Sunday afternoon, you were not a thinking man. Your cars had won only once since the days of Mario and Ronnie, and that was out of the blue. Since then, they had often taken pole, often led, but this race - this meeting - had been dominated by a Lotus, first to last.

Ayrton Senna's victory on Sunday will be remembered as a classic. From the start he was in a race of his own, and made no mistake worthy of the name in conditions so appalling as to catch out a man of Alain Prost's quality. The Brazilian gave the impression that he could have gone on like that indefinitely. And he probably could have. It was a mesmeric performance.

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