Watch: Gerhard Berger ends Ferrari 38-race winless streak

Watch: Gerhard Berger ends Ferrari 38-race winless streak | 1987 Japanese GP. Berger won by 17 seconds over Senna.

The 1987 Japanese Grand Prix was held at Suzuka on 1 November 1987. It was the fifteenth and penultimate race of the 1987 FIA Formula One World Championship and the first Japanese Grand Prix since 1977.

The race was won by Austrian driver Gerhard Berger driving a Ferrari F1/87. It was the end of a 38-race losing streak for Formula One’s most famous team (the first victory for Scuderia Ferrari since the 1985 German Grand Prix) and GerhardBerger’s second Grand Prix victory having won the Mexican Grand Prix the previous year. Berger won by 17 seconds over Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna driving a Lotus 99T. Third was the McLaren MP4/3 of Swedish driver Stefan Johansson.

At the start Berger immediately imposed his authority by building a cushion. Prost, in his McLaren, perhaps the only driver capable of challenging Berger for the victory, suffered a puncture on the first lap and, therefore, was out of contention. At one stage Stefan Johansson in the McLaren closed on Berger, but the Austrian driver responded and eventually romped to a seemingly effortless victory.

Michele Alboreto, in the second Ferrari, got away very slowly at the green lights leaving him towards the rear of the field. However, the Italian drove an aggressive race to climb his way back up the order to finish an excellent fourth despite suffering from a dragging undertray causing a huge amount of sparks.