1987 Italian Grand Prix

The 1987 Italian Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Monza on 6 September 1987. It was the eleventh race of the 1987 Formula One World Championship. It was the 57th Italian Grand Prix and the 52nd to be held at Monza. The race was held over 50 laps of the 5.8-kilometre (3.6 mi) circuit for a race distance of 290 kilometres (180 mi).

The race was won from pole position by Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet, driving a Williams-Honda. Piquet took his third victory of the season by 1.8 seconds from compatriot Ayrton Senna, who led in his Lotus-Honda before running wide at the Parabolica with eight laps to go. Piquet's British team-mate, Nigel Mansell, finished third, nearly 50 seconds adrift. It was also the sixth consecutive victory for the Williams team, a run of wins that had begun at the French Grand Prix in early July.

French Tyrrell driver Philippe Streiff was the first naturally aspirated Jim Clark Trophy car to finish in 12th, three laps down on Piquet.

The win strengthened Piquet's championship points lead to 14 points over Senna and 20 over Mansell.

During qualifying, Piquet recorded a speed of 352.135 km/h (218.807 mph), the fastest achieved by a Formula One car during the first turbo era of the sport (1977-88). Like Lotus, Williams had been working on their own computer controlled Active suspension. However, unlike Lotus who had been running theirs all season on the 99T in a bid to try and gain a technical advantage, this was the debut Grand Prix for the Williams version, called "Williams Reactive Ride" (Lotus allegedly had a legal copyright on the Active Suspension name), with Williams Technical Director Patrick Head preferring to get the system right before trying to figure it out on the run in the limited time available during a race meeting. Nigel Mansell had little faith in the system after disastrous results with the original Lotus Active Suspension in 1982–1983. Piquet's faith in the suspension system however was absolute after completing a full race distance test session at Imola (albeit on a virtually deserted track), finishing 3 minutes faster than Mansell's win there earlier in the year. By using the Reactive car, Piquet was able to run less wing than his team mate and was over 5 mph (8.0 km/h) faster through the speed trap than Mansell in the passive FW11B.

Due to the entries of AGS and Coloni, for the first time in the 1987 season, there would be drivers who would fail to qualify for the race - in this case, it was to be Nicola Larini in the Coloni and Pascal Fabre in the AGS.

This was the first F1 race since the death of former Ferrari driver Didier Pironi, subsequently the Tifosi paid tribute during the weekend.