1985 Formula One World Championship  The 1985 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 39th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It began on 7 April and ended on 3 November after sixteen races. The World Championship for Drivers was won by Alain Prost, and the World Championship for Manufacturers was won by McLaren for the second consecutive year. The 1985 Formula One season saw continued success for the McLaren-TAG team. After losing the Drivers' Championship by two points to Nelson Piquet in , and by just half a point the previous year to teammate Niki Lauda, Alain Prost would ultimately secure his first of four titles by a 23-point margin. The Formula One writer Koen Vergeer remarked that "It was about time, everyone knew he was the best", reflecting a general feeling that Prost had been unlucky to finish runner-up in the previous two years, even though he had won more races than Piquet in 1983 and Lauda in 1984. The reigning Drivers' Champion Lauda competed in his final season of Formula One, but he was unable to match Prost for results; despite maintaining a close pace with his teammate, Lauda only won once at Zandvoort. Seated next to an unhappy McLaren team boss, Ron Dennis, who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to continue driving, Lauda announced his decision to retire for good at the season's end in a press conference before practice for his home Grand Prix in Austria. For most of the season, the points table was headed by Ferrari's Michele Alboreto, who enjoyed his best season in F1. He won the Canadian and German Grands Prix, and was on the podium eight times. However, Ferrari's results faded badly in the second half of the season as other emerging drivers took the fight to Prost. Among these were Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell, both of whom scored their first victories in 1985. Lotus team manager Peter Warr had replaced Mansell with Senna going into the season, a decision which seemed justified when Senna took a superb win in the wet in Portugal in Round 2. Despite only scoring a mere 7 championship points up until Round 13 in Belgium, Mansell fought back the Williams-Honda, and chalked up two victories near the season's end, including his famous breakthrough win in the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. In winning at Brands Hatch, Mansell made Peter Warr eat his words as the Lotus boss had declared that Mansell would "never win a Grand Prix as long as I have a hole in my arse" after he crashed his Lotus 95T out of the lead in the wet 1984 Monaco Grand Prix.