Pre-qualified?

Yannick Dalmas, driving his AGS JH24 (photo above), succeeded for the first time of the season, and just barely, to pre-qualify and thus to participate in the qualifying sessions for the 1990 Brazilian Grand Prix, held at Interlagos.

It should be remembered that at the time nine competitors were called upon to pre-qualify on Friday morning and only the first four passed this first obstacle… for the others, it was already time to pack up, the weekend ended there.

Among those eliminated in the first hour were Gabriele Tarquini in the second AGS, Roberto Moreno in one of the modest EuroBruns, Bertrand Gachot in the heavy Coloni-Subaru, Claudio Langes driving the second EuroBrun and Gary Brabham in the hopeless Life… Dalmas then qualified his AGS JH24 in 26th position out of 30 starters, but retired on lap 26 with a broken suspension.

A reader (Mischa Bijenhof) recalls : “It’s a bit of a strange story: Dalmas’ suspension broke during the race and it was believed to be the result of a collision with Aguri Suzuki during the Sunday morning warm-up. Coincidence or not, Suzuki retired for the same reason, at roughly the same time. Makes you wonder if these cars had been properly checked after the warm-up.”

In any case, this withdrawal was a real shame for Dalmas, who did not imagine qualifying the JH24, because this same AGS had never managed to qualify in 1989… and would not manage to qualify again afterwards.