At Imola however, it was plain to see what all the teams had feared. Steve Nichols' McLaren MP4/4, combined with the championship winning Honda V6 turbo, made a mockery of the rest of the grid. In qualifying both Senna and Prost were 3 seconds faster than the Lotus-Honda of Piquet in 3rd. At the end of the race Senna and Prost (who had almost stalled at the start and was only in 8th by the time the field got to Tosa, giving Senna a clear track while Prost took a number of laps to get to second) had lapped the entire field, with teammate Prost only 2.3 seconds behind a fuel conserving Senna at the finish. Indeed, both McLarens set faster race laps than anyone else had qualified. The McLarens lapping the field with 5 laps remaining was bad news for the Benettons of Thierry Boutsen and Alessandro Nannini respectively. This meant that both Piquet (Lotus) and Berger (Ferrari) had one lap less that they had to try and stretch their fuel and now could afford to up their turbo boost if needed. Over the final 5 laps, Piquet pulled away from a challenging Boutsen (who was down on power due to a cracked exhaust), while Berger passed Nannini for 5th place on the last lap by cutting the grass at the Acque Minerali chicane, though no action was taken for cutting a corner to make a pass for position.