and much to the agony of the crowd, was only in 23rd halfway through the first lap). Not having done a practice start in the car, during the warm-up Prost had asked Lauda what revs to use at the start. Lauda told him no less than 10,000 but on the grid Prost felt this was too high and dropped to 8,000 only to find Lauda had been correct. Despite this he was beginning to show the superior race speed which would become the story of the season. Lauda quickly passed de Angelis and when he passed Warwick for 2nd at the end of the back straight on lap 10, the McLaren's right rear hit the Renault's left front tyre. The hit damaged Warwick's suspension, leading to suspension failure for the Renault driver late in the race when running second. Senna was the first retirement of the 1984 season with turbo failure on lap 8. Alboreto's race was ruined by a loose bolt in his car's right front brake caliper which released all the brake fluid and caused the brake to overheat, resulting in a couple of spins and a pit stop where buckets of water were thrown over the brakes in a vain attempt at cooling it. Lauda was leading by some 40 seconds on lap 34 when the wires to his McLaren's battery came loose causing electrical failure. After almost stalling his Brabham-BMW at the start, Piquet finished an unhappy race on lap 32 when the BMW engine failed coming onto the pit straight. After passing Warwick for the lead, Prost, who was in the pits for a tyre change when Lauda coasted in to retire, lost the lead back to the Englishman when he made his second stop for tyres. He regained the lead for good following Warwick's retirement and ran out the winner by 40 seconds from the Williams-Honda of Keke Rosberg and the Lotus of de Angelis. For Rosberg it was his third successive second place in the Brazilian Grand Prix, though it was the only one in which he was not disqualified. Eddie Cheever finish 4th in the Alfa Romeo, while Renault's Patrick Tambay was classified in 6th after running out of fuel on the last lap, losing 5th to another F1 rookie, Martin Brundle in his Tyrrell-Ford. Brundle, and the Tyrrell team, would later be disqualified from the season for technical infringements. This promoted