the new road built inside the Victoria Park Racecourse which is where the pits were located, the entire circuit other than the Brabham Straight had been re-laid a few months prior to the race to prevent the problems often faced on American street circuits where the road surface broke up badly under the strain of the high powered cars). The new surface was causing graining in both qualifying and race tyres. Other than a bump in the road at the end of the Brabham Straight, the circuit itself was generally given the thumbs up by those that really mattered, the teams and their often highly paid drivers. The only Australian driver in the field, World Drivers' Champion Alan Jones who was driving the Haas Lola team's Lola THL1-Hart, was given the honour of driving the first Formula One car out onto the new circuit when first practice opened at 10am on the Friday morning. Bernie Ecclestone had arranged for Jones to do a lap of the track before any other cars were released from the pits. Jones also had the honour of having a section of track named after him, with the Rundle Road section of the track, a 350-metre straight between turns 9 and 10, renamed as the "Jones Straight" when the circuit was in use. Jones Straight led directly onto the fast Brabham Straight. Qualifying Official qualifying became a battle royal between the Williams-Hondas of World Champion Keke Rosberg and his teammate Nigel Mansell, and the Lotus-Renault of Ayrton Senna. Rosberg took the honors on Friday with a lap of 1:22.402, only 0.001 faster than Senna, with Mansell a further 0.161 back in third. During final qualifying, Mansell looked to have pole position wrapped up with a lap of 1:20.537 in his Williams FW10, with Senna second with Rosberg another three-tenths further back in third. Senna was out on his third run with only minutes left before the end of qualifying in his black and gold Lotus 97T, powered by a special Renault qualifying engine rumored to be putting out some , and stunned everyone with a time of 1:19.843, seven-tenths faster than Mansell, to grab his 7th pole position of the season. As such, Senna was the only driver to record a time under 1:20- and he went out again but could not get anywhere near that time again. World Champion elect Alain Prost was 4th on