The Hungaroring had been changed from the year before; the tight, slow S-bends at Turns 3, 4 and 5 had been changed in character and bypassed. Turn 3 remained, but was now taken much faster as what were Turns 4 and 5 were bypassed, thus extending the straight now from Turn 3 into the new Turns 4 and 5; raising the circuit's average speed by 10 percent.
In the Friday morning pre-qualifying session, Stefan Johansson was comfortably fastest in his Onyx, and his team-mate Bertrand Gachot also pre-qualified in fourth. Piercarlo Ghinzani went through to the main qualifying sessions, in second place. Michele Alboreto's Larrousse-Lola was the other pre-qualifier in third.
Riccardo Patrese took a surprise pole position in his Williams-Renault, beating Ayrton Senna by three-tenths of a second. It was only the third pole of Patrese's career and his first since the 1983 Italian Grand Prix. Alex Caffi took third in his Dallara-Ford-Cosworth, just six-tenths behind Senna, with Thierry Boutsen fourth in the second Williams-Renault. Drivers' Championship leader Alain Prost was fifth in the second McLaren-Honda, with Gerhard Berger sixth in the V12 Ferrari. Nigel Mansell could only manage 12th in the second Ferrari, nearly seven-tenths behind teammate Berger and over two seconds behind Patrese.
At the start of the race, Patrese, Senna and Caffi maintained their grid order into turn 1, while Boutsen lost out to Prost as Berger passed both of them. Mansell made a good start, rising to 8th at the first corner. Caffi was struggling, the Dallara unable to replicate the speed it had shown in qualifying. Before long he had been passed by both Berger and Prost, and was holding up a train of cars consisting of Boutsen, Nannini, Mansell and Warwick.
Mansell passed Boutsen and Caffi in quick succession to move to 5th. He then set about closing the 17-second gap to the leaders, and was promoted to 4th when Berger pitted for tyres. Having caught up to the leading group, Mansell passed Prost for 3rd. Patrese's Williams then began to develop a problem with a holed radiator, which slowed him and bunched up the leading group. Eventually, Patrese's holed radiator became so bad that both Senna and Mansell were able to pass him in the space of a few corners. Patrese retired from the race shortly afterwards.
Mansell began to pressure Senna, clearly faster but unable to pass due to the extra power of the McLaren's Honda engine. Meanwhile, Prost pitted for tyres and rejoined 6th, while Berger only inherited 3rd briefly before he retired with gearbox problems, leaving Senna and Mansell on their own. The pair came up to lap Stefan Johansson's Onyx. Senna caught him at an awkward moment, just at the accelerating zone out of turn 3. The Brazilian uncharacteristically hesitated, briefly lifting off, and this allowed Mansell to draw alongside as they went past Johansson and then use the Ferrari's greater momentum to surge past Senna and take the lead. After that, Mansell had an unchallenged run to the flag, beating Senna by nearly 26 seconds, with Boutsen completing the podium.
The article is based solely on the supplied corpus, which appears to be a Wikipedia article about the 1989 Hungarian Grand Prix. No primary archives, autobiographies, period programmes, or specialist publications were consulted.