The battle of the Honda-powered cars continued at Silverstone with victory in qualifying going to Nelson Piquet who beat his Williams team mate Nigel Mansell to pole by less than a tenth of a second. Third was Ayrton Senna in his Lotus while Alain Prost was fourth fastest in his McLaren-TAG. The third row of the grid was shared by the two Benetton-Fords of Thierry Boutsen and Teo Fabi while row four was an all-Ferrari affair with Michele Alboreto just ahead of Gerhard Berger. The top 10 was completed by Andrea de Cesaris's Brabham-BMW and the second McLaren driven by Stefan Johansson.

There was disappointment for Ligier with Piercarlo Ghinzani being excluded from the meeting after he ran out of fuel on the circuit and was then refueled and push-started by his mechanics. The Italian also did a couple of extra laps at the end of the first qualifying and the catalogue of rule-breaking proved to be too much for the stewards to accept.

In the race Prost made a better start than both Williams drivers and took the lead but at the second corner Piquet blasted ahead of the Frenchman and almost immediately Mansell followed Piquet through. It was going to be a straight fight between the two of them. Piquet led for most of the afternoon but in the closing laps, with the crowd roaring him on, Mansell closed up on Piquet and at Stowe Corner on lap 63 of 65 Mansell went ahead of his rival with a stunning passing maneuver. On the slowing down lap Mansell ran out of fuel.

Third place went to Senna with fourth going to Satoru Nakajima in the second Lotus-Honda and the remaining points going to Derek Warwick (Arrows-Megatron) and Fabi.