Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

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THE ARGENTINE GRAND PRIX A good start Buenos Aires, January 13th WITH Christmas and the New Year over the Formula One scene was soon in full swing and air freighters were taking the cars to South America for the first of the 1980 races, with the drivers and team personnel soon following, clutching their Enteroviaform and Ambre Solaire, for the Argentinian food and summer, respectively. As the 1979 season ended there were some indecisions about who joined which team, but everything was eventually sorted out and while the businessmen shuffled their paper-work and talked money the designers drew new cars or modified the old ones and the workers applied themselves to the tools of their trades and made the new cars or rebuilt the old ones. Strikes, absenteeism, industrial strife and unrest are things unknown in the world of motor racing, everyone gets stuck in and an impressive collection of machinery was assembled in the Buenos Aires Autodrome to start practice. There was some slight reshuffling of racing numbers, with Ferrari taking 1 and 2, for World Champion Jody Scheckter and his eager team-mate Gilles Villeneuve, both having new T5 Ferraris to race. Lotus dropped from the head of the list to take the old Ferrari numbers of 11 and 12, with Mario Andretti leading the team. After a certain amount of legal hoo-ha the young Italian Elio de Angelis bought himself out of his contract with the Shadow team and joined Lotus as number two. After the disastrous 1979 season when the promising new Lotus 80 failed to work properly and the team seemed to forget how to make the Lotus 79 work, the winter break allowed them to come up with the Lotus 81, which can best be described as a cross between the last two models. Last year Carlos Reutemann started the season well with Team Lotus, but gradually became disenchanted with the situation, as they did with him, and he left the team at the end of the year to eventually join the Williams team as number 2 to Alan Jones, the aim being to have the Williams cars in a strong 1-2 position at all times. There did not appear to be any necessity to drop the successful FW07 design and Patrick Head’s winter work involved designing a B-version which incorporated all the detail improvements that were experimented with and thought up during 1979. Little of the original cars is being used to form the basis of the B-version though no radical changes were made to the basic design. Regazzoni did not linger around the Williams team once he knew that Reutemann was being sought, and he joined the Ensign team which was being re-constituted and financially backed by Unipart. A lot of overtime by Morris Nunn’s team got their new design finished in time for a brief run before being flown out to South America, where it made its debut in red, white and blue colours. The Tyrrell team lost their promising young Frenchman Didier Pironi to the Ligier team, but were not too worried as they were signing on the Irishman Derek Daly who had shown good promise last year. Having blatantly copied the Lotus 79 to build the Tyrrell 009, the next step was a problem, for the Lotus 80 was not a design to copy and to step sideways and build a Williams-copy was not practical, so the 009 series cars were altered and modified in the light of 1979 experience, but the light was not very strong. Jean-Pierre Jarier, who has promised so much and achieved so little, retained his place in the team. The space in the Ligier team for Pironi was provided by the departure of Patrick Depailler, who could not see much future as “joint number one” with Jacques Laffite and left to join the Alfa Romeo team with young Bruno Giacomelli as his partner. At the end of the 1978 season the way ahead for aspiring designers was simple, for Colin Chapman had proven the “ground-effects” principle and it was a simple matter to follow it and the Ligier team were one of the most successful. When the Williams FW07 proved to be more effective than most it was not easy to see why, so that teams that lacked an original thinker on the design staff were unsure of their next move and could only uprate their 1979 cars as best they could, the Ligier cars for Argentina being modified JS11 models, heading towards the next completely new design, the JS15. McLaren found themselves in a similar situation and altered the M29 design where they could, to produce the M29B. John Watson retained his position as team leader, but Patrick Tambay was replaced by Alain Prost, the 1979 European F3 champion. This was unfortunate for Tambay, who seems to be a driver who needs a good leader. When James Hunt was leading the McLaren team, Tambay showed good promise in his style and ability to match the pace of his leader, but last year with Watson at the front there was little to inspire Tambay and he faded away. The Renault team spent the short winter break with no problems, the RS10 to RSI4 twin turbo-charged cars were taken apart to form the basis for a new set of cars incorporating a great number of detail changes, but no radical departure from the basic design. There were no driver problems, for like the Ferrari team, the drivers liked the team and the team liked the drivers, so Jabouille and Arnoux stayed with the turbo-charged 1.5-litres. As already reported the Fittipaldi team bought the assets of the Wolf team, including the cars, designers, management and driver and the newly-constituted Fittipaldi team, no longer backed by Copersucar, doubled its size overnight. The basis of the WR Wolf cars formed the new Fittipaldi F7, as an interim design to get Emerson Fittipaldi and Keijo Rosberg to this first race. The constitution of the Arrows team was unchanged over the winter, but a simpler car was built, known as the A3, utilising some of the good points of the unusual and unsuccessful A2 design. Drivers Patrese and Mass retained their positions in the team. The two backmarkers from last year. ATS and Shadow, just scraped onto the FOCA list of members, the German-financed team expanding to run two cars, for Marc Surer and Jan Lammers, and the Shadow team regrouping itself with a new design, the DN11, and with drivers David Kennedy, the forceful Irishman from Aurora racing, 3
and Swedish F3 driver Stefan Johansson. Last, but by no means least, the Ecclestone team of Brabham cars were as seen at the end of last season. With Alfa Romeo running their own cars there was little future in using the Alfa Romeo engines so Ecclestone made an instant and complete break and returned to the Cosworth fold, and concurrently Niki Lauda gave up racing and disappeared from the scene. In a situation that would have destroyed some teams, Ecclestone’s Brabham team burst through with a new lease of life. Gordon Murray designed the BT49, using Cosworth DFV power and it was very competitive from the word go, while Nelson Piquet’s undoubted ability was given a free rein as he took over the number one position in the team. He was joined by Ricardo Zunino, from Argentina, who showed good promise from the word go. Everyone had arrived early, thanks to the efficient transport organisation of the FOCA and there was an unofficial test-session on the Thursday before official practice began on Friday morning. During this threehour session there were three major factors that arose, firstly the Goodyear Racing Division told everyone loud and clear that there were no special, super-sticky, soft qualifying tyres for ANYONE. As far as Goodyear are concerned qualifying tyres are finished. They found it a wasteful and expensive avenue of development that did not leach them anything and had tried to get the FISA and FOCA organisations to do something about eliminating them. Michelin were agreed in principle that qualifying lyres were best abandoned, but nobody did anything so Goodyear’s Leo Mehl took the initiative and stopped any further production of special short-life qualifying tyres. There were three types of tyre available for the Goodyear runners, all of which would go the race distance, but with varying degrees of hardness to cater for different cars and drivers. This was a hard and ruthless decision, but it was necessary in the face of the lethargy of the FISA and FOCA and generally speaking it was applauded by everyone. The feeling is that Michelin will be “shamed” into following suit. Goodyear also made it clear that if their decision was unpopular they might be forced to fade quietly away from Formula One. The second thing that came to light on Thursday was the fact that parts of the track had been resurfaced too recently and the heat and the lyre adhesion of today’s car was tearing the surface to pieces, as happened in Zolder in 1973. While one faction was talking about not racing, led by a rather vociferous Jody Scheckter in his new role as President of the re-formed GPDA, another group led by Alan Jones was saying “We’ve come, we’re committed, we’ll have to get on with it as best as we can. but in all honesty there shouldn’t be a race on the track as it is.” Scheckter was also busy trying to whip up support for boycotting the forthcoming race at Interlagos in Brazil, in view of the roughness of the track. The Brazilian race was due to be held at the new Rio de Janiero circuit, but at the last minute it was discovered that that track was sinking into the sand-bed on which it was built so a hurried switch back to Interlagos was made. Advancement in chassis technology is one of the factors in this bumpy circuit problem, for with increased down-force of 400-500 lb. being gained from aerodynamic studies, suspension spring-rates have had to be doubled or even trebled in order to retain control of suspension movements so that a bump of two years ago that could be ridden over with a soft spring, has now become a major obstacle that bounces the car into the air rather than making the suspension work. If softer springs are used the good cars will bottom-out at high speed. It is an engineering problem more than a surface problem, but some drivers cannot sec this and blame the surface. The third thing was the decision to stagger the two-by-two grid, as has been done in Monaco in recent years, to form a one-by-one line of cars for the start, offset alternately. The result of this decision meant that practice times and grid positions were more important than ever, for second fastest would no longer put you on the front row, you would be some 10 yards behind the poleposition car. Drivers at the back of the 24 car grid were going to need very good eyesight to see¬the green light! Apart from these three major factors arising before practice began there were personal troubles as well, especially in the Williams team for Alan Jones had found the old FW07/4 to be much better in terms of speed, balance, and adhesion than the B-series car, with us different rear suspension and different aerodynamics. Friday practice saw more tests carried out and that night the decision was made to convert both B-series cars back to 1979 specification as far as was possible, and this meant a lot of all-night work, ending at 3 a.m. Saturday morning and starting again at 6 a.m! Racing mechanics really earn their money. Jones used the T-car to make fastest time on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon while Reutemann was troubled by ignition trouble and only did a few laps. By the time his car was rebuilt the track surface had deteriorated so badly that he had little chance of recording a good time. Despite this trouble, in his home Grand Prix with a new team, he seemed relaxed and content: disappointed, perhaps. but much more philosophical than expected. The Ligier team were fairly happy, Laffite making second fastest time on Friday, which was just as well as his car had to have a last-minute engine change before the final session on Saturday, due to a persistent oil leak, and then he had trouble with the fuel pressure so that he only managed one lap on Saturday afternoon and that took him 13 min. 02.48 sec., an average of 27.45 k.p.h.! Whether this jaundiced his view or not, he was one of the vociferous ones wanting to have the race cancelled due to the deteriorating surface, which was a measure of how serious the situ¬ation had become, for he is normally pretty even tempered. Pironi was very happy with his new team and new car and when asked if it was better than the Tyrrell 009 he remarked that it had “better brakes, better steering, better handling, better traction . . .”. Clearly better! The Brabham team were not as happy as they felt they ought to be for Piquet, who is as brave as they come, was feeling a bit un-nerved by his cars’ inability through the very high speed corners, and could not match the times of the front runners. In the untimed session on Saturday morning he was out in the T-car, trying softer front springs when he had a high-speed spin and crashed backwards through the catch-fencing on the left right before the pits hairpin. Earlier Rosberg had done the same thing in the spare Fittipaldi car, but luckily it 4
Page 1 and 2: February 1980 Motor Sport Founded i
Page 3: is more than twice as dangerous as
Page 7 and 8: During the warm-up Andretti’s Lot
Page 9 and 10: go that there was no need for major
Page 11 and 12: acing a white, low-chassis. 100 m.p
Page 13 and 14: time, there comes the temptation to
Page 15 and 16: in a taxi, on a day of visits to hi
Page 17 and 18: layer of leather. The lid was then
Page 19 and 20: THE BANDAMA RALLY A TITLE collected
Page 21 and 22: FORD’S SABBATICAL IT is just over
Page 23 and 24: Apart from having to provide an ope
Page 25 and 26: ack. “At least we had our back se
Page 27 and 28: Fitzpatrick’s opinions of the mac
Page 29 and 30: We got totally confused and found l
Page 31: the International Sporting Code and

Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

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