Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

messing around behind the Brabham for long and Jones
was carefully examining the situation to sec if there
was a chance of jumping them both. Rosberg. running
remarkably smoothly, was now up to sixth behind
Scheckter, then came the consistent Daly, Giacomelli’s
slipping and sliding
Alfa and young Prost. McLaren’s number two
had the mother-and-father of spins early in the race,
bounding across the grass and tearing his M29B’s skirts
off in the process. That didn’t daunt him in the least and
the young Frenchman reckoned the car handled better
than he would have expected after such an excursion.
Jones found a way ahead of Villeneuve for third
place and then displaced Piquet next time round, the
Brabham by now showing the first signs of overheating.
On lap 30 Jones made it past Laffite and into the lead,
the Ligier unfortunately responding by blowing up its
engine on the next lap which took the pressure off Jones
a little bit. That was just as well, because the Williams’s
temperatures were still looking pretty precarious and,
with that appalling track surface to negotiate, Jones could
be forgiven for not wanting the added complication of a
hard-charging Ligier right on his gearbox.
But Jones was equally aware of the fact that
Villeneuve was behind him. The “Cannuck” really
started to pile on the pressure once there was only the
Williams between him and the lead, and for a while
it seemed that we might have a repetition of some of
last year’s great scraps. Jones seemed fairly well in
control of the situation although he was cutting things
as closely as he could, and Villeneuve was having to
run as near flat-out as he dared. Then, coming through
the “esses” just before the last hairpin, Villeneuve’s T5
hurtled straight on into the barriers on the outside of
the circuit, failing to negotiate the right-hand section
of the swerve. As the dust settled one could almost see
the little French-Canadian driver orientating himself
and thinking “what was all that about?” He quickly
composed himself, leapt from the wrecked Ferrari
and ran across the circuit towards the pits where he
expressed the opinion “something broke at the front”. A
television replay all over the world showed an apparent
steering failure on the Ferrari as it swooped into the
corner, the scarlet flat-12 shooting off the road with the
front wheels pointing in opposite directions.
From that point onwards, once he’d turned in a
couple of quick laps to demoralise Piquet’s challenge, the
race belonged to Jones. That is as long as his engine held
together. But with Piquet’s Brabham similarly bothered
by over-heating Jones was able to lengthen his lap times
to over two minutes as he ran to a morale-boosting
victory in the first GP of the season.
For Piquet, second place was a tremendous
justification of his fast-mushrooming talent, while
Rosberg only just scraped home third ahead of Daly. The
Finn’s Fittipaldi was stuttering as it ran low on fuel and
he dived for the pits with six laps to go to take on a few
extra gallons. His mechanics slammed the “dump can”
onto the fuel filler “counted to ten” and then pulled it
off again, showering fuel over the pit lane as Rosberg
hurtled straight back into the fray. Their timing was just
about right, for Rosberg held off Daly by just under five
seconds to the flag.
Fifth was Giacomelli after a steady run, the sole
Italian “12” to finish after Scheckter’s Ferrari, in. an easy
third place, expired in a very terminal-looking cloud of
oil smoke at the end of lap 45. Prost strove manfully to
finish sixth while Zunino maintained a very circumspect
pace to be the final classified finisher in seventh place.
Regazzoni’s Ensign made three pit stops with a
repeat of the throttle-sticking problem, an extra return
spring being applied on each occasion; he was still
running at the end, as was Fittipaldi. but they were both
too far behind to be classified officially. Patrick Depailler
looked as though he might last through to the finish
only for his Alfa’s engine to give out with seven laps to
go. “I started the day with some apprehension” smiled
Depailler weakly after the race, “by the time I retired I
was almost enjoying it again”.
There were some unpleasant moments at the
post-race scrutineering when it looked as though the
winning Williams and the second-place Brabham might
be slightly under the minimum weight limit. But there
was some doubt about the scales’ accuracy and, apart
from Ken Tyrrell getting very heated, the whole matter
quickly evaporated. The Williams team doesn’t need
to cheat to be successful. As for Jones, he was smiling
brightly. When all the ifs and buts were laid at rest, he’d
done the job. He’d negotiated the ruts, survived the spins
and lasted the race.
A.H./D.S.J.
Notes on the Cars at Buenos Aires
Ferrari: As with many other teams during the winter,
the Ferrari factory took three of their 1979 cars and
dismantled them down to the las; rivet and then built
up new and redesigned cars from the bare bones. The
cars they dismantled were 312T4/037, 039 and 041 and
the new cars that resulted were 312T5/042, 043 and 044
of which Scheckter took the first, Villeneuve the second
and third was the T-car. The driving position was moved
further forward, the side pods were wider aided by more
compact cylinder-heads and a narrower front track was
used, while the upper surface of the body was smoothed
out. While seeming to be an improvement over the T4,
according to the drivers, the advance was not as much as
the T4 had been over the T3.
Tyrrell: Not too many changes on the Tyrrell cars.
During last season the original 009 design was modified
with “outboard” mounted rear brakes and a centralpillar
rear aerofoil on the lines of the Williams FW07, and
the cars are ostensibly the same this year. Experiments
were made in the winter with automatically operated
suspension variables, but Ken Tyrrell’s only comment on
that and a new car was “... we’re not talking about that . .
.”. Jean-Pierre Jarier used 009/3, which he raced last year
and Derek Daly had 009/6 which Pironi raced last year
when it was a new car using the number 009 4 which had
been destroyed at Monaco. The spare car was 009/5 from
last year which had taken the identity of 009/2 that was
destroyed at Kyalami. These two cars should be written
009/6(4) and 009/5(2)
Brabham: The BT49 series that made its debut at the
end of last season was so obviously right from the word
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