1980 Argentine Grand Prix
The Formula 1 silly season is officially over as the teams arrive to Argentina. Local hero
Carlos Reutemann comes to Buenos Aires as the reigning World Champion and is surely delighted at the chance to start his campaign on his home track.
Experts made some notes of the cars teams are using this weekend. Many teams are using brand new chassis, most of them already seen in the pre-season tests. Of the front-running teams Tyrrell, Williams, Lotus and Renault however have decided to continue with their chassis from last season. Alfa Romeo, Ensign, Ligier, Rebaque, Shadow and Wolf have made a similar decision. It's unsure when the teams will bring out their new challengers.
Pre-qualifying
Of the teams seen here last season, Shadow, Alfa Romeo and Rebque made it out of the dreaded pre-qualifying session. Brabham and Wolf are new to pre-qualifying, making company to regulars Ensign. Newcomers ATS and Osella are of course taking part.
Jacky Ickx was the strongest driver on Friday morning, teammate
Patrese securing an expected Brabham 1-2.
Jean-Pierre Jabouille was their closest challenger, leading Ensign to the qualifying session. ATS was a pleasant surprise after they were comfortably the third fastest team out there. Decent start to their comeback although it wasn't enough to see them advance.
Qualifying
To the delight of the crowd it was
Carlos Reutemann who put in the fastest lap in the #1 Ferrari.
Alan Jones in the second Ferrari got close but had to settle to second. Third fastest was Arrows'
Jacques Laffite who returned to the series after missing the 1979 season. The Frenchman had clearly not been slacking off during his year off as he surprised everyone with his strong qualifying effort in the brand new A3 chassis.
Villeneuve would accompany him in the second row.
Williams's, McLarens,
Arnoux, Fittipaldis and
Tambay sat on the next four rows. Only in 13th was the better Tyrrell,
Pironi. There were rumours on the paddock about Tyrrell's possible financial troubles but a more plausible explanation to their poor pace must be the old 009 chassis.
Scheckter, who set 17th fastest time in qualifying, won the last two races of '79 using the chassis but now it was clearly outdated after numerous teams had brought new cars with them. It was a similar story for Lotus too. The 1978 champions had faded badly over the last year and a half and would start the race from the last row.
Shadow's
Alain Prost who joined the series with huge hype and had already showed very convincing pace at the pre-season tests was only 20th, just faster than his experienced teammate
Jochen Mass.
Race
Laffite took the best start from second row and promoted his Arrows to the lead of the race! His lead wasn't going to last long as Carlos Reutemann passed the Frenchman on third lap, for the joy of the Argentinean crowd. Villeneuve had took third in the start but was already losing ground and was down to sixth by this moment.
De Angelis, Jones and
Piquet had gone through.
Lauda had gone past McLarens and was 7th. In the back Scheckter was already making a lot of ground after taking advantage of Pironi's and
Takahara's poor starts - he was up to 11th.
Like last season, Ferrari was the dominant car and by lap 10 the prancing horse had 1-2 lead in the race after Jones had caught up and passed Laffite. Otherwise the order was mostly unchanged in front. Further down there were some nice battles, some of them not ending in such a happy tone. French youngster Alain Prost hadn't been able to live up to the expectations and his race ended in a collision with another promising young driver
Eddie Cheever.
As the race went on a number of drivers faced techical issues. On lap 16
Nigel Mansell's debut race blew up in the air together with McLaren's Cosworth engine and a few laps later his teammate
Rosberg pulled over too after his right rear wheel got loose. Matra's return as a factory engine supplier was far from succesful too - both Matra powered Ligiers exited following a thick cloud of smoke from the engine.
In front the closest battle was fought between Piquet and Villeneuve over fifth place. Laffite was also within striking distance from Jones. The Arrows driver tried all he could but couldn't quite catch the Australian before the chequered flag.
However it was Argentina's Carlos Reutemann who crossed the line first. The reigning World Champion never looked like losing his lead and took arguably one of his greatest victories in front of the home crowd. Behind Jones and Laffite the other points finishes went to Williams' Elio de Angelis who had a rather quiet race to fourth. Villeneuve was fifth and Nelson Piquet added to Williams' good day in sixth.
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