SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Grand Prix Classics 1979 F1 Mod for rFactor

Grand Prix racing predating 1981 was really that — Grand Prix racing. Post 1981, it was gradually positioning itself to become more and more the Formula 1 World Championship including a higher level of professionalism.

Pit access was less restricted back then, so here's a snapshot of Mario.

During the years ´79, ´80 and ’81, tensions between the teams who were organized in FOCA, the Formula One Constructors Association, and the emerging FISA, the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile which was headed by the controversial president Jean-Marie Balestre, grew to a point where strikes and boycotts were threatened, and in some instances performed against individual race events. The FISA-FOCA war was a battle for television rights, for technical regulations and ultimately for power over the future development of Formula 1 racing.

In many ways, modern Formula 1 was born when the Concorde agreement, named after Place de la Concorde in Paris, was signed by the two parties. A man named Bernie Ecclestone who had owned the Brabham team since 1972 and consequently participated as team owner in the discussions, played a not unimportant part by securing the rights to manage Formula 1 as well as all television rights.

In the following years the sport grew from events that sometimes would, but more often would not be televised by broadcasters to events that would eventually become televised to an audience of hundreds of millions of viewers all across the globe. Before that, news was scarce and the fans who did not have the opportunity to go to the actual races had to wait for the closing minutes of Sunday’ s sports news in the hope of catching some brief moments of footage from the weekend’s race events.

Headlines were only guaranteed by crashes that were either spectacular or led to someone dying, and track and medical safety was of a varying, sometimes shocking standard with poor marshalling, races being started before all cars had become stationary on the starting grid, and even with mechanics on the track while the field of cars was roaring off the starting line.

During the period, the sport saw the advent of ground effect as implemented in the revolutionary Lotus 77 and 78. This was copied by Ferrari in 1979 (rather crudely) and perfected by Williams in '79 and '80, with the all conquering FW07. Renault had been running 1.5 litre turbo-engines of their own make since 1977, and while some team principals in the paddock were still quietly doubting the merits and especially the lack of reliability running turbo engines, Jabouille won the French GP at Dijon for Renault and many realized that having a turbo was going to be very important if you wished to keep winning in the longer run.

In 1978, Mario Andretti won Lotus their last Driver’s title while teammate Ronnie Peterson loyally stayed on as no. 2 until the fatal race at Monza, where a young and charging Ricardo Patrese stormed through the field during the start, hitting James Hunt when attempting to squeeze into one line before the first chicane. The start was botched by the starter, allowing the cars to start the race while half the grid was still under power and moving forward into their grid slots.

When Michael Schumacher won the World Drivers Championship in 2000, he was the first driver to do so for Ferrari since Jody Scheckter took the title in 1979. In ’79 Ferrari won the Constructors title convincingly, beating the nearest opposition (Williams) by 38 points. The seventies had been kind to Ferrari, with Niki Lauda claiming the driver’s title in ’75 and ´77.

Now who thought that chimneys on cars were a recent invention?

Jody Scheckter won the title narrowly with a 7 point advantage (only 3 points after subtracting some points according to the regulations stipulated in the 1979 rule book) over teammate Gilles Villeneuve, who in the early eighties were offered the option of campaigning a semi-automatic gearbox which would be developed for his Ferrari, but he turned it down on grounds that it would remove some of the driver skill from the equation, turning over gear shifts to an automatic device. One can only wonder about what would be Gilles' comment on today’s driving aids, were he still alive.

Two teams won their last driver’s titles in the seventies; Tyrrell and Lotus, and while they were occasionally rejuvenated, especially Lotus in the eighties, neither team quite achieved the highest rung on the ladder again.

Among teams on the way up, were Frank Williams’ team, bearing his own name. Fielding drivers such as the recently deceased Clay Reggazoni who won the team it’s first victory at Silverstone in ´79, and Australian Alan Jones who launched a late charge for the championship with the FW07. Due to a weak first half of the season, he missed the objective that year, only to score the laurels in the following year. The Williams cars sported logos from new and at that time untraditional sponsors. Instead of the almost mandatory cigarette-companies, the Williams’ were in the livery of Saudi Airlines, and a certain businessman by the name of "bin Laden" was also seen as sponsor on the cars.

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