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Video Series: Car Wars – Formula 1 season 1979

Submitted by on January 1, 20122 Comments

A year after Colin Chapman began using ground effects to glue his Lotus 79s to the ground Formula One was a very different beast.

Four world champion drivers would compete in the 1979 Formula One season, but none would win a race. It was the dawn of a new era, where the car you drove would have a greater influence on the outcome of a race than your own performance.

It was also the first success for a technology that would become instrumental to the sport in the 80s – turbo. Renault secured the first ever victory for a turbocharged car, the RS10, in Formula One at Dijon while Gilles Villeneuve and René Arnoux created history with one of Formula One’s most famous dices.

Car Wars looks back on the ’79 season and its place in Formula One history. It features plenty of brilliant racing footage along with thoughts from top men like James Hunt and is well worth a watch.

 

 

 

 

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  • TedNes

    Great footage, but I don’t care too much for some of the insights offered from the commentator. Even in just the opening minute, they essentially slagged off Jody’s and Gilles’ successes in ’79 as in being all about the car.

    The Ferrari was hardly “cutting edge” when compared to the Lotus, the Renault, and the Brabbham they were up against. Ferrari built a less sophisticated but stronger and more reliable car, and as such, claimed the Championship at the end of the season…Gilles drove like a madman (as always), and Jody took the bit more of a “steady-eddy” approach…

    I was only 11 at the time, and yes, being a young Canadian boy, Gilles was my hero. Still, that’s my take from North America on the ’79 season……

  • http://reverendfrog.co.uk Reverend frog

    Fantastic footage from what I believe is the Brunswick archive. It’s slightly strange to see alternative angles of things like Villeneuve’s tyre blow at Zandvoort. While I agree with TedNes that the commentator seems to be taking an unduly harsh attitude towards Gilles and Scheckter, if you watch part 3 on YouTube and the interviews with James Hunt and Niki Lauda you’ll see that it was definitely the mood in the paddock at the time that cars were more important than the driver. But yes, a bit harsh, especially on Jody since he won races with Tyrrell and Wolf before this.

    It’s ironic really that a ‘classic’ era of F1 was denigrated at the time for the same reasons that it is now!