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1980 South African Grand Prix
Formula 1 circus returns to the high altitudes of Kyalami as the teams ship their gear across the Atlantic ocean to South Africa. Turbo engines are again expected to have power advantage over normally-aspirated Cosworths, Alfas and Matras. One team will also unveil their new car here as Ligier has completed work on a brand-new FRA-01 chassis.
Pre-qualifying
Jacky Ickx is quickly gaining himself a reputation as a pre-qualifying specialist by clocking the fastest time of Friday morning once again. Jabouille was second in his Ensign but it just wasn't enough as his teammate Bobby Rahal was almost a second slower, meaning Ensign was only the third best team. This meant that Wolf would advance from pre-qualifying for the first time this season following Hunt and Zunino's decent drives. Osella and ATS were well off the pace and there looks to be little to no hope for the newcomers at the moment.
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Qualifying
Renault was expected to do well here but after the qualifying sessions had concluded the expectations proved to be false. Villeneuve in 11th and Arnoux in 13th was largely disappointing result for the team. Much happier faces were seen in Ferrari pits as Carlos Reutemann took his second pole position of the season after narrowly beating Williams driver Elio de Angelis. McLaren's rookie driver Nigel Mansell continued his good efforts in third.
Battle for fourth in the grid was extremely tight as the next four drivers (Jones, Rosberg, Mass and Piquet) were all within one tenth of a second. Patrick Tambay showed promise of the new Ligier FRA-01 in 8th ahead of Laffite and Pironi who got Tyrrell their best qualifying result of the season in 10th. is teammate Scheckter was far down the order in 19th. Word out for Lotus too who got a clear boost following the manager change. Cheever's 12th place was very good considering their poor pace in the first two races.
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Race
Reutemann took the lead in the start. De Angelis retained second and Jones got past Mansell to third. Rosberg and Piquet followed. In sixth was Jacques Laffite who got a great start but the best of all was Wolf's James Hunt who made up a staggering 11 places on the first lap on his way to 15th. Fittipaldis had everything but like Hunt's start as they dropped to the back in the start.
Lap 3 saw the first retirement as Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni made contact, forcing the Alfa Romeo driver to retire. Ickx limped back to pits for repairs and was able to continue a lap down. Next few laps meant the end for two high-profile drivers as de Angelis' Cosworth and Villeneuve's Renault exploded. Bitter blow especially for de Angelis who was comfortably in second.
On lap 15 of 78 the running order was Reutemann, Mansell, Jones, Laffite, Piquet and Daly who had come from out of nowhere in to the points! Talk about a boost by the new manager! Rosberg and Binder were heading the chasing pack behind them.
Mansell crashed out on lap 22 promoting Jones to second which meant Ferrari had a 1-2 lead. Laffite was up to 3rd and Binder to 5th - Arrows was having a great race, until... A disaster struck on lap 34 for Laffite. His gearbox failed under downshifting for the first corner and a few laps later Binder suffered a similar faith meaning Arrows' promising race was ruined for good. These and other events had suddenly promoted Tyrrell's Didier Pironi to third but Mass, Piquet and Daly weren't far away.
Pironi's pace was enough in the end as he grabbed the team their first points of the season behind Ferrari 1-2. Reutemann lead from start to finish and the Maranello outfit never looked like giving up their lead, lapping the entire field on the process. Derek Daly got Lotus a formidable fourth after making wonderful overtakes on Mass and Piquet, who finished fifth. Jody Scheckter had a quiet race today but capped it off with a solid sixth place finish.
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The development market for the fourth race is NOT yet open! I will update the budgets later today/tomorrow.
e. Also @Tim Engberink has been added to waiting list. If no team loses their managers before the start of next season, you will have a chance to pick one of the three teams joining the series.