Peterson had re-joined Lotus at the beginning of the 1978 season and had challenged his teammate Andretti all the way. Peterson had crashed his car in practice, and had to use Andretti's spare car, not a comfortable fit for the tall Swede, in contrast to the diminutive American. As the race started, there was a huge, fiery multi-car pile-up on the approach to the first corner. One of the victims was Peterson; his car slammed head-on into the Armco barriers and had caught fire. Instead of the ill-equipped marshals, Briton James Hunt, with the help of Frenchman Patrick Depailler and Regazzoni ran towards Peterson's aid and pulled him out of the burning Lotus. Peterson suffered severe leg injuries, and he died from embolism complications a day later. With Peterson's retirement from the race, Andretti won the Drivers' Championship. The race itself was an interesting one; during the parade lap South African Jody Scheckter lost a wheel from his Wolf at the second Lesmo curve and hit an Armco barrier right next to the track. Andretti, Hunt, Lauda, Fittipaldi and Reutemann went to inspect the damage, and they refused to start until it had been repaired; and it was repaired in time; although the race started well after it was supposed to. The cars were shown the green light while the back half of the field was still in motion (this often happened at Monza and it had happened during the first start); and due to the visible excitement of the start official Andretti and Canadian Gilles Villeneuve jumped the start and were penalised a minute; Lauda went on to take victory in his Alfa-powered Brabham in a shortened race distance; it was getting dark by the time the checkered flag was shown to the Austrian driver. 1979 saw changes to Monza, run off areas were added to the Curva Grande and Lesmo corners and the track was upgraded. Scheckter, now driving for Ferrari, won the race and the Drivers' Championship.