page_title: René Arnoux
section_title: Renault
hierarchical_section_title: René Arnoux / Formula One / Renault
caption_attribution_description: Rene Arnoux, #28 Ferrari placed 2nd. His Formula 1 career spanned 1978 to 1989, 149 starts in 164 races, 7 wins, 22 podium finishes, and 18 poles. The car shown here is the Ferrari 126C which was the replacement for the 312T. It was Ferrari's first attempt at a turbo car with its 1500cc V6. It suffered from huge turbo lag and then an acceleration blast that unbalanced the car and made handling difficult.
context_page_description: René Alexandre Arnoux is a French former racing driver who competed in 12 Formula One seasons. He participated in 165 World Championship Grands Prix winning seven of them, achieving 22 podium finishes and scoring 181 career points. His best finish in the World Drivers' Championship was third in 1983 for Ferrari. In 1977, Arnoux won the European Formula Two Championship. In 2006 he raced in the inaugural season of the Grand Prix Masters series for retired F1 drivers.
context_section_description: In the 1979 season, the factory Renault team entered two cars for the first time since its debut in 1977. The team's only victory of the year was taken by Arnoux's teammate Jean-Pierre Jabouille at the French Grand Prix at the Dijon-Prenois circuit, but Arnoux took the headlines due to a fierce, but good-natured wheel-banging battle with the Flat-12 Ferrari of Gilles Villeneuve for second place. Ultimately Villeneuve would just hold off Arnoux to take second place. Arnoux began to fulfil his potential in the second half of the season with 4 top-six finishes (3 podium places) whereas Jabouille's Dijon victory was his only points finish of the year.
  In 1980, Arnoux took his first two Formula One victories, the first being at a much-protested Interlagos circuit in Brazil but a lack of reliability prevented him from playing a part in the fight for the world title, although he took three pole positions. His second win came in the very next race at the Kyalami circuit in South Africa where the thinner air at high altitude saw the turbocharged Renault RE20 have a power advantage over its mostly Cosworth powered rivals. At that point in the season Arnoux was leading the World Championship for the first time. He would not lose the championship lead until Round 6 in Monaco. The season though was punctuated by unreliability from the turbocharged Renault V6 engine, though progress was rapidly moving forward with the V6 proving powerful, producing approximately 510 bhp (380 kW; 517 PS) to be on par with Ferrari (and considerably more powerful than the 475 bhp (354 kW; 482 PS) Ford DFV). What generally hurt the Renaults was unreliability, and the lack of ground effects. Although he would later finish in a fine second in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, he would finish the season in 6th place with 29 points, 38 points behind World Champion Alan Jones.
  Arnoux's situation was complicated in 1981 by the arrival of Alain Prost at Renault. Inevitably their rivalry on track flared up off the track and relations between the two men deteriorated, dividing the small world of French motorsport. The conflict reached its peak at the 1982 French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard. The drivers took the first one-two in Renault's history in Formula One, Arnoux finishing ahead of Prost. Prost was furious, considering that his teammate had not kept to the team orders agreed before the race, according to which he should have ceded the win to Prost, who was better placed in the 1982 championship. Arnoux replied that no orders had been given before the race and that he was free to drive his own race. He took one other win at the Italian Grand Prix at the end of the season. He was also lucky to walk away from a high speed crash after losing a wheel going into the banked Tarzan corner at the end of the long straight in the 1982 Dutch Grand Prix, though luckily his car's momentum was largely stopped by the sand trap and tyre barrier.
caption: Arnoux started at the back of the field for the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, but climbed to second by the finish.
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