1979 United States Grand Prix

1979 United States Grand Prix

The 1979 United States Grand Prix is the 16th and final race of the 1979 F1 Season. It was won By Gilles Villeneuve with Jones 2nd and Arnoux 3rd.

Pre-Race

Heading into this race Scheckter and Laffite were tied on points. If Laffite finished ahead of Scheckter he would win the title but if Scheckter finished ahead of Laffite, he would be the 1979 World Champion.

Qualifiyng

Arnoux qualifed on pole with Jones and Regazzoni 2nd and 3rd. Scheckter qualified in a shocking 16th whereas Laffite qualified 4th. Merzario, Ribiero, Rebaque, Lammers, Mass and Brambilla failed to qualify.

Race

At the start, Piquet suffered with wheelspin on his slicks and was left behind. Scheckter took an outside line through turn one, but he got pushed onto the grass and had to wait for the entire field to go by before re-entering. Keke Rosberg spun and recovered, but he forced Bruno Giacomelli off behind him and into retirement with a bent steering arm. After one lap, the order was Arnoux, Jones, Carlos Reutemann, Jacques Laffite, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Clay Regazzoni, Villenueve, Didier Pironi, John Watson and Jean-Pierre Jarier. After two laps, Arnoux had extended his lead to five seconds.

By lap three, Jacky Ickx, in his last Grand Prix, had moved his Ligier from 24th to twelfth. As he closed on Derek Daly's Tyrrell approaching the turn before the pit entrance, however, he bumped Daly from behind and went off. His teammate, Jacques Laffite, running in fifth place, spun off on the next lap at the same place dropping to 8th. Reutemann crashed out on lap six from third place when his fire extinguisher sensing unit came loose and interfered with his pedals. The other Lotus, driven by Andretti, decided his gamble to start on slicks had not worked and pitted for wets, since it was still raining. He returned in 20th, but retired soon after when his gearbox became permanently lodged in fourth.

The gap between Arnoux and Jones varied, with Regazzoni quite a bit back in third. When the rain became heavier, the Ferrari's Michelins performed better; when it slacked off, the intermediate surface favored the Goodyears on the Williams. On lap 11, Scheckter, now in third after fighting his way back from last place, pitted for slicks, as did Regazzoni. Scheckter later said that it was still too early, as he began sliding around down the straight, but the lap time comparison with Villeneuve helped the Ferrari crew to decide when to bring Villeneuve in.

On lap 13, Rosberg caught up with Pironi and tried to overtake on the inside. He could not hold his line, and when he slid wide, he took the Tyrrell with him. Pironi was able to continue, but Rosberg retired with a damaged gearbox. Beginning on lap 14, most of the cars came in for slicks, except the three leaders, Villeneuve, Jones and Arnoux. As the circuit continued to dry, Jones cut into Arnoux's lead, taking off two seconds per lap. By lap 15, Jones was on his tail, and then quickly past. In two laps, he was 3.1 seconds clear. Arnoux came in to change tires on lap 16, and returned 39.5 seconds behind Jones.

The Williams crew prepared to fit Jones' car with slicks as he came in on lap 17. After some difficulty removing the right rear, the racing manager waved the jacks away and the car out. As the mechanic on the right rear shouted and waved that he was not finished, the car sped from the pits. At the beginning of the back straight, the wheel came off and Jones retired.

Villeneuve now led Arnoux by almost a lap. Scheckter lost two positions, to fifth, when he pitted for tires, but regained third place, ahead of Daly and Pironi, in two laps. On lap 18, Ickx felt his car floating about and thought he had a puncture. He decided to go one more lap, but never made it back. The tire shredded and he retired, leaving only nine cars still running. Daly spun off from fourth, and Piquet, after setting fastest lap of the race in pursuit of John Watson's McLaren, dropped out with a broken driveshaft five laps from the flag.

Villeneuve coasted home, allowing Elio de Angelis and Hans-Joachim Stuck to unlap themselves, but finishing with a 48-second margin over Arnoux. Later, Villeneuve revealed that he had been nursing the car with failing oil pressure for the final 5 laps. The American Shadow team celebrated de Angelis' fourth place, his only points of the year. The win by Villeneuve was his third, matching champion Scheckter's total, securing a one-two finish in the Drivers' Championship. Scheckter's sixth place was enough to win the drivers title by a single point.