Race
The race started at 16:00 local time (UTC+2) on Sunday afternoon, and took place in dry and sunny weather with temperatures around 100 °F (38 °C). Carlos Reutemann made a good start from fourth place on the grid, and drew level with his team-mate Alan Jones, who had passed pole-sitter Jacques Laffite. Following the first corner of the race, Reutemann led from Jones, with Laffite in third alongside his Ligier team-mate Didier Pironi. That remained the order at the end of the first lap, with Nelson Piquet a close fifth and the rest of the field dropping back from the leaders. David Kennedy spun off the track at the start of lap two and was unable to rejoin the race and so became the first retirement. Local wildcard driver Emilio de Villota had a similar incident but was able to rejoin, albeit in last place.
Pironi had opted to use a harder rear-left tyre than his rear-right and by lap three he was struggling with the handling of the car. In addition, he was having problems with his brakes. A slight mistake allowed Piquet to overtake him for fourth place. Alain Prost, running in 12th place was forced to retire on lap five with engine problems. Both Keke Rosberg and Derek Daly suffered brake failure causing them to crash, neither were hurt. A missed gearshift by Jones on lap 13 saw him drop three places to fifth. Laffite, who had moved up to second as a result made a few attempts to pass Reutemann for the lead, but was unable to find a way past.
Jan Lammers was running in fourth place, when brake problems forced him to come into the pits. He rejoined, but suffered electrical problems and pitted again where the ATS team took the decision to retire the car. Mario Andretti pulled into the pits to retire on lap 29 with a broken engine, and one lap later Riccardo Patrese retired form the race with a broken gearbox, having stopped for a lengthy pitstop five laps previously which had dropped him down the order.
On lap 35, the leaders came up to lap Emilio de Villota. De Villota attempted to move out of the way of Reutemann by taking the inside line through the corner, allowing Reutemann to go around him. Laffite saw an opportunity to get past Reutemann by going inside of de Villota. Instead he collided with de Villota which caused him to bounce off and hit Reutemann as well. Both Reutemann and Laffite retired on the spot and although de Villota was able to carry on to the pits, his suspension was beyond repair and his race was also over. Piquet assumed the lead of the race, with Pironi second and Jones third within three seconds of the leader. Piquet led for seven laps until on lap 42 his Brabham's gearbox failed, and he was unable to continue. Geoff Lees retired on the same lap, with a broken wishbone on his car. Due in part to the number of retirements, the two leaders had built up a lead of around 50 seconds to the rest of the field by the halfway stage.
When coming up to lap Patrick Gaillard, John Watson misjudged Gaillard's braking point and hit him. Watson's McLaren was launched into the air over Gaillard's Ensign. Gaillard continued after a pitstop to replace some of the Ensign car's body panels however Watson's race was over.
Pironi was 15 laps from the end, when he noticed a front wheel wobble on his Ligier. He slowed the car to approx 50 km/h (30 mph) before the wheel came off, and he pulled off the track at the end of the start/finish straight to retire, giving Jones the lead. Jones continued to keep a fairly constant distance between himself and second placed Jochen Mass to win the race, with Elio de Angelis, the only other car to be on the lead lap, finishing third. Jean-Pierre Jarier and Emerson Fittipaldi finished in fourth and fifth place respectively, both one lap down. Sixth placed Patrick Gaillard was the last driver to be classified as finishing the race, five laps down after his earlier collision with John Watson's car.
Read more about this topic: 1980 Spanish Grand Prix
Famous quotes containing the word race:
“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The race may or may not be to the swift,
but tell me, is it likely
that the fight will be entrusted to the dead?”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)