Kyalami, Johannesburg, February 7th
Notwithstanding the lack of support from Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo and Talbot Ligier, the Formula One Constructors Association entered a total of nineteen drivers for this year's South African Grand Prix at Kyalami, although whether FISA will ever formally regard it as the first round of the FIA World Championship is hard to say. With no Goodyear company to supply tyres, no FISA blessing and the absence of the aforementioned teams FOCA were nonetheless determined to put on a race and all the cars had to run on "production" Goodyear G50 hard compound tyres supplied for the occasion by Ecclestone's tyre distribution company. Several teams were worried that these tyres would overheat as they were designed with softer sidewalls than last year's Grand Prix tyres. The British F1 series for which they were designed last year had regulations which specified the cars to run without side skirts.
When practice began on the Thursday prior to the race, the battle took up where it left off in Montreal at the end of 1980, the Williams FW07Bs of Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann facing a strong challenge from Nelson Piquet's Brabham BT49. There were three Williams machines at Kyalami, including the new number 10 for Reutemann, and they had all been modified to take the latest specification Cosworth DFV engine with its revised water and oil pumps. Consequently the water radiators had swapped sides, right to left, and the oil radiators had been moved similarly left to right. Jones was troubled during the first untimed session when his car's brand new engine proved reluctant to rev properly, so top gear was changed only for the World Champion to find it running up to 11,000 r.p.m. on the straight which was more than he would have liked. He also ran out of petrol on the circuit and then tried the spare car, finally ending up with the third quickest time of 1 min. 13.28 sec. for the starting grid.
