Hunt and Fittipaldi's buttock-clenching F1 battle of Buenos Aires

F1

On a formidable Buenos Aires circuit, where three interlopers challenged F1's established frontrunners, the scene was set for a thrilling start to the 1975 season. As Matt Bishop recounts, it didn't disappoint

Emerson Fittipaldi with James Hunt and Carlos Reutemann on the podium after the 1975 F1 Argentine Grand Prix

A Buenos Aires podium fizzing with charisma: Fittipaldi, Hunt and Reutemann

AP Photo/E Di Baia via Alamy

Can it really be true that the 1975 Argentine Grand Prix took place half a century ago? Yes, unbelievably, it is indeed the case, for it was run on January 12, 1975, which means that 50 years and two days have passed since the sun set on that long, hot, dry, and dusty Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires.

I am often asked which country from Formula 1’s glorious back catalogue of abandoned host nations I would most like to see the top tier of global motor sport return to, and Argentina is usually my reply, for Buenos Aires is a wonderful city and the Autódromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez is – and particularly was – a fabulous circuit. I say “was” because, although it is still in use today — for Formula 4, Stock Car Pro, Top Race V6, Turismo Carretera, and Turismo Nacional — it has not staged a round of the F1 world championship since 1998, and by that time the truncated No6 version of the circuit had been mandated, which packed 18 tight turns into its 2.68-mile (4.32km) perimeter and was not regarded by the F1 drivers of the day as a particularly visceral challenge.

But in 1975, as it had been in 1974 and would be until 1981, the Argentine Grand Prix was run on the formidably challenging No15 version of the circuit, whose 3.69 miles (5.95km) included the addition of a dauntingly rapid loop consisting of two long straights, Recta del Fondo and Recta del Lago, joined by one big, wide, super-fast, 180-degree right-hander, Curvón de Salotto (Turn 3), which, even 50 years ago, the braver drivers in the faster cars would tackle flat in top gear, without even a confidence lift, which meant that they took it at a buttock-clenching 195mph (314km/h), sometimes with a dab of ‘oppo’ nervily yet deftly applied by sweaty palms and white knuckles. As a result, from the exit of Turns 1 and 2 (S del Siervo) to the braking point for Turn 4 (Chicana de Ascari), they were absolutely flat-out for 40 ear-splitting seconds.

Denny Hulme in 1974 Argentine Grand Prix

Denny Hulme muscled his way to victory in the 1974 Argentine Grand Prix

Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

In Argentina in 1975 the braver drivers in the faster cars were the form horses from the previous F1 season, namely Emerson Fittipaldi (McLaren), Niki Lauda (Ferrari), and Carlos Reutemann (Brabham), who had all won grands prix in 1974. But the Argentine Grand Prix was the first race of the 1975 F1 season, and three interlopers also showed scintillating pace in qualifying: Reutemann’s new team-mate at Brabham, Carlos Pace; James Hunt, who had shown flashes of form in his Hesketh in 1973 and 1974 and was determined to do even better for that plucky British team in 1975; and Jean-Pierre Jarier, who had also raced promisingly in 1974, for Shadow, and was giving its brand-new Tony Southgate-designed DN5 its F1 debut in Buenos Aires. Indeed, it was Jarier who took the pole, with a stunning lap of 1min 49.21sec, which was almost half a second better than anyone else could manage. Second on the grid was Pace, then Reutemann (third), Lauda (fourth), Fittipaldi (fifth), and Hunt (sixth).

Before I tell you about the race, which was a thriller, let’s spend a few minutes on some other Argentina 1975 narratives, some of them interesting, amusing, or even bizarre.

In the lead-up to the event, discussions between Shadow and Lotus had taken place, the subject a possible driver swap: Lotus would take on Jarier’s team-mate at Shadow, Tom Pryce, in return for whom Lotus’s disaffected superstar Ronnie Peterson would join Shadow. In the end it did not happen. But, had it done so, one can only imagine how rapidly Peterson would have driven that neat and nimble Shadow DN5. Put it this way: Jarier and Pryce were both quick, undoubtedly, but Peterson was, and will always be, one of the fastest drivers we have ever seen, in any category, in any place, in any year.

A few weeks before, it had been rumoured that, pressured so to do by its Formula 2 engine partner BMW, March might abandon F1 altogether, concentrating instead on the manufacture and sale of its customer F2 and F3 cars, which operation had become successful and lucrative, adjectives that could not be used to describe its F1 team. But, at the 11th hour, Max Mosley and his merry March men decided to persist with F1 after all, lodging entries for two Italians, Vittorio Brambilla and Lella Lombardi, sponsored respectively by Beta Utensili (tools) and Lavazza (coffee). However, only Brambilla made it to Argentina. Lombardi appeared two grands prix later, in South Africa, where she became only the second woman to start a world championship-status F1 grand prix, after Maria Teresa de Filippis, who in 1958 had raced a privately entered Maserati 250F in the Belgian, Portuguese, and Italian Grands Prix. In the 49 years since Lombardi’s 12th and last world championship-status F1 grand prix start, which she made at Österreichring in 1976 in an ex-works Brabham BT44B entered by RAM Racing, which for that short time was known as RAM Racing Lavazza, no woman has followed suit, which is a crying shame in my humble opinion.

Lella Lombardi and Vittorio Brambilla at 1975 March F1 launch

March remained in F1 for 1975: Vittorio Brambilla (in cockpit) was later joined by Lella Lombardi (right)

Grand Prix Photo

Two Williamses were on the grid in Buenos Aires in 1975, driven by Jacques Laffite (17th) and Arturo Merzario (20th). Why is that noteworthy, you may be wondering? The reason is that, prior to 1975, Frank Williams had run Brabhams (1969), De Tomasos (1970), Marches (1971 and 1972), and Iso-Marlboros (1973 and 1974). So Argentina 1975 was a step forward for Team Willy, as Frank liked to call his little team, for Laffite and Merzario were driving F1 cars called Williams for the first time.

Qualifying 23rd and last, having posted a lap just over 11 seconds slower than Jarier’s pole time, was Wilson Fittipaldi, Emerson’s elder brother, who was giving the Copersucar-Fittipaldi FD01 its F1 debut in his own all-Brazilian team’s maiden grand prix. It is fair to say that his race went no better than had his qualifying, for on lap 13 Fittipaldi shunted his singularly sluggish and luridly oversteering car at the exit of the Mixtos hairpin, slamming it into a trackside wall, which impact caused it to burst into flames. He was able to clamber out unhurt, only to be met by a young and shirtless marshal eager to yank him away from the conflagration. Wilson responded by giving the foolhardy lad a hefty shove, briefly felling him. A fire engine was called, the incident was dealt with, and the race went on uninterrupted despite a pall of heavy black smoke hanging low over that part of the circuit throughout the rest of the afternoon. And, yes, you did indeed read that correctly: back in the day, marshals, even if they would be required to attend fires, sometimes prioritised getting a tan over protecting themselves from burning petrol.

Also entered for the 1975 Argentine Grand Prix was one Nestor García-Veiga, in a Berta. I do not blame you if you have heard of neither driver nor team, for they failed to turn even a single lap in Buenos Aires that weekend and they never appeared in F1 again. The team boss, Oreste Berta, was a driver-engineer who had raced stock cars and touring cars in his native Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s, and would go on to run his own teams in the same series in the 1980s and 1990s, with great success. For 1975 he had designed and built his own Berta F1 car, based on his own Berta Formula 5000 car, and he had selected his friend, the aforementioned Nestor García-Veiga, to drive it. García-Veiga had started out in Turismo Carretera and Turismo Nacional, winning prolifically, and he had then gone on to race the Berta F5000 car in the United States, albeit without success.

From the archive

To say that the Berta F1 programme was over-ambitious would be an understatement, for the tiny team had designed and built not only its own chassis but also its own engine, which, perhaps not surprisingly, proved to be low on power, heavy, and unreliable. Nonetheless, the team entered the next F1 grand prix, Brazil, Oreste Berta asking Wilson Fittipaldi for the loan of a spare Cosworth V8 to bolt into García-Veiga’s car in place of the substandard Berta V8. Unsurprisingly, given Copersucar-Fittipaldi’s disastrous F1 debut in Argentina, that request was refused, and that was the end of the Berta F1 team.

Anyway, let’s pick up the story on race day, in Argentina, in 1975. There was drama right from the start, since the crown-wheel-and-pinion at the back of Jarier’s Shadow failed on the warm-up lap, so the pre-race favourite never even made the grid. When the flag dropped, the lead was grabbed by Reutemann, taking advantage of not only the empty space ahead of him where Jarier’s Shadow should have been but also his certainty that, as the local hero, he was unlikely to be penalised for jumping the start. As events turned out he was right, for his professional foul duly went unpunished, and behind him Pace in the other Brabham, followed by Lauda’s Ferrari, Hunt’s Hesketh, and Fittipaldi’s McLaren, set off in angry pursuit.

They circulated like that for the first seven laps, until Hunt overtook Lauda on lap eight. Then, on lap 14, Pace spun at the fast left flick, Tobogàn, rejoining in sixth place. On lap 23 Fittipaldi passed Lauda, and now the three leaders pulled away together — Reutemann’s white Brabham and Hunt’s white Hesketh leading Fittipaldi’s red and white McLaren, the trio running nose to tail and in line astern — and, with 30 laps to go and nothing so pesky as a pitstop to interrupt their sprint to the end, it was clear that the huge crowd of F1-mad Argentines, who were cheering their beloved Lole to the echo, could look forward to the thick end of an hour of nail-biting racing to continue to enjoy.

They were to be disappointed, however, for Reutemann’s Cosworth soon began to lose a few revs, and his front Goodyears started to go off, giving him understeer, which he had always hated and indeed would always detest throughout the rest of his F1 career. Neither affliction might have been crippling on its own, but the combination meant that, try as he might, finally he could not keep Hunt behind him, and, when the three cars came around at the end of lap 26, the Hesketh was in the lead. Frustrated and upset, perhaps Reutemann did not then fight Fittipaldi on the following tour as hard as he could have done, for Emerson slipped past him on lap 27, and after that Carlos dropped back a bit, although he maintained a now-lonely third place, comfortably ahead of Lauda in fourth.

So now the 1975 Argentine Grand Prix was a two-horse race. Hunt led, but Fittipaldi was right behind him. For lap after lap, there was never more than a few car lengths between them, for they ran together, trading fastest laps as they went, manhandling their cars spectacularly through the superfast flat-in-top-gear Curvón de Salotto, controlling them on the ragged edge of their deteriorating Goodyears’ adhesion only by sawing at the wheel, each man allowing his right foot nary a flinch.

As Hunt began to lap the backmarkers, some of them went off-line too obediently for his liking, churning up trackside dust and even stones at the flying Hesketh behind, one of them hitting and indeed holing its windscreen but fortunately not smiting its driver in the head. Nonetheless, after the race James admitted that, wary of the debris off-line, a known hazard of the tricky-in-so-many-ways Buenos Aires racetrack, he had been grateful that his team had provided him with an extra-thick helmet visor.

Hunt’s lead looked solid, if never secure, for Fittipaldi was always there, invariably just behind. Nonetheless, James was driving beautifully, never making the kind of error that would allow Emerson to have a proper go at passing him. Could Hunt win his, and Hesketh’s, first ever world championship-status F1 grand prix? Perhaps he could, for on lap 34 he set the fastest lap of the race, 1min 50.91sec, thereby beginning lap 35 with a lead visibly larger than any he had hitherto enjoyed, with just 18 of the 53 laps to go.

Maybe the newly hard-won daylight behind him unsettled him — or broke his rhythm — for, at the end of that very lap, the 35th, he ran wide at the exit of the last corner, the Curva de Parga hairpin, and Fittipaldi drew level with him on the long drag down the start-finish straight. They ran together into S del Siervo, but Emerson had the inside line, and he duly emerged onto the 40-second flat-out loop ahead. Two laps later James repeated his fastest lap, another banzai effort that again stopped the clocks at exactly 1min 50.91sec, but ahead Emmo had everything in hand, his McLaren now “running fantastic” as he described it later, and he would not be denied.

On the podium three of the best and most charismatic drivers of their era — Fittipaldi, Hunt, and Reutemann — stood alongside one another. Emerson, the 1974 F1 world champion, had begun his title defence perfectly – and fittingly, too, for the race had been the McLaren team’s 100th world championship-status F1 grand prix. Hunt was bitterly disappointed, for he felt that he had let a golden opportunity slip through his fingers, because, although he had won the non-championship F1 International Trophy at Silverstone in 1974, he had never yet felt the joy of scoring a world championship-status F1 grand prix victory. The patriotic Reutemann was morose, too, eager as he had been to deliver a home-grown triumph to his adoring fans. But each of them would go on to win races in F1 that year: Fittipaldi, his second of the season, at Silverstone; Hunt at Zandvoort; and Reutemann at Nürburgring. By September, however, Lauda would be F1 world champion.

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