Bewildering configurations? Oh yes. World championship-status F1 Argentine Grands Prix were held on four layouts: number-2, number-6, number-9, and number-15. As a child, I found those numbers intoxicating. They suggested mystery, experimentation, and a refusal to settle. Why have one circuit when you can have four? Or, potentially, 15? To me, the Gálvez was not a fixed object but a living organism, adapting itself to circumstance, politics, safety, and whim. It was a circuit that could not quite make up its mind, and in that indecision lay some of its indefinable appeal.
Oscar Alfredo Gálvez himself deserves more than a pause here. He was — along with his younger brother Juan, who would be killed in 1963 in a marathon race on the formidable 94-mile (151km) asphalt and gravel road circuit at Olavarría, near Buenos Aires — a titan of Argentine racing, a Turismo Carretera hero, and a man whose fame in his motherland eclipsed that of F1 world champions, Juan Manuel Fangio apart. Naming Buenos Aires’ autódromo after him was not merely an honorific gesture but a statement of identity: here was a circuit rooted in national pride, and in its country’s history of perilous road races and homespun mechanical ingenuity, not an imported European concept dropped onto a convenient patch of wasteland, as we now see in the Gulf States. Gálvez, who was almost always photographed grinning from ear to ear, represented patriotism, resilience, creativity, and a kind of joyful ambition, and those qualities seeped into the tarmac that bore and still bears his name – and, since 2008, that of his brother too, for in that year it was rechristened the Autódromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez, and rightly so, for Juan was an ace in his own right, winning the Turismo Carretera nine times.
Of all the circuit’s configurations, it is the number-15 layout, used for Argentine Grands Prix from 1974 to 1981, that then beguiled and still beguiles me most. Daunting but glorious is the phrase that keeps returning to me, unbidden and insistent. At 3.709 miles (5.968km) it was long and it was fast. Indeed, it was absolutely flat-out for more than half its length, all the way from the exit of S del Siervo up the long straight to the big, wide, and mesmerisingly intimidating 180-degree Curvón de Salotto, then back down another long straight to the Chicana de Ascari. It was wonderful, but scary, and it punished the inattentive. It flowed but it bit. Drivers had to cope with oppressive heat, to read the sometimes melting track surface, and to manage boiling tyres when tyres were things you managed with intuition rather than spreadsheets. Watching footage of it now, I am struck not by how primitive it looks but by how honest it feels.
Elevated views of Henri Pescarolo and Ronnie Peterson for marshals and hot air balloonists in 1972
LAT
The 1974 Argentine Grand Prix, won by McLaren’s Denny Hulme, was F1’s first taste of number-15 magic. Hulme, a taciturn New Zealander, an F1 world champion for Brabham seven years before and by 1974 a balding 37-year-old, was the opposite of flamboyant, and I begrudged him his victory, for it was as much a result of his good luck as his workmanlike mastery of that brutal circuit. Why so? Because the local hero, Carlos Reutemann, had thrust his Brabham into the lead on lap three and had held it consummately until two laps from the end, when first a loose airbox then a disconnected plug lead had cruelly ended his run. Lole would never win at home. He came close a few times – he was second once and third twice – but never closer than in 1974.
A year later McLaren’s Emerson Fittipaldi and Hesketh’s James Hunt delivered a classic. Now, 50 years later, viewing video clips of them hurling their gorgeous cars through Curvón de Salotto on the ragged edge of their suffering Goodyears’ adhesion is like watching dancers who happen to be helmeted. Fittipaldi had that rare ability to make speed look serene. Hunt’s approach was more urgent, and, in Buenos Aires that day, under a sun that tested both man and machine, they battled mightily. In the end Emerson prevailed, but only just.
There was no Argentine Grand Prix in 1976 – a military junta overthrew the elected government instead – and, by 1977, by which time F1 had returned, the sport’s narrative had shifted again, as it often did in those days. Jody Scheckter arrived with the brave, new, one-car Wolf team – and he immediately won, a result that hit F1 like a thunderclap. The Wolf WR1 was a neat Harvey Postlethwaite design, and number-15 suited Scheckter’s muscularity. It was incredibly hot that day, and Jody was by then the fittest of the F1 drivers, indeed the only one who prioritised gym work as they all do now. In Argentina in 1977 he raced with a mixture of stamina and intelligence that belied his reputation as a bit of a wild man, and his victory was a declaration that the old order could be challenged anywhere, and by anyone, even on a circuit that had traditionally favoured big-team drivers whose calling cards featured experience and finesse.
Indeed, Carlos Pace – just such a driver, in other words an experienced man who oozed finesse – should have won that race in his beautiful Brabham-Alfa, an old-order combo if ever there was one, but, as Scheckter told me in a big interview I did for Motor Sport earlier this year, “The extreme heat caused problems for a lot of the cars and a lot of the drivers, and our car was a solid design and I was really fit by then. Towards the end of the race I was up to second, and Carlos Pace was leading in the Brabham-Alfa, but I was closing on him, and I could see that he was taking funny lines, struggling in the heat, and in the end he puked in his helmet I think, so I passed him and I took the win.”
“I spun off into the infield, and the car was chopped in half against a marshals’ post”
Mario Andretti, already a prolifically successful legend in IndyCar (or, more accurately, USAC and CART) by 1978, and over the previous couple of seasons a regular race winner in F1 too, was almost 38 when he won the 1978 Argentine Grand Prix, and his Lotus 79 was about to rewrite the aerodynamic rulebook. However, he won that race in the 1977 Lotus, the 78, which produced less ground-effect downforce than the 79 but was in many ways a nicer race car. Mario was often unbeatable in the 79, but he was made for the 78. He and his Lotus team-mate, Ronnie Peterson, appeared to sail through Curvón de Salotto in 1978, applying one firm quarter-turn on their steering wheels where all their rivals would be sawing at theirs maniacally. Late last year I did a feature interview for Motor Sport with Divina Galica, who had failed to qualify her Hesketh for that race, and she said: “Early on in a practice session I’d been passed at the big 180-degree right-hander, Curvón de Salotto, by Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson in their Lotus 78 wing cars, and I saw that they didn’t lift as they swooped by. So on my next lap I tried to take it flat myself. That was a mistake: my Hesketh certainly didn’t have the Lotus’s level of downforce, I spun off into the infield, and the car was chopped in half against a marshals’ post. Luckily I wasn’t hurt and neither were the marshals, but it was too late to rebuild the car for qualifying. The next day I watched the race with Marlene Lauda, Niki’s then wife. Niki finished second, and Mario won. At one point Marlene said to me, ‘Don’t worry that you didn’t qualify. Niki told me that even he couldn’t qualify that Hesketh heap of junk.’”
Mario Andretti leads on his way to victory in 1978
LAT
Jacques Laffite’s victory in 1979 was a surprise, and perhaps that is why it lingers in my memory so indelibly. In 1976, 1977, and 1978 Laffite’s Ligier-Matras had been good for a grand total of one race win – Anderstorp 1977 – and a few podiums, but they had rarely been as quick as the dominant Ferraris, McLarens, and Lotuses. However, for 1979 Ligier had jettisoned Matra for Cosworth – a rare abandonment of French chauvinism in favour of if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em expediency – and the result was the Ligier JS11, not only the most beautiful but also by far the fastest car in Argentina in 1979. It seemed to skim its way through the circuit rather than pound around it, and Laffite instinctively knew that his task was to coax rather than command. His win felt like an elegant rebellion against the F1 establishment, and a reminder that, as behind him all the others toiled and tussled, grace still had a place in F1.
