In less than two weeks, Formula 1 heads back to Australia for the first round of the World Championship. With that in mind – as well as Nigel Roebuck’s new feature on F1 turbos – it’s a good time to look back at when F1 ended the season in Adelaide. This video is from 1985, the first time Australia featured on the championship calendar.
We join Patrick Tambay during practice in his Renault RE60B. His super-smooth style is on show here, corralling his car’s incredible horsepower with what looks like relative ease. It’s always interesting to watch the driving style of ’80s F1, all right angles and short bursts of power. The quick manual gearchanges at full throttle are something we definitely won’t be seeing next year, nor perhaps the whining rasp of the engine.
Murray Walker gives you plenty of information about the venue during the out lap but it’s worth noting that, with decent results tailing off, Adelaide ’85 was Renault’s last Grand Prix as a constructor before officially returning in 2002. Despite the best efforts of Tambay and Derek Warwick, the team had scored no wins and only seven podiums in the previous two years. Not bad, but nowhere near what was expected from them after Alain Prost’s close challenge for the title in 1983.
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