When F1 turned a total farce into a thriller

If the 1984 season was dominated by McLaren-TAG, Alain Prost and Niki Lauda winning 12 of the 16 grands prix, the team came up short in the North American races, of which - believe it or not - there were three in four weekends.

After Nelson Piquet's Brabham-BMW took Montreal and Detroit, Keke Rosberg gave Williams-Honda an unlikely victory in Dallas, and that race, never repeated, remains vivid in the mind of all who were there: Texas in July was a furnace.

The Dallas Grand Prix, on the eighth of the month, tied in neatly with the Firecracker 400, traditionally run on The Fourth of July. I watched Richard Petty win his 200th NASCAR race before going on to Dallas, and if it had been hot at Daytona, this was something else again: as we emerged from the airport at mid-evening the temperature was 95, and it was like walking into a thousand hair dryers.

At the hotel I ran into Italian journalist Pino Allievi, who had been round the circuit. "Incredible!" he said. "Like Francorchamps in the streets."

If my friend exaggerated somewhat, the track, made up of roads within the State Fair Park at the tatty end of town, was indeed quicker than most street circuits, with blind corners and minimal runoffs. This wasn't going to be an easy weekend.

On Thursday morning out the drivers went for a familiarisation session, after which most declared the track even worse than they had suspected. "The only thing good about it," said Prost, "is that suddenly Detroit isn't so bad."

Not all condemned it, however, and Derek Warwick, for one, was quite upbeat: "It's bloody dangerous, but as a track not bad - quite challenging, in fact."

That day, though, most of the drivers did their sport no service. At a press conference they were listless and sullen, and this was reflected in the headline of the Dallas Times Herald: 'Not only the engines whine'.

Rosberg, ever one to speak his cynical mind, rightly put the blame on the governing body, which had chosen to sidestep one of its own rules, requiring any new F1 track first to stage a lesser meeting to prove its suitability.

The warm-up was cancelled. As I talked to Renault team manager Jean Sage, we were able to lift the track with our fingers...

"Should there be races like this?" Keke said. "No, of course not - but the fact is, we're all whores, aren't we? If the money's right, we'll do our stuff for anyone." In a PR-smothered world, how one misses folk like him.

The FIA's folly came into sharper perspective on Friday afternoon, for now the track surface - recently laid - was breaking up. On his first flying lap Martin Brundle crashed, suffering ankle injuries that pain him to this day, and the Lotus-Renaults of Nigel Mansell and Elio de Angelis set times that would remain unbeaten. On Saturday, with conditions worsening, Lotus did not even take to the track, and Warwick was the only frontrunner to improve his time.

Alongside Derek's Renault on the second row was Rene Arnoux's Ferrari, followed by the McLarens of Lauda and Prost, the Toleman of Ayrton Senna, and the Williams of Rosberg.

Keke remained in sanguine frame of mind. His FW09 - the team's last 'pre-carbon monocoque' car - flexed disconcertingly, and that, together with the 'light switch' power delivery of the Honda turbo, surely made for a nightmarish concoction in these conditions, but he wasn't fazed: "It's like that everywhere - and at least here we have some hope, because it's going to be a lottery."

Given the state of the track, it might have been a sound plan to scrap Saturday afternoon's 50-lap Can-Am race, but the organisers went ahead with it, and the heavy sportscars duly chewed the surface to rubble.

In an effort to avoid the worst of the heat, the grand prix was scheduled to start at 11 o'clock, with the warm-up session at seven. That being so, Jacques Laffite arrived in his pyjamas, which raised a laugh, but not for long, for the mood was becoming militant: as resurfacing work began with epoxy cement, Lauda suggested they were not certain to race.

The warm-up was cancelled, to allow the cement to dry, but in the heat it didn't cure properly: as I talked to Renault team manager Jean Sage, we were able to lift asphalt with our fingers.

Amid the crippling humidity, Rosberg remained the coolest man in the place. While his colleagues, sheltering with ice packs under umbrellas, huffed and puffed about not racing, Keke lounged on the pitwall, overalls top down, cigarette in hand.

"To race in these circumstances," he said, "is crazy, but of course it'll happen - there are 90,000 people here, and 28 countries waiting for TV! Where, though, are our wonderful people from the FIA? Not here, because it's too bloody hot for them."

Finally, after three laps of acclimatisation, the drivers went to the grid, and - against all expectations - gave us one of the best races of the season. "Look at them," commented John Watson. "Racing drivers again!"

Indeed so. From the outset everyone went for it, with Mansell at the front, threatened by Warwick - who fell foul of the crumbling surface as he tried to take the lead, and hit a barrier. Later Mansell also clouted a wall, whereupon Rosberg took over, before ceding the lead to Prost, who then untypically clipped the concrete 10 laps from the end.

There were many great performances, notably from Arnoux, who started at the back after his engine refused to fire, then scythed through to second, but in conditions that put 13 drivers in the wall, Rosberg's victory was a freehand masterpiece.

"It was just a question of survival," Keke said, "of staying away from the marbles, and going only at the speed the track allowed you to go." He sold himself short.

On Monday morning the Dallas Times Herald changed its tone: 'All complaints aside, when these chaps climb into the cockpit, they flat go racing. There's no pouting there.'