Senna hogs the headlines, Lauda's key win - F1's 400th GP

The 1984 Formula 1 season was the year the turbocharged revolution became complete, the year Ayrton Senna leapt up from Formula 3 and soon came to dominate the headlines, and the year of the first all-McLaren title battle.

Where Senna would end up for 1985 was the biggest news story of the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, while on track Niki Lauda took his first home victory in F1 despite his McLaren-TAG Porsche being on the edge of retiring with a broken gearbox.

Where would Senna go?

Ayrton Senna only qualified 10th for the Austrian GP, three seconds off the pace, but had made it up to fourth by the time he retired with a loss of oil pressure in his Toleman-Hart at just shy of three-quarters distance.

His junior record plus that week in, week out giantkilling brilliance for his small F1 team made Senna the hottest young property in the paddock in years - and the prospect of his next move led that week's Autosport news section:

At the Osterreichring last weekend, the paddock buzzed with rumours of driver transfers for 1985, and the name of Ayrton Senna cropped up constantly...

Last week one story suggested that the Brazilian had already 'reached an accommodation' with Lotus, but in Austria Senna denied that this was the case.

"We have a three-year contract with Ayrton," commented Alex Hawkridge of Toleman at the weekend, "and he has given me assurances that he has not been negotiating with other teams. As far as I am concerned that is the current situation. And I can only say that I am prepared to take legal steps to protect our contract with him..."

Senna's name has also been linked, in the recent past, with Williams, McLaren and Ferrari. Although Enzo Ferrari announced some time ago that he would be retaining the services of Michele Alboreto and Rene Arnoux again in 1985, neither driver has yet signed his contract, and Italian insiders are not at all convinced that Arnoux will stay. They suggest, indeed, that Senna has been advised 'not to sign for anyone else without ringing Maranello...'

As it turned out, seven days later Lotus announced it had signed Senna for 1985 and he would be 'buying himself out' of the rest of his Toleman deal. Toleman furiously promised legal action... but Senna was on his way.

Nigel Mansell was the man making way for Senna at Lotus, but his future was only deemed worthy of a brief in the news pages:

We hear that Frank Williams's first choice for the number two drive next year is Nigel Mansell - and that Keke Rosberg is less than enthusiastic about the idea...

With the benefit of hindsight, this seems a rather low-key way to report a driver move that would end up having such an impact. But at that time Mansell was a 31-year-old out of favour at Lotus, with only four podium finishes to show for 57 grands prix.

And his likely destination Williams, which had taken Keke Rosberg to the title just two years earlier, was giving little hint that it and engine partner Honda were about to get their collective act together so spectacularly. Rosberg's recent win in Dallas was an anomaly of improvisation on a crumbling, crazy circuit and Nigel Roebuck's report made clear how little impact Williams made on the Austrian GP race as both Rosberg and team-mate Jacques Laffite retired from the midfield:

Tyres were changed, adjustment made to the front wings, but Keke was still not satisfied and, his mood black, called it a day five laps later. This was a bad race for Frank's team, for Laffite's spirited effort had ended shortly before with engine failure. By the end of the race there was little tangible sign that Williams had been present. All had departed.

While Senna to Lotus and Mansell to Williams were significant driver moves that did happen, this suggestion from Autosport's news pages proved wide of the mark - Al Unser Jr to Brabham...

While there has never been any doubt that Nelson Piquet will stay at Brabham for 1985 - his seventh season with the team! - there are suggestions that Teo Fabi may not stay as his number two.

Parmalat have already confirmed their sponsorship of the team again next year, but we understand that the signwriting may be rather different. Instead of the company name, the cars may bear the words 'Mister Day', a range of cakes and pastries introduced by Parmalat during the last year.

We hear that this brand is to be introduced into the USA, and that, with this in mind, Parmalat could be interested in an American driver for the second Brabham.

Names being mentioned include Rick Mears and Al Unser Jr. We cannot believe that Mears has any further interest in Grand Prix racing, despite the fact that he once tested quite impressively a Brabham BT49.

The era of epic power

With neither of the Cosworth-powered Tyrrells qualifying in Austria, F1's 400th world championship round was the first in its history where the entire starting grid used turbocharged engines.

Speeds, power and manufacturer influence were getting larger by the week, and Autosport's news section carried this warning of brewing political trouble:

At a dinner in Austria last weekend, FISA President Jean-Marie Balestre announced that he had informed the F1 constructors that they must come up with an unanimous agreement on a workable means of limiting horsepower by the date of the expiry of the Concorde Agreement: December 31 1984.

If agreement is reached, Balestre said, the Concorde Agreement will be renewed for four more years. If not, he went on, FISA will assume complete control of the sport again.

Please, constructors, please get something sorted out...

The Osterreichring is often cited as the circuit where the ferocity of the turbocars could be most viscerally experienced. Roebuck's Autosport qualifying report began with a chat on that topic with Keke Rosberg:

"Some people," Keke Rosberg said, "have funny ideas about safety. At Dallas people were talking hysterically about how dangerous it was - and the average speed was 80 or 90mph. Yet here no one says a word, and the average is - what? - nearly 155! I tell you what, if something happens to my car coming into the Boschkurve... for sure it's a bigger accident than anything that could happen to me in Dallas..."

Did he agree, though, with other drivers who were saying that it was all getting a little too quick again, as in the latter years of the ground effect era?

"No, no way. It's exhilarating - particularly in qualifying when you can just go for it, put everything into one lap, with a lot of horsepower. I get a thrill from that, a buzz, and a racing driver needs to get a thrill from what he does. Don't you agree? We're not here for a Sunday afternoon drive, after all.

"Let me tell you something. Last weekend I drove the old FW08, last year's Cosworth car, at Keimola in Finland, to demonstrate a Formula 1 car in my own country, where they don't see them very often. And it seemed like a moped! Really, I mean it. It was so slow, so boring. It just felt like Formula Ford or something. No, I love the power of this era..."

This era. This era is moving on apace. Twelve months ago Patrick Tambay's Ferrari took the pole in Austria with a lap fractionally shy of 148mph. Last Saturday the same time would have qualified him for the seventh row. Nelson Piquet, heading the first, took the Brabham-BMW round at 154.26mph, this faster even than his lap in the ground effect maelstrom of 1982.

Such speeds were proving unnerving. Piquet's pole was an upset given he thoroughly expected the McLarens of Alain Prost and Niki Lauda to outpace him, but some mechanical niggles for them late in final qualifying left the door ajar. Lauda ended up fourth behind Elio de Angelis.

Before then, though, Lauda had a high speed near miss with Derek Warwick's Renault while on a qualifying lap - leaving Roebuck concerned:

Afterwards there were no harsh words between the two drivers. Niki and Derek are two men who respect each other, and when you put into effect Grand Prix racing's absurd qualifying procedure on a circuit as fast as the Osterreichring, such moments are utterly inevitable. Last weekend a set of qualifiers were beginning to go away before the end of a single lap. You had, therefore, but two serious shots at a quick time in each session. Lauda could not afford to lift. Two years after the death of Gilles Villeneuve, this sport appears to have learned nothing.

Starting grid for F1's 400th GP - Austria 1984

The turbo tech wars

The mid-1980s were a bit of a transition period for F1. First, the refinement of aerodynamics post-ground effect era was beginning to hit its stride - as cambered aerofoil profiles and additional wings became de rigeur, while Renault's early turbo toils eventually began a battle between turbocharged engines and their naturally-aspirated counterparts.

Then, the turbo engines weren't nearly as sophisticated as today's hybridised power units, and didn't have innovations like the MGU-H to nullify the effects of turbo lag - the time taken for the turbocharger to fully spool up and drive the compressor. One ex-F1 engineer suggested that the turbo lag in those days was "so bad, you had time to make a cup of tea before the turbo got up to speed".

Since the turbochargers were quite large, they were capable of generating huge amounts of torque, which could be very difficult to control. Looking back at old footage, the drivers had to contend with plenty of squirming after the exit of the corners as the turbo began to spool up to full pelt.

By increasing the rear end downforce, teams could stabilise that. It wasn't uncommon in 1983 to see extra sproutings from the rear wing, positioned over the rear tyres to squeeze out some extra grip. Among the lesser runners, the likes of Toleman and Spirit were occasionally seen lumbering around with twin rear wings - carried into 1984, where the bonus wing enjoyed some success as part of Ayrton Senna's formative F1 season.

The smaller side wings - used by a great majority of teams - offered a little more rear wing span, most crucially when the car was in yaw to settle the rear end when turning out of the corner.

That year's McLaren made the most of them, and also had one of the best turbo engines in the business in the back of the car - the Porsche-designed TAG-badged V6.

In comparison, BMW's hugely-powerful turbocharged straight-four boasted more than 1000bhp, but would frequently gut itself over the race track under the load of full racing speeds - also proving to be hugely thirsty. Honda was still in its infancy as a top-line engine, having only just switched from Spirit to Williams, while the Renaults also enjoyed accompanying the BMW units in stopping at the side of the road.

The TAG-Porsche unit had the perfect blend of speed and reliability, and the benefit of both Niki Lauda and Alain Prost to guide its development perfectly. And, without any customer obligations, Porsche was able to tailor it to the excellent MP4/2. The fuel consumption was perfect for the time, too, as everyone else struggled to varying degrees with the 220 litre limit.

But as Autosport wrote at the time, following on from the succeeding Dutch Grand Prix victory a week after Austria, the team's irrepressibility over the season was "without any apparent 'quantum leap' in technology".

Consider: John Barnard's MP4-2 is flat-bottomed, like its rivals, because the current Formula 1 regulations permit nothing else. It has a turbocharged V6 engine, but so do many other cars on the grid.

This McLaren success has been achieved for several reasons. Barnard's car produces more downforce than any other. The Porsche-designed-and-built TAG engine produces excellent horsepower, and has been remarkably reliable all season long.

The standard of preparation within the team is such that, on two occasions, Prost has been able to step into the spare car at the last minute - and win with it, untroubled.

Renault in turbo trouble

Renault, the pioneer of F1 turbocharged, never managed to win a title in its 1980s heyday. And by 1984 it was in the decline that would lead to the exit of its works team.

Mentions of the factory Renaults and customer teams Lotus and Ligier coating the circuit in oil pepper the Autosport report, and though Patrick Tambay and Derek Warwick put the factory cars on row three, the journey there was not smooth:

The Renaults had row three to themselves, Tambay ahead of Warwick on this occasion, and perhaps the Frenchman was more dissatisfied than anyone after practice.

"The car was fantastic today, beautiful. I did a 26.7 on my first run, and I believe that, on my second set, I could have done a 26.0 - without changing anything. But it was decided to give it a little bit more boost and... it was too much."

Just beyond the Hella-Licht chicane the engine blew in a big way, and that was it for Tambay. "I tell you, if the engine had lasted the lap, the time would have been incredible! Along the pit straight the difference was amazing".

Ferrari's misery

Ferrari had won the previous two constructors' championships and began the year looking like it would be McLaren's main title threat. That's where it technically ended up in the standings, but a massive 86 points adrift at the end of a year in which it managed just one race win.

By Austria in August, Ferrari was mainly a source of comedy for Roebuck's reports:

Ferrari, frankly, were in a state of total chaos in Austria. As is the usual practice these days, they brought four cars, one with a lengthened wheelbase (for Alboreto), the other three with the revised suspension tried, but not raced, at Hockenheim. And everything about the Italian pit in qualifying suggested a team which had completely lost its way.

"It's not bad," commented Michele, bravely. "The 'andling could be better, you know, and the grip, and the turn-in... Through the Boschkurve we have a problem.'

The man is a master of euphemism and tact. From my vantage point at the Boschkurve, the car looked about as secure as Daley Thompson's grip on good taste. Acute understeer initially, then a twitch at the rear end, then a bounce over a bump in the middle of the corner. Only their horsepower, it seemed, was working for them and they needed all they could find, so slowly were they coming off the corners. Not since 1980 have we seen Ferrari so utterly off the pace.

Rene Arnoux was even more po-faced than usual. The Osterreichring is his favourite circuit, and one at which he has traditionally shone. The lap record is his, and has stood since 1980. Last year, in the Ferrari C3, he qualified and finished second. In the C4 he was unable to get within a second of that time, and started 15th, confused and fed up.

And in the race, Roebuck reported that the Ferrari fans decided they were better off cheering one of their old drivers:

There is always a vast Italian contingent at the Austrian Grand Prix, a race in which the Commendatore's cars are traditionally strong. And on Sunday, despite Ferrari's currently appalling form, still they came, spilling out of countless coaches, draping their banners over the fence. Even the most blinkered fan, however, had to concede that the C4s were also-rans, essential window dressing but nothing more. And it was fascinating to observe that, in the absence of any excitement from Alboreto and Arnoux, the dedicated tifosi - quietly at first, eventually with fervour - were cheering on the efforts of Niki Lauda. He might not be in a Ferrari today, they reasoned, but once he was. And didn't it say in the papers this morning that he might be coming back...

The Ferraris at least finished - Alboreto 48.9s from the front in third place, but Arnoux a lapped and point-less seventh.

Berger makes his debut with a "shambles"

Ferrari wasn't the only team leaving Roebuck underwhelmed in Austria, but at least relative minnow ATS had the excuse of much smaller resources.

But it was with ATS that eventual F1 race winner Gerhard Berger, then a 24-year-old F3 star, would make a tough GP debut.

Constant gearbox and fuel pressure problems for full-time driver Manfred Winkelhock meant that Winkelhock commandeered Berger's car for the key parts of both Friday and Saturday, meaning that the rookie would in Roebuck's words: "go into his first Grand Prix with, let's say, minimal practice. A shambles".

In those circumstances, Berger did well to make it onto the grid in 20th. Winkelhock qualified 14th, only for his car to fail again before the start. Berger was classified 12th, having stopped late on with a broken gearbox.

Lauda's crucial win

While mentioning Lauda putting two wheels on the grass to dodge Warwick while flat-out on a qualifying lap, Roebuck had made clear how hard the 1975/77 world champion was pushing in 1984 to tackle Prost:

Here, though, was another example of the 1984 Lauda, driving - in Rosberg's recent words - "harder than at any time in his life, because he's got Prost so big in his eyes..."

Roebuck's report summary picks up the story of how Lauda won his home grand prix for the first time - and launched himself from 5.5 points behind Prost to 3.5 points ahead in the championship in the process.

As the number eight McLaren came out of the Boschkurve with nine laps to go it suddenly faltered. Up went Niki Lauda's arm, warning to those behind. The gearbox was broken, his race over.

But as the car moved towards the trackside, its driver pulling off, it began to pick up pace once more. Now Niki drove it through the next corner and on to the end of that lap. And the next.

He was in severe trouble, and fourth gear was gone altogether. As it passed, the car's exhaust note could not mask the dreadful noise from the damaged gearbox. But Lauda made it through to the flag, finally, a winner at home.

The Austrian had only recently taken the lead from Nelson Piquet, and it was fortunate for him that the World Champion was himself in tyre trouble, and could not respond. Nelson, too, was relieved to see the chequered flag.

Alain Prost saw it only from the pits. Again he had been quicker than Lauda in qualifying, and again he had problems with his car on race day, the McLaren needing an engine change after the warm-up. In the race Alain pursued Piquet, while Lauda hovered in third place. But the Frenchman, too, had gearbox problems, having to hold the lever in fourth. And when the car leading trio hit oil, dropped by de Angelis, Prost spun into the catch fencing.

Twelve races down, eight wins to McLaren, four to Lauda and four to Prost. This is domination of Grand Prix racing such as we have not seen since the era of the Lotus 79. Now, it is clear, the championship is between Niki and Alain. And with two drivers so equal, reliability and preparation of the cars will probably settle the issue. Both men are quietly confident that they can do the job.

Lauda never relinquished the championship lead again. It's always said that the crucial factor in his half-point victory over Prost was that the Monaco GP was stopped early - meaning the 4.5 points Prost earned for winning was smaller than the six he would likely have got for finishing second behind Senna in a full-distance race (though whether Stefan Bellof would've passed Prost too has to be factored into that debate).

But the story of 1984 would have been very, very different if Lauda hadn't changed his mind about retiring his McLaren in the world championship's 400th race and just given it a few more seconds to see if it would keep going. That decision saved nine points that changed the complexion of one of F1's best title battles.

Results - F1's 400th world championship race, Austria 1984