Arrows' heartbreak and a wild finish - F1's 300th GP

What can you say about Colin Chapman that hasn't already been said? A whip-smart visionary with a penchant for the experimental, the success of his various innovations throughout the '60s and '70s led him onto his latest wheeze - ground effects.

Even so, he wasn't the first to ever explore the field of ground effects in F1 - Peter Wright had looked into it during his time at BRM, and he was the perfect man to assist Chapman with turning its performance potential into something tangible.

The Lotus 78 was the first iteration, with giant sweeping sidepods formed into the rough shape of an aerofoil. At the point at which the gap to the road was the smallest, this was capable of generating a huge amount of suction behind it - developing a not-inconsiderable low-pressure zone underneath the car. The ensuing 'Venturi' tunnel allowed the air underneath to expand and accelerate, creating extreme areas of low pressure.

Time was needed to understand the ground effects further, as the team had found that they weren't quite working on the level that they needed to. The skirts to seal the floor off amounted to brushes, which were prone to frequent leakage, and the point of lowest pressure in the ground effect configuration was too far forward - meaning Lotus had to compensate with a larger-than-ideal rear wing.

There were also still some handling issues to iron out - drivers Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson attempting to work through the gamut of Goodyear tyres available to see what would work. It was unreliable, too - and failures in practice left Peterson with plenty of work to do come race day. Lotus had attempted to run its own gearbox, but teething problems had left the team having to revert to the off-the-shelf Hewland package.

At Kyalami, with the long initial run to the lap-opening Crowthorne Corner, the large rear wing was a bit of a hindrance in a straight line - but the extra downforce was a fantastic tool in the fast, sweeping corners; Peterson had the grip to swashbuckle his way through the order, having made a setup change to cure his earlier handling issues and preserve the life of his tyres.

Later in the season, the team brought the 79 to the party; the ground effects had been developed further and the chassis strengthened to cope with the huge aerodynamic loads produced. The brush skirts were replaced with full plastic skirts which slid along the road, dialling out any disturbances to the underbody, while the fuel tanks were taken out of the sidepods and positioned fully behind the driver for better weight distribution.

In it, Mario Andretti surged to Lotus's last-ever title triumph. While the 78's more modest success could keep prying eyes away from the ground effect concept, the 79's dominance prompted more than just a few sideways glances from its competitors - kicking into action the war for ground effect aerodynamics.

Turbos not quite there yet...

While ground effect was about to become dominant when the next generation Lotus arrived, the other big F1 tech innovation of the era - turbocharged engines - was still in the state summed up by Autosport reporter Jeff Hutchinson's description of the Renault's practice form:

The Renault seemed to spend very few laps at racing speed, but on those Jean-Pierre Jabouille did, he was quick. Jabouille reckoned, when he finally got his temperamental turbocharged engine running cleanly, that he was pulling the same sort of power as the other cars, despite predictions of a theoretical 15 to 20 per cent power advantage. Either he is going to be in trouble back in Europe down at sea level, or somebody did their sums wrong.

Still Jabouille managed to qualify the car sixth, but the race was one of the 10 from which he retired during 1978:

The turbo Renault finally bowed out of the race after 37 laps with an engine that had lost power, developed a misfire and, during a pitstop, threw all its water over the pit lane.

A race of 'might have beens'

The eventual dominance of the Lotus 79 means that the 1978 F1 season is remembered more for historical importance - the first ground effect title, the most recent American world champion, Gilles Villeneuve's first F1 victory, Peterson's tragic death - than cracking individual races.

But Kyalami was a race that six drivers other than the eventual victor could easily have claimed, and was settled by just 0.442 seconds in a final-lap joust.

Reigning world champion Niki Lauda - three races into his stint at Brabham after parting with Ferrari - took his first pole for his new team despite this incident with Jean-Pierre Jarier in practice, as recounted in the Autosport report:

He had rushed up on Jarier and been too forceful in getting past. Jarier's rear wheel rode over Lauda's front wheel and the ATS bounced high into the air, fortunately coming back to earth still on its wheels and just short of the barrier. The ATS damaged a radiator which, literally, got Lauda into hot water. He even went to Jarier and apologised for the incident.

An increasingly sick engine meant Lauda went backwards in the race, though he was still third when he retired at two-thirds distance.

His Brabham-Alfa Romeo team-mate John Watson also ended up with a shot at winning. He had only qualified 10th and complained that "there is something wrong at the front end. The car feels like a front, a middle and a back instead of all in one. I also have a slight brake problem and the motor is not very good either".

But in the race he was on course to finish ahead of eventual winner Peterson had he not spun on oil dropped by Rupert Keegan's Surtees with 15 laps to go. Third place, just four seconds from victory, showed what might've been for Watson.

Home favourite Jody Scheckter led the race for six laps in the Wolf, which he had put fifth on the grid with what Autosport reporter Hutchinson felt was a triumph of effort over machinery:

A look at just about any corner on the track showed more of what was going on: it was sheer brute force and determination getting him so far up the grid, and he was often arriving at corners with the front wheels puffing out blue smoke until the very last minute and then a big opposite lock powerslide through the corner and away to the next one.

In the race, after his short stint up front he was dropping down the order with poor handling even before this happened:

As he braked for the corner, faulty fuel pressure caused the engine to stall: then when he tried to drop a couple of gears to get the revs up and restart the engine he found himself on the oil, without power, and slid off the road to end up stuck in the mud at the side of the track.

Ferrari had won the previous GP in Brazil with Carlos Reutemann, but in South Africa its Michelins were no match for the Goodyears in race conditions. Worse still, Villeneuve went out with an oil leak and Reutemann then crashed out on the same oil - with his car then catching fire.

The McLarens that had shared row two with James Hunt and Patrick Tambay fared just as badly - Hunt out with a sick engine after just five laps and Tambay tumbling down the order at the start then later crashing on yet more oil.

So as many of F1's most famous teams tripped over themselves in the 1978 South African GP, one of its least heralded outfits nearly won...

(Almost) Arrows' greatest day

Arrows never managed to win a grand prix in its 24 and a half years on the grid. Its most agonising near-miss was Damon Hill's last problem in the 1997 Hungarian GP. But its second-closest heartbreak came in only its second F1 start.

The team had been formed by a breakaway group of Shadow personnel, including designer Tony Southgate. A court would rule later in 1978 that the Arrows FA1 was to all intents and purposes a Shadow DN9 - and that Shadow, not Southgate himself, owned the intellectual rights to that design. Anticipating that outcome, Arrows was already building its own A1 design and was able to continue its maiden campaign without missing a race.

Though Shadow would eventually win that battle, the Arrows split meant its best F1 days were behind it and in South Africa it failed to even make the grid with Hans Stuck and Clay Regazzoni:

The Shadow team had made the mistake of putting all their effort into the new DN9 chassis after Brazil, and the DN8s arrived in South Africa unready to go straight out on the track and try to qualify for the next race. It was a poor state of affairs for a team of Shadow's standing.

Arrows had begun with a quiet 10th place in Brazil for Riccardo Patrese. But in South Africa it was centre of attention from the start - for multiple reasons:

The biggest surprise of all came from the young Riccardo Patrese of the Arrows team, which arrived at this race with a second car, not for Ian Scheckter as planned but for Rolf Stommelen, who has brought himself and Warsteiner beer sponsorship to the team for the rest of the season.

There was a sordid couple of days before practice when there was a rumour of a law suit because of alleged broken promises to Scheckter, but finally it was settled amicably on Wednesday morning after Ian's Palm was crossed with gold.

As if the Arrows team did not have enough problems, Patrese opened his first day's practice with a blown engine, but in the four flying laps he got before being sidelined he showed both his and his car's potential with a 1m 16.08s. On the very last lap of the untimed session on Thursday morning he flew off the road exiting Sunset Bend and badly damaged the front subframe and one of the side pods, which fortunately saved the chassis from more serious damage.

The team managed to get the car back together again in time for the final half hour of practice and Patrese went out and set a string of sub-16 times, ending up with a best of 1m 15.48s and pushing both Ferraris down a place.

In only the car's second race, Jackie Oliver was confidently talking about his team's chances of winning the race. Everybody was very impressed, including Goodyear who gave Riccardo some semi-special tyres on which to set his best time, although he was virtually as quick on the 'standard' rubber. Had Patrese got going the first day which was generally agreed to be a lot quicker, he might well have made an even bigger impression with a front row time.

Starting grid for F1's 300th GP - South Africa 1978

Instead Patrese started seventh, but in the race he rapidly moved forward to battle with Lauda and Scheckter for second:

The young Italian was matching every move of the car in front and driving as if he had all the time in the world.

In a way, he did. For unbeknown to him Lauda was in a big trouble with an engine that was getting more and more gutless as the race went on, while Scheckter was also in trouble with his rear tyres.

Then as early leader Andretti faded backwards with tyre concerns, Patrese battled past Scheckter to take a shock lead and pull away:

Almost immediately the Italian was pulling comfortably ahead, showing the spectators just how easy he had been taking it up to that point. It still looked as though he was driving an easy race as he put great chunks of road between him and Jody for lap after lap: but still this race was not done.

Guttingly for Patrese and Arrows, it wasn't. Fifteen laps from the end, his engine blew:

Just as Reutemann and Lauda strolled back past the Arrows pit, Lauda offering his congratulations to Alan Rees, the pit was thrown into consternation as Patrese, now cruising around to what seemed a doubtless victory, failed to appear.

It did not take long to get the news that the Arrows had stopped at the Esses, and Riccardo was soon walking down the pit lane in tears to tell the team that the engine had gone for no apparent reason. "Oil, water, everything was perfect. I just change up from second to third gear and the engine goes bang," said Riccardo later.

Still the future looked bright, with Autosport predicting Patrese would rapidly join what looked at that moment like a wide open title fight led by Andretti, Peterson, Lauda, Patrick Depailler and Reutemann:

With only three points separating the first five championship positions after the first three races this season, it looks as though we are going to be in for another really exciting year.

And we can almost certainly expect to see Patrese joining in the points battle after the sort of performance he showed at Kyalami.

Instead Kyalami proved to be as competitive as Arrows got. Patrese led nearly half the race in Long Beach in 1981 before a misfire hit, but that aside Arrows wouldn't get another realistic shot at victory until Hungary 1997.

An incredible finale

Patrese's exit left Depailler leading for Tyrrell - but there were still more twists to come:

So now it was Depailler who held the lead with just 15 laps to go, but Ken Tyrrell was looking far from confident as the laps slowly dragged on. His Tyrrell was puffing out blue smoke at the back and any moment Ken expected the car to stop turning up as well. In fact it turned out to be a leaking gearbox oil pump housing, which looked dramatic, but it was not losing enough oil to stop him getting to the finish.

The real problem was the two Lotuses, Andretti and Peterson, seven seconds behind but catching up fast. Almost as if Ken's prayers had been answered, the leading Lotus pulled out of the race and into the pit lane on its last breath of fuel. A couple of gallons were quickly poured in and in a rage Mario fired up the engine, with the pits with about 9000 rpm on the clock only to have the engine die again a few yards up the pit lane as an airlock worked through the system. A push got the car going again, to which nobody seemed to object, but by that time it was too late for Mario to do anything about his vital lost points.

Before the race, in order to load the tyres as little as possible, Colin Chapman had decided to drain three gallons out of Andretti's car. Most of what Mario had to say about those final laps were unprintable.

Peterson jumped readily into the breach and then, as if his second lot of the prayers for the day had been answered, he found Depailler's car getting nearer and nearer every lap. The Tyrrell was also running low on fuel and not picking up the last couple of gallons.

"It started six laps from the end," said Patrick, and by the end of the race he had Peterson right on his tail. The whole 80,000 crowd got to its feet as Peterson got alongside Depailler - and stayed there, despite the Tyrrell driver twice bumping wheels and edging him off on to the dirt.

Finally, going into the esses, Depailler could hold him off no longer and, as the Tyrrell slid sideways a little, Peterson was through and away to the flag to win by less than half a second.

Depailler's first GP victory wasn't actually far away - coming in Monaco two months later. Both he and sparring partner Peterson's F1 careers were tragically cut short, Peterson following the Monza startline crash later that season, on the day team-mate Andretti became world champion, and Depailler in a testing accident at Hockenheim ahead of the 1980 German GP.

Results: F1's 300th GP - South Africa 1978