1978 United States Grand Prix West

Long Beach, California, March 31-April 2, 1978

Here's the late James Hunt signing my ticket.

Here's the ticket....$10.00! And I had to pay a whopping $15.00 for Sunday race day. The good old days.

...and here's James talking to one of the engineers while his car gets prepped for Q-fying. They wasted their time. Hunt-the-Shunt bunted the car into the wall on the jump up to Ocean Blvd., and crashed out of the USGP West for the second year in a row.

The late Gilles Villeneuve, in his fourth race with Ferrari. He would show his style by snatching the lead at the start, and crashing while in the lead trying to make an insane pass on backmarker Clay Reggazoni right in front of me.

Gilles talks to Ferrari chief engineer Mauro Forghieri while his car gets a wipe down.

The 312 T3 cockpit. That's a Sports Car Club of America sticker next to the headrest! Way to go Gilles!

And here it is with the bodywork off. The driver literally sits in the fuel tank. Check out the wooden shift knob on the five-speed gate. Also check out how low the flat 12 engine is. You can't even see it.

This one you can see. The venerable Ford Cosworth DFV 3.0 liter V-8. This specimen is about to be installed in Mario Andretti's Lotus 78. It helped him qualify 4th, and finish 2nd.

1977 World Champion Niki Lauda talking to the late Ronnie Peterson. Peterson would die this same year after burns sustained at Monza.

This is the Renault 1.5 liter turbo V-6 driven by Jean-Pierre Jabouille. It was constantly in the pits for adjustments during practice and qualifying, (as you can tell from the poor mechanic's grimy hands) and the turbo lag caused it to struggle on the short, tight Long Beach circuit. The advantage the turbo had at higher elevations was negated at the sea-level course. Renault said the turbo failed, which means, you guessed it, the motor grenaded. You would have never guessed that just a few years later, the 1.5 turbo would dominate F-1.

The FABULOUS Gordon Murray designed Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT45. This is the car that would later become the infamous "Fan Car" when Murray added the gearbox driven fan behind the rear-mounted radiators you see laying across the entire back of the car here.

Unfortunately, Murray had yet to perfect the ground-effect aerodynamics essential to the cooling system as well as the downforce, and was forced to run radiators in the front wing with the hose clamp outhouse plumbing you see here. You can also see the full skirts, the first car to have them. Colin Chapman would get all the credit for ground effect when he figured out what Murray was trying to do, and enhanced and deployed his ideas, along with a brilliant sliding skirt, in the excellent Lotus 79 that won Andretti the World Championship that year.

More of the outhouse plumbing on the lower right side of the car. It's a shame, because everything else about this car screamed fast, from the beautifully crafted and shaped body work, to the full end-plated rear wing, to the Alfa flat 12 which absolutely howled. Problem is, with the integral gearbox and transaxle all housed in the engine block, it was overweight, and well, an Alfa, which means Niki's died with an electrical problem, while Watson's blew up in spectacular, uncontained catastrophic engine failure. Alfa says it was the "Gearbox." It was the gearbox. When the engine blew up, it blasted the whole gearbox-transaxle assembly, which WAS in the same case as the engine, right out the back of the car. I love the Italians!

 

Race Report:

Bottom line: Carlos Reutemann took over at the halfway mark from Ferrari teammate Gilles Villeneuve, when the Canadian crashed out of the lead, and won by eleven seconds. American Mario Andretti finished second to maintain a share of the Championship lead with Reutemann.

At the start of the weekend, though only 22 cars would make the grid, there were 30 entries, requiring a one-hour pre-qualifying session on Friday morning for the eight non-FICA members. From these eight, the fastest four would join the rest of the field in qualifying for one of the 22 starting spots. Americans Brett Lunger and Danny Ongais would not be in the group of four who advanced, despite massive cheers every time they went by. Now-Indy-Car-announcer Derek Daly failed to pre-qualify as well, which made my day. He was already writing articles for magazines, and was actually bragging about visiting "Malibu Grand Prix." Can you say D-O-R-K? I knew you could.

Niki Lauda, who had placed his Ferrari on pole for the previous year's race, again set the early pace, this time in the Brabham. Late in the Friday morning session, however, Reutemann suddenly jumped to the top of the sheets with a 1:20.99 and eventually posted the day's best of 1:20.636. As usual at Long Beach, a number of drivers suffered from broken gearboxes from jumping up onto, and down off of, Ocean Blvd. On Saturday, because the weather was hotter, and because there was goo on the track from the Formula Atlantic guys, no one was able to better Reutemann's time. The first three rows of the final grid were occupied by just three teams, as Villeneuve moved up to complete the all-Ferrari front row, LEAPING off of Ocean Blvd COMPLETELY sideways to do it, while Brabham teammates Lauda and John Watson were third and fifth, and the Lotus pair of Andretti and Ronnie Peterson were fourth and sixth. Emerson Fittipaldi ended up 15th, complaining of a lack of traction out of the slow Long Beach turns. He even tried a fully locked differential, which was interesting to watch as he go-karted the Fittipaldi-Cosworth around the circuit.

A beautiful Southern California day and 75,000 paying fans showed up for the race on Sunday. The start had been moved from in front of the pits on Ocean Blvd to the curving "straight" on Shoreline Drive in order to avoid another first corner tangle like the one the previous year that eliminated James Hunt, among others. The strategy seemed to work, as everyone got through cleanly. John Watson's late braking maneuver down the inside allowed him to move from fifth to second, but caused him to exit wide from the hairpin and force polesitter Reutemann wide with him, so Villeneuve neatly tucked into the lead as they exited.

After one lap, the order was Villeneuve, Watson, Lauda, Reutemann, Andretti, Alan Jones, James Hunt and Peterson. In the lead of a Grand Prix for the first time, Villeneuve was driving superbly, and began to extend his lead. On lap six, Hunt smacked the wall at the apex of the leap up onto the Ocean Blvd pit straight and knocked his right front wheel off. Three laps later, Watson retired from second when his Alfa motor switched to thermo-nuclear mode at the end of the long Shoreline Drive straight. There were quite a few souvenirs left on the circuit, if you like chunks of oily molten metal. Andretti was dropping back in fourth, the warmer weather and offshore breeze meant he chose too soft a compound of Goodyear tires and too low a top gear, forcing him to bounce the Cosworth motor off the rev limiter down Shoreline Drive, while Jones, in the sharp-as-a-tack looking Williams, was closing on him quickly. On lap 19, the Williams shot through and took off after Reutemann.

With Villeneuve's lead at two seconds, Reutemann was pushing Lauda hard for second place. Suddenly, on lap 28, the Brabham went straight on at Turn One at the end of Shoreline Drive, looking as if he had outbraked himself. Lauda stopped however, stepped out and removed his helmet. An electrical failure had killed the motor. Meanwhile, Jones had caught up to Reutemann, and the top three were separated by a mere 2.5 seconds.

On lap 39, just before the halfway point, Villeneuve came up to lap Clay Regazzoni, who was in a battle with Jean-Pierre Jabouille's wheezing Renault. Rather than wait until the straight, the Canadian tried to get by in the twisty section leading up to Ocean Blvd. There simply wasn't room, however, and, when Regazzoni braked earlier than Villeneuve expected, the Ferrari's right front wheel hit the left rear of the Shadow and was launched over the white car into the wall. Fortunately, no one was hurt. I was close enough that I actually ducked, even though the accident happened after they had already passed me. Reggazoni would later have his brake pedal break at the end of Shoreline Drive, and he crashed into a couple broken cars parked on the escape road, paralyzing him from the waist down.

This left Reutemann in the lead, ahead of Jones, then a long gap back to Andretti. Lap after lap, Jones hounded Reutemann, but the Ferrari was too fast down the straight for him to get by. On about lap 47, with Jones still on the Ferrari's tail, the front wings of the Williams strangely flopped down, and I figure Jones actually rear-ended Reutemann under braking, although Williams says it was a structural failure. Jones continued to battle, but began losing around a second a lap. Adding to the Aussie's misery, his fuel pressure began fluctuating. His head jerked back and forth as the engine sputtered and, sometimes, cut out entirely. As one car after another passed, the struggling Williams fell all the way to eighth place. Recording the fastest lap of the race on lap 27 and repassing Emerson Fittipaldi on the last lap for seventh place were his only consolations after a spectacular drive.

Reutemann cruised to the finish, maintaining a twelve to fifteen second gap over Andretti, who had a similar cushion over Patrick Depailler in third.

Race details
Race 4 of 16 in the 1978 Formula One season.
Date	April 2, 1978
Location	Long Beach, California
Course	Temporary street course 2.02 mi / 3.251 km
Distance	80 laps, 161.60 mi / 260.08 km
Weather	Clear, warm
Pole
Driver	Carlos Reutemann	Ferrari
Time	1:20.636
Fastest Lap
Driver	Alan Jones	Williams-Ford
Time	1:22.215 (27)
Podium
First	Carlos Reutemann	Ferrari
Second	Mario Andretti	Lotus-Ford
Third	Patrick Depailler	Tyrrell-Ford

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Classification

Pos	No	Driver	Team	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	11	Carlos Reutemann	Ferrari	80	1:52:01.301	1	9
2	5	Mario Andretti	Lotus-Ford	80	+11.061 secs	4	6
3	4	Patrick Depailler	Tyrrell-Ford	80	+28.951 secs	12	4
4	6	Ronnie Peterson	Lotus-Ford	80	+45.603 secs	6	3
5	26	Jacques Laffite	Ligier-Matra	80	+1:22.884	14	2
6	35	Riccardo Patrese	Arrows-Ford	79	+1 Lap	9	1
7	27	Alan Jones	Williams-Ford	79	+1 Lap	8
8	14	Emerson Fittipaldi	Fittipaldi-Ford	79	+1 Lap	15
9	36	Rolf Stommelen	Arrows-Ford	79	+1 Lap	18
10	17	Clay Regazzoni	Shadow-Ford	79	+1 Lap	20
11	10	Jean-Pierre Jarier	ATS-Ford	75	+5 Laps	19
12	8	Patrick Tambay	McLaren-Ford	74	Accident	11
Ret	20	Jody Scheckter	Wolf-Ford	59	Accident	10
Ret	19	Vittorio Brambilla	Surtees-Ford	50	Transmission	17
Ret	15	Jean-Pierre Jabouille	Renault	43	Turbo	13
Ret	12	Gilles Villeneuve	Ferrari	38	Accident	2
Ret	1	Niki Lauda	Brabham-Alfa Romeo	27	Ignition	3
Ret	3	Didier Pironi	Tyrrell-Ford	25	Gearbox	22
Ret	37	Arturo Merzario	Merzario-Ford	17	Gearbox	21
Ret	9	Jochen Mass	ATS-Ford	11	Brakes	16
Ret	2	John Watson	Brabham-Alfa Romeo	9	Gearbox	5
Ret	7	James Hunt	McLaren-Ford	5	Accident	7
DNS	18	Rupert Keegan	Surtees-Ford		Practice Accident
DNS	16	Hans Joachim Stuck	Shadow-Ford		Practice Accident
DNQ	30	Brett Lunger	McLaren-Ford
DNQ	23	Lamberto Leoni	Ensign-Ford
DNPQ	32	Keke Rosberg	Theodore-Ford
DNPQ	25	Hector Rebaque	Lotus-Ford
DNPQ	39	Danny Ongais	Shadow-Ford
DNPQ	24	Derek Daly	Hesketh-Ford

• Lap Leaders: Gilles Villeneuve 38 laps (1-38); Carlos Reutemann 42 laps (39-80).
• Keegan and Stuck set the 22nd and 23rd fastest qualifying times but neither could take the grid due to practice accidents. Pironi, who was 24th fastest, moved up into the grid.
• The win brought Reutemann even with Andretti in the title standings after just four races, but Mario would ride the brilliant Lotus to six wins and the Championship before the series returned to America at Watkins Glen in the fall.