Remembering when F1 used to race in January
January is a dead month as far as Formula 1 fans are concerned. Sure, there are bits and pieces of news: Aston Martin teasing anticipation for its return to grand prix racing; Lando Norris testing positive for COVID; the likelihood of major F1 calendar revisions, including the postponement of the Australian opener; Suzuki MotoGP team chief Davide Brivio making a dramatic switch to F1 with Alpine (formerly Renault). But while the F1 wheels never really stop turning for the teams, we on the outside have little to sink our teeth into.
It wasn’t always this way. Between 1953 and ’82, a total of 23 grands prix took place in the first month of the year – in some seasons not just one but two being held in the southern hemisphere as the UK shivered in the grip of winter gloom. Here’s a reminder of the days before ‘dry January’ became a thing for F1.
Buenos Aires: when ‘fair winds’ blew
In 1953, the fourth year of the F1 world championship, grand prix teams were blown south in January for the first time as the Argentinean Grand Prix kicked off the new season, on the 18th day of the new year. But given what happened, it seems amazing now it wasn’t also the last grand prix at a new circuit constructed in capital city Buenos Aires.
There was plenty of local enthusiasm for the race – too much, in fact. It’s said somewhere between 300-400,000 people pitched up, and there was no hope of trackside stands and fences containing them. President Juan Domingo Peron, the infamous dictator responsible for luring F1 to Argentina, even told the police to give up trying to stop the swarm that pushed through to find a vantage point, some on the very edge of the track itself. “My children, let them in,” he is reported to have commanded his officers.
The scene that met the drivers beggars belief. Demented in their excitement, some of the crowd took to the track, goading the cars as if they were matadors playing with bulls in a ring. Was the race stopped? Of course not. This was the 1950s.
Inevitably, tragedy followed when Giuseppe Farina, running third, pitched his Ferrari into a spin to avoid a figure darting out in front of him. The car then ploughed into the trackside crowd, killing 15 and injuring more. There were other incidents. Alan Brown’s Cooper-Bristol cut down and killed a boy that ran into its path, and yet still the nightmare rolled on. After three hours of mayhem and horror, Alberto Ascari claimed an inglorious victory. This is how F1, and the world at large, has changed in seven decades.
Somehow, Argentina put this grizzly affair behind it and the grand prix became established as the regular season-opener, hosting the first round each year until 1960 (apart from ’59). Among the notable victories was that of Stirling Moss in ’58 when he beat the Ferraris in Rob Walker’s privately entered Cooper T43, the first F1 victory for a rear-engined car.
Welcome to East London (not that one)
During the 1960s, F1 abandoned Argentina in favour of South Africa as the Prince George circuit took its place, in East London – although it was a long way from Bethnal Green.
Situated in the East Cape Province, the South African GP’s world championship history began as a 29th December season finale in 1962, when Graham Hill was dramatically crowned world champion after Jim Clark’s Lotus failed him. But after the 1963 race, held on 28th December, the grand prix became a curtain-raiser instead of a curtain-closer. Clark kicked off his remarkable 1965 season with a ‘grand slam’ victory – on 1st January! What a way to ring in the New Year, as he won from flag to flag and set fastest lap too.
The race switched to the much better Kyalami circuit in Gauteng province from 1967 (2nd January this time) when Mexican Pedro Rodríguez claimed his first grand prix win and what turned out to be Cooper’s last. Back on New Year’s Day the following season, Kyalami was then the scene of Clark’s 25th grand prix win, surpassing Juan Manuel Fangio’s record – but it would also turn out to be his last, a matter of months before he died in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.
Kyalami would continue to host F1 through the 1970s and ’80s, although no longer as early in the year – except for in 1982. Back as the season opener, Alain Prost won the final grand prix to be run in January after a superb comeback drive following a puncture. Incidentally, the infamous 1981 race would have counted as the opening round that season too, except FISA-FOCA war politics led to its loss of world championship status – much to the annoyance of Williams, which won the race with Carlos Reutemann. It ran on 7th February, so was too late to make our list of January races anyway.
South America back in vogue
In 1972, the Argentinian Grand Prix returned to the calendar for the first time since ’60 and once again became a sunny and popular January race. Local hero Reutemann claimed a remarkable pole position on his grand prix debut in the lobster-claw Brabham BT34, but Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell emerged the winner on a hot and sticky race day in Buenos Aires.
Brazil joined Argentina as an F1 world championship host a year later (Reutemann winning the non-championship race at Interlagos in ’72), and the two countries intermittently doubled up in January through the seasons that followed – in 1973, ’74 and ’75, then again in ’77, ’78 and ’80. The Jacarepagua circuit in Rio first hosted the Brazilian GP in ’78, then properly displaced Sao Paulo’s Interlagos from ’81 – but by then the race was run in March rather than January.
Still, for F1’s hard-working teams the Rio track was a welcome new-year venue each January for pre-season tests during the 1980s, and the perfect place to blow away those chilly European winter blues. What a good tradition that was. In fact, it sounds like something we’d all welcome, especially this year.
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.
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