1978 World Drivers' Championship - Schedule

Schedule
  
Each track will be made available for download in the relevant race topic.
 

#	Map	Date	Event	Circuit	Laps	Distance
1		Jan 10	Gran Premio de Argentina	Autódromo Juan y Oscar Gálvez	52	306.648 km (190.542 mi)
2		Jan 24	Grande Prêmio do Brasil	Jacarepaguá	63	316.953 km (196.938 mi)
3		Feb 14	Grand Prix of South Africa	Kyalami	78	320.112 km (198.908 mi)
4		Feb 28	United States Grand Prix West	Long Beach	80	260.08 km (161.60 mi)
5		Mar 13	Grand Prix de Monaco	Monaco	75	248.4 km (154.348 mi)
6		Mar 27	Grand Prix de Belgique	Zolder	70	280.77 km (174.44 mi)
7		Apr 3	Gran Premio de España	Jarama	75	255.3 km (158.625 mi)
8		Apr 17	Sveriges Grand Prix	Scandinavian Raceway	70	282.170 km (175.332 mi)
9		May 1	Grand Prix de France	Paul Ricard	54	313.686 km (194.94 mi)
10		Jun 5	John Player British Grand Prix	Brands Hatch	76	319.656 km (198.588 mi)
11		Jun 19	Großer Preis von Deutschland	Hockenheimring	45	305.505 km (189.81 mi)
12		Sep 4	Großer Preis von Österreich	Österreichring	54	320.814 km (199.368 mi)
13		Sep 18	Grote Prijs van Nederland	Zandvoort	75	318.9 km (198.15 mi)
14		Oct 2	Gran Premio d'Italia	Autodromo Nazionale Monza	52	301.24 km (187.18 mi)
15		Nov 13	United States Grand Prix	Watkins Glen	59	320.67 km (199.24 mi)
16		Nov 27	Grand Prix du Canada	Circuit Île Notre-Dame	70	315.0 km (195.7 mi)

Any reason why the Italian GP is 40 laps here? It was supposed to be the normal 52 but was shortened due to the start-crash. As we won't have that crash simulated here, I would've believed that the original number would be the most correct.

Ole Marius Myrvold wrote:

Any reason why the Italian GP is 40 laps here? It was supposed to be the normal 52 but was shortened due to the start-crash. As we won't have that crash simulated here, I would've believed that the original number would be the most correct.

I agree. I hope we won't simulate the tragic proceedings of that event.

A minor oversight, we will be running the 52 laps, don't worry about that.

There will be 40 laps, and for the sake of realism , each member should suffer the same injuries than in real races .

We will restart the race after one minute of silence in memory of him Realism is everything for us, don't worry

Just the one minute of silence please.

Qui est mort ?

Marcus

Ronnie Peterson.

Due to a lack of knowledge from the Mayor that started the race (was handling the lights/flag), only the front 2 rows had gotten to a stand-still while the rest of the field was moving towards their starting positions.
Due to this a concertina effect occured around the end of the pit-exit road and in the middle of the pack, Patrese hit the rear right of Petersons' Lotus sending him headfirst into the gaurdrail, effectively crushing both of his legs on impact (they were broken in 4 or 5 places I believe).
After having been dragged out of his burning car by fellow drivers Hunt and, someone else I can't remember, he together with another driver was airlifted to hospital.
Well there they decided, in understanding and agreement with Ronnie, to operate on the legs but sadly, after the operation, bone marrow from his broken leg(s) seaped into his bloodstream which clotted, leading to his death in the early morning of the day following his accident.

One of the best drivers to have driven in F1 who didn't get to win a WC, mostly due to the cars he drove being very unreliable, he started about 123 races but only finished about 70 of them, almost all of his DNF's being caused by the cars breaking down. This could also be due to his driving style though which was that he drove them on the slide like a Rally Driver instead of the more smooth approach of most of his peers back in the day...
Will certainly have a silent moment for him weather we do it or not.

Didn't Peterson have a 1979 McLaren contract in his back pocket at the time?  One journalist remembered him saying that he didn't want to be another dead hero for Colin Chapman. 

He did, but it was because he wanted to be No.1 driver at a team.

In the aftermath of his death, his sponsor Olympus said that the accident had been "good publicity for the company".

yeah...

A different era, to say the least. My bachelor thesis in history was about how mainstream society and media responded to accidents like this one. It wasn't pretty.

Quote :

He did, but it was because he wanted to be No.1 driver at a team.

It has been said dozens of times that Ronnie was actually faster than Mario and was limited by being nº 2, but I beg to disagree. Ronnie was aggressive and pushed Mario in many races when Mario was at the front, making him look bad (As if Mario was slower but team orders held Ronnie) but truth is Mario was holding back to secure the championship in a car that was very superior but also very fragile. I'm not saying that Ronnie was not marginally quicker sometimes or even many times at one lap or two or three. But the 1978 comparison is unfair because Colin issued orders to Mario of securing title/points and to Ronnie of not challenging Mario. Colin knew well that if both raced full on, the 79 would break a lot and he did not want to see a potential championship for Lotus lost because his two drivers were trying to prove who was really faster. Looking at it as team owner, it was an evident decission. Of course he had a sympathy for Mario and therefore rooted for him as the one who could race for the crown, but anyone thinking that Peterson was clearly superior is looking at only a small part of the picture. Peterson needed that fame to get a good contract with another team, and therefore made it look like that, pushing Mario and visibly not overtaking him -while Mario wasn't really defending nor going as fast as he could.

first time i looked at the schedule properly and i must say, it's a very nice line-up of tracks that season

Info concerning the accident here at 5:07

Ronnie was the least political driver you could think of, and Mario considered him one of his best friends. Ronnie was a frequent guest at the Andretti family estate when he raced in America, once he even crashed one of Michael's motocross bikes there! Ronnie's frustration was with Chapman, never with Mario. Mario definitely held back at times, but I think the sticking point of Mario's superior pace early in the season was that he had developed the Ground Effect since the beginning, while Ronnie had to adapt to it. It took at least half a season for Ronnie to catch up; then there were the mythical qualifying session at Brands Hatch where he supposedly qualified on pole with race tyres and a full tank of fuel, only to retire very early on in the race. After that, Ronnie form was mega: the race in Austria proved that; at Zandvoort both of them had no brakes at the end, and finished 0.32 apart.

aaanyway, I hope we won't try to recreate the farcical events of Monza 1978 in any way, but run it to full distance as it was supposed to be.

Jacob Fredriksson wrote:

aaanyway, I hope we won't try to recreate the farcical events of Monza 1978 in any way, but run it to full distance as it was supposed to be.

Distance updated to 52 laps.

Quote :

I hope we won't try to recreate the farcical events of Monza 1978 in any way, but run it to full distance as it was supposed to be.

Of course not, but we will dedicate a thought to Ronnie

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

Quote :

I hope we won't try to recreate the farcical events of Monza 1978 in any way, but run it to full distance as it was supposed to be.

Of course not, but we will dedicate a thought to Ronnie

Jonatan Acerclinth wrote:

Due to this a concertina effect occured around the end of the pit-exit road and in the middle of the pack, Patrese hit the rear right of Petersons' Lotus sending him headfirst into the gaurdrail

The Wikipedia article says that Patrese went off into the grass and came back, which caused Hunt to veer to the left and hit Ronnie. What's correct and what's wrong I wonder?


Anyway, I love this tribute song to Ronnie quite a lot:



Video material mostly from '78 and '79, there are actually at least two bits that show Mario&Ronnie in formation at Hockenheim&Zandvoort.

Ronnie forever!

After reviewing some aerial photographs, Tony Southgate said it was actually hunt who had come across on Patrese, which then spun Hunt into Peterson. If I remember correctly there was a car squeezing Hunt on the left, which made him squeeze Patrese.

Colin Chapman may have been an engineering genius, but he was also a man of questionable character.  Blaming Peterson's death on the team for not having a 79 chassis ready in time is so cowardly and self-serving, IMO.

Most rational people blamed the accident on the start, Colin blamed it on the Team, and Hunt, well Hunt threw full responsibility for the accident directly at Patrese and he NEVER forgave Patrese for it.

So much so that when he was commentating with Murray, if Murray or anyone else said anything nice about Ricardo, Hunt had to immediately interject something about how terrible of a person he was, anything to perpetuate his contempt for him over the accident.

I read a Hunt biography a while back, and he did take his Patrese vendetta to a cartoonish level. When he discovered there was a facility at Grand Prix races that compiled all the statistics on the drivers (Murray had known about it for years, but Hunt had finally discovered it) his first instinct was to use it to prove to everyone what a wanker Patrese was.