1980 Formula One season

The 1980 Formula One season was the 34th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1980 World Championship of Drivers and the 1980 International Cup for F1 Constructors, which were contested concurrently from 13 January to 5 October over a fourteen-race series. The season also included one non-championship race, the Spanish Grand Prix.

Alan Jones, driving a Williams-Ford, became the first Australian to win the World Championship since Jack Brabham in 1966. The season saw a major change of guard in Formula One with the Williams team's first Drivers' and Constructors' titles, the emergence of Nelson Piquet as a championship contender and the debut of future World Champions Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell, while reigning champions Jody Scheckter and Ferrari suffered a terrible season that resulted in Scheckter retiring from the sport at the end of the year. In addition, Frenchman Patrick Depailler lost his life while testing at Hockenheim.

The following drivers and constructors contested the 1980 World Championship of Drivers and the 1980 International Cup for F1 Constructors.

Originally, 1980 was to be an eighteen-race championship, but three Grands Prix were cancelled before the season began:

The 1980 Formula One season started in Argentina in January. This event, held at the Buenos Aires Municipal Autodrome located in the sprawling Argentine capital started off badly. After Friday's practice, due to the heat and the suction these ground-effect cars were creating, the track began to break up, and the drivers found conditions difficult and even dangerous. Led by Emerson Fittipaldi, the drivers staged a semi-unsuccessful protest – the organizers did actually fix the track, but not successfully – come race day, the track was still in a dreadful condition. The race went ahead anyway, and the Buenos Aires circuit, being one of the most varied and challenging circuits on the calendar, provided an ultra-exciting race, where many drivers were caught-out by the disintegration of the twisty arena infield section of the No.15 variant of the racing facility. After going off twice and dropping back to 4th after making a pit-stop to clean grass out of his car's radiators, Australian and title favorite Alan Jones took victory in his Williams-Ford/Cosworth. Brazilian Nelson Piquet, who also went off a few times finished 2nd, and Finn Keke Rosberg scored an excellent 3rd in his Fittipaldi. French rookie Alain Prost, in his first ever F1 race, finished 6th and scored his first ever World Championship point. Gilles Villeneuve, competitive throughout in his Ferrari, crashed heavily at the Toboggan left-right sequence of corners after his front suspension failed after possible damage caused to it after a number of off-track excursions the Canadian had during the race.

The other half of the South American January tour took place in Brazil. This meeting was also met with pre-race difficulties. The safety conditions of the very difficult, demanding and confined 5-mile Interlagos circuit located in the steel-making metropolis of São Paulo had been heavily protested by the drivers for some time, led by South African Ferrari driver Jody Scheckter. The original arrangement was that this Grand Prix was originally supposed to be held at the Jacarepaguá circuit in Rio de Janeiro, and then the drivers would return to Interlagos for 1981 after it would go through a complete resurfacing; but the Jacarepaguá circuit had problems with the tarmac sinking into the ground, so the only option was to return to São Paulo. The drivers protested that the Interlagos track's surface (already notorious for being very rough) was so bad that it was actually dangerous to race on. Also, the barriers and catch-fence arrangements were not adequate enough to protect the cars from the embankments and very rough and uneven-surface of the limited run-off areas there, even though the track was very wide in most places. But the race went ahead anyway, and the Renault of Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jabouille took pole and led for 25 of 40 laps. The Renaults proved to be dominant at Interlagos, which was 2,840 ft (850 m) above sea level, giving the turbocharged Renault engines a considerable horsepower advantage. But he retired with turbo failure and his teammate Rene Arnoux took the lead and won, followed by Italian new-boy Elio de Angelis in a Lotus and Jones in his Williams.

The F1 teams arrived in South Africa in March, at the fast Kyalami circuit between Johannesburg and Pretoria in the midst of an African summer. Alain Prost crashed his McLaren at the Esses and broke his wrist; he would miss this and the next race in Long Beach; while Marc Surer had it worse – he crashed heavily at Crowthorne and broke his leg; he missed the next 3 races. Like Interlagos before, the even higher altitude of Kyalami helped the Renaults even more so than in Brazil, and this proved to be an invaluable advantage, and the yellow French cars dominated the race. And as in São Paulo, Jabouille led for a while and retired, and Arnoux took the lead from 2nd place and won the race. However, this race effectively brought the FISA–FOCA war into the spotlight. FISA, the governing body of international motorsports (and the organization that the 3 big constructors – Renault, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo – were aligned to) led by Jean-Marie Balestre, argued that the ground effect cars of the time were too fast through corners, and FOCA (Formula One Constructors' Association, representing the mostly British independent constructors) led by Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, argued that the superior road-holding of the independent teams' cars equalized their cars to the power advantages that particularly the Renaults had.

A stop-over in Long Beach, California right next to the Hollywood-dominated landscape of Los Angeles happened 4 weeks after the South African race. The typically pleasant and sunny weather there gave for a relaxed atmosphere at this tight, twisty and rough street circuit (1 of 2 on the calendar – the other being Monaco) which was in contrast to the previous 3 quick Southern Hemisphere circuits used thus far in the season. With its tight, slow layout being lined with unforgiving concrete walls, Long Beach was known then to be the toughest and most punishing race of the season on the car and driver. Nelson Piquet effectively dominated this race in his Brabham-Ford/Cosworth – he took pole, set fastest lap, led from start to finish and took his first of 23 race victories. But the race itself was littered with accidents – there was a pile-up at the Le Gasomet hairpin caused by Alfa Romeo driver Bruno Giacomelli and the 40-year-old Swiss Clay Regazzoni crashed appallingly at the end of the long, flat-out Shoreline Drive when the brakes on his Ensign failed and he crashed head on at 180 mph into Ricardo Zunino's parked Brabham, then through some tires and into a concrete wall. The Swiss was critically injured, but survived; he would be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.