Patrese comes close

The 1981 United States Grand Prix was held at Long Beach, California and was the opening race of the 1981 Formula One World Championship. In final qualifying, Riccardo Patrese, picture above in his Arrows A3, and Alan Jones (Williams FW07C) traded the top spot, back and forth, several times during the session. Patrese finally managed to take pole, clinching his first ever and the first (and only) for Jackie Oliver’s Arrows team, by just 0.01 seconds.

For the first part of the race, Patrese the surprise of qualifying, led the Reutemann (Williams) by around one second with Jones, the reigning world champion, another three seconds behind. Later, Patrese had to retire with a misfiring engine, and when Reutemann slid wide in the esses, Alan Jones went through for the lead that he will never relinquish.

Riccardo scored a fine second place finish at the 1981 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola (picture below), but was going to have to wait till the 1982 Monaco Grand Prix and his passage to the Brabham team, to finally, he debuted in F1 in 1977, win the first Grand Prix of his career. The amicable Italian will have a total of six Grand Prix wins in 256 starts, a remarkable achievement.