A year to forget

After a glorious 1979 campaign, in which Jody Scheckter was crowned Formula One Drivers’ Champion and Gilles Villeneuve took second, in their Mauro Forghieri-designed Ferrari 312T4, hopes were high at Maranello. The team was confident that it could successfully defend its position at the top, and maybe offer a world title to the fast Canadian who, everybody agreed, deserved one.

It was decided that an evolution of the T4 concept would be developed, always by Forghieri and his team, for the 1980 season. Unfortunately, the new 312T5 was incomprehensibly uncompetitive, and soon Jody Scheckter lost motivation, qualifying more often than not on the back of the grid, and not even Gilles Villeneuve, always a warrior, could tame this difficult single-seater.

Picture above : Engineer Mauro Forghieri, Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve, seem perplexed, during qualifying at Hockenheim, German Grand Prix 1980. Villeneuve qualified in 16th position, three seconds slower than pole-man Jones in his Williams, while Scheckter was even further back in 21st… It was crisis at the Scuderia.

Villeneuve (picture here-under) was heroic in the race won by Laffite (Ligier), and scored one point for sixth place, while Scheckter finished far away, in 13th position, a lap down. The Scuderia did not recover in 1980, only coming home eighth in the Championship, and at the end of the year, Jody Scheckter announced his retirement from racing.