Gum story

A disappointing start of the 1977 season for Jacques Laffite – three retirements due to mechanical failures, two accidents and two seventh places – and so, no championship points when Écurie Ligier arrived in the paddock of the Swedish Grand Prix held on the 4 km long Anderstorp circuit, which straight line served as a landing strip for small planes.

All the cars entered were shod with Goodyear tires, but the American firm had a new lot of softer and better performing ones, exclusively for the top teams. Although not being considered as a top team yet, Guy Ligier succeeded to negotiate one set of these better tires for his driver, but for the race only.

His JS7 was instantaneously faster, better balanced and the French ace, who had qualified in eighth, posted the fasted lap of the warm-up. After a bad start, Laffite was eleventh but charged through the field and by lap 30 was in fourth. Eleven laps later, Laffite was second but far from the leader of the race, Mario Andretti and his Lotus, when 3 laps from the end, the V8 Cosworth of the black Lotus 78 started to stutter, no more fuel.

Andretti limped into his pit, but Laffite has not noticed it. The French driver remembers: “I continued to attack because I felt I could catch Andretti and maybe push him into making a mistake. Suddenly, I noticed that the spectators were cheering at each of my passages. Then I saw my pit board and saw P1. I thought that my guys had made a mistake. But not! I was crying in my helmet, I couldn’t see a thing, it was terrible! But I won, I was so happy.”

It was the first F1 victory for the popular Jacques Laffite and the first for an all-French car: chassis + engine. On the podium Laffite is surrounded by Mass and Reutemann (picture-above), but the ceremony is silent, because the organisers didn’t think Laffite had a chance of winning, so they didn’t bother having a recording of the Marseillaise!