Touch and go

End of 1978, after the conclusion of his season in the European F3 Championship in the first (Wolf-livered) Dallara, the young Bobby Rahal was given by the opportunity by the Austrian-Canadian oil tycoon Walter Wolf to drive his second F1 car, alongside Jody Scheckter for the last two Grand Prix.

Classified twelfth in his debut at Watkins Glen in the WR5 (picture above), the American hopeful had to revert to the old WR1 after an accident in practice at Montréal, where he was forced to retire with a fuel pump problem (picture below).

Rahal moved to the F2 in 1979 with Chevron, then in Can-Am and IndyCar in the 80s where his successes are well known. We’ll only see him back in F1 as a Team Principal at Jaguar Racing in 2001, but his team RLL (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) is still active in the USA, in particular with his son Graham in IndyCar.