Timing is all with a columnist and Autosport certainly hit paydirt when they selected Ferrari’s South African driver Jody Scheckter as their regular scribe for the 1979 F1 season.
Paired with Gilles Villeneuve in the red cars, his glamourous Canadian colleague who caught a lot of the attention, but it was Jody who generally got the job done, drawing on years of experience behind the wheel of a string of Formula 1 cars.
Reflecting on the recent Spanish Grand Prix in May 1979, these were the days of different tyre manufacturers and in Jarama, Jody found himself on the wrong rubber with his Michelins. “As the Goodyears got better grip, mine deteriorated to the point where it felt as if, lap by lap, my tyres were getting harder and harder. Consequently the car began to slide more and more and became very difficult to put into the corners.”
It meant Scheckter losing a couple of places in the last moments of the race and finishing fourth. Still, nil desperandum. “Next stop, Zolder in Belgium. Theoretically this is more of a Michelin circuit than Jarama. I noticed in the recent Autosport article by Jackie Stewart that he backed me to win this year’s World title. In which case I’ve got some points to start making up if I’m not to disappoint him.”
As it turned out, Jackie Stewart knew his stuff. Read more from Jody across his championship year here.
