40 years since the first turbo victory in Formula 1
07/19/2019
It was actually the beginning of a new era! On July 1, 1979, Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the French Grand Prix in Dijon for the first time in a Formula 1 car powered by a turbo engine. And it was an entirely French team that achieved this victory, as the car, engine and even the tires came from France, as did the driver, of course. The Renault RS10 scored its first victory. It was also its only one that year, but more followed in the years that followed. With the Renault RS10, the idea of achieving Formula 1 victories with a turbocharged engine half the size had become a reality, because until July 1, 1979, it had always been three-liter engines with eight or twelve cylinders that ensured victory.
As early as 1977, Renault had begun to participate in Formula 1 races as the only factory with turbo engines. Many obstacles had to be overcome. Although Renault had experience with turbo engines, Formula 1 made special demands with its high power requirements and correspondingly high engine speeds. Jean-Pierre Jabouille still remembers today: "In the beginning, we had four to five engine failures per test day!". Many of the 1492 cm3 V6 engines also died during racing and thwarted good results. The gearbox also caused problems and the team was the only one to compete with Michelin radial tires.
They had to learn the hard way, but on July 1, 1979, almost everything worked out. They could even have come close to a double victory. And anyone who remembers the duels back then knows that this was a completely different era of Formula 1: wheel-to-wheel duels through several combinations of corners, the finest braking maneuvers, and so on.
Renault is rightly proud of its victory in 1979 and is celebrating it now. For this purpose, a Renault RS10 was completely restored and Jean-Pierre Jabouille drove a few laps on a small racetrack near Paris.
Jabouille not only took the first victory at the time, but also accompanied the entire development of the RS01 and the subsequent RS10 wing car (with twin turbo).
He did not really benefit from his involvement, as other drivers achieved more victories with the Renault turbo engine than he did, but no one knew the engine and racing car as well as the tech-savvy Jean-Pierre Jabouille.
But Renault had changed Formula 1. The familiar three-liter engines were soon consigned to the scrapheap and there was no way around high-revving 1.5-liter turbo engines until they were finally banned.
