Jones’s run of wins punctured

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 32

Jones’s run of wins punctured

NZPA-Reuter Hockenheim

Australia’s Alan Jones will resume his quest for the world drivers’ title in Austria on. Sunday, after a puncture ended his winning sequence- in the West German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.

A wheel change five laps from the finish forced the 33-year-old Melbourne driver to drop from first to third, allowing the Frenchman, Jacques Laffite, to record his first grand prix win of 1980.

Jones, annoyed about the mishap to his usually reliable Williams, took little comfort from the one-point increase in his over-all lead in the drivers’ standings.

“There are still five races to go,” he said. “I would have felt better if I had won this one.”

Laffite owed his victory as much to the ill fortune of his brother-in-law, JeanPierre Jabouille, and his fellow Frenchman, Rene Arnoux, in the yellow Renaults, as to the slow puncture which scuppered the Australian. The race had looked like

being a battle between Williams and Renault with Laffite alone maintaining the challenge of Ligier after his French teammate, Didier Pironi, dropped out with a broken drive-shaft on the eighteenth lap of the 45-lap race.

Asked before the race if he would be able to outrun the Renaults, Jones had said: “I don’t know, but I’ll give it a bloody good try.”

The Renaults had broken three valve springs in practice. More depressingly, two more went in the race when Jabouille was out in front of Jones, and Arnoux was third, ahead of Laffite. Jabouille, winner of the French Grand Prix last year, has enjoyed little good fortune this year, though his bad luck enabled Arnoux to win in Brazil and South Africa.

In turn, Jones’s mishap at Hockenheim enabled his Williams teammate, Carlos Reutemann, of Argentina, to take second place in the race, and move up to third place over-all with 26 points. Jones has 41 points, and the Brazilian, Nelson Piquet, has 34.