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Carlos Reutemann – an enigmatic genius remembered
Carlos Reutemann, who has died at the age of 79, had a sublime touch in a racing car, and should have been the 1981 World Champion. Just past the midpoint of the battle, at Silverstone, he was 17 points clear of Nelson Piquet, having just finished second to John Watson in the British GP, and things at Williams were going his way. He’d finished second in Long Beach, won in Brazil, been second in Argentina, third in Imola, first again in Belgium and fourth in Spain. Yet when journalist Alan Henry said he fancied a bet on him for the title, Carlos demurred, denigrating his own chances. Henry was deeply shocked.Carlos Alberto Reutemann was born in Santa Fe, Argentina on April 12th, 1942. His grandfather was Swiss-German, his father Argentine, and his mother Italian. They were a farming family, and it was not until 1965, when he was 23, that he started racing in a small Fiat. That led to the tough metier of modified production cars, a Fiat-engined de Tomaso single-seater, and some Formula 2, in a tired Ron Harris Tecno, then an ex-Frank Williams Brabham in which he ran wheel-to-wheel in the 1968 Temporada with emergent star Clay Regazzoni before spinning off. With the backing of the Automobile Club of Argentina he competed in the European Formula 2 Championship in 1970, distinguishing himself for the wrong reasons in his first race, at Hockenheim, by inadvertently taking off the King of F2, Jochen Rindt, before going on to finish fourth. He was in unfamiliar territory, but before long the motorsport world began to rate the talent of this fast racer, whose good-looking mien vacillated between big smiles and moody introspection.
They called him 'Lole,' which did not mean wolf as most supposed but dated back to a childhood mispronunciation involving piglets (los lechones). In 1971 the state-controlled YPF petroleum giant paid for him to share a Porsche 917 with Emerson Fittipaldi in the 1000 kms sportscar race at the Autodromo Oscar Alfredo Galvez in Buenos Aires. They failed to finish, but a fortnight later he drove the ageing McLaren M7C to third place in a non-championship F1 race there, behind Chris Amon and Henri Pescarolo. When F1 returned to the venue the following year, he made his World Championship Grand Prix debut for Brabham, now owned by a certain Bernard Charles Ecclestone. And to the delight of his myriad compatriots, the local hero caused a sensation by planting his hitherto unloved ‘lobster claw’ BT34 on pole position. He battled winner Jackie Stewart initially before falling back to seventh after a pit stop to change worn soft-compound tyres. The season brought no further sensations, but he scored his first points with fourth in a Brabham BT37 at Monza.
In 1973 he was closing on victor Fittpaldi at Montjuic Park, as the Lotus driver struggled with a slowly deflating tyre, when Gordon Murray’s intriguing Brabham BT42 broke a driveshaft. He finished on the podium twice, however, with thirds in France and America, and backed them with fourths in Sweden and Austria and sixth in Italy. The following year, he was sensationally headed for victory on his home soil, first time out in the evolutionary BT44, when it ran short of fuel after the airbox had come loose and upset the mixture. He dropped out of the lead with a lap to go, again taking seventh place. The Gods made up for that disappointment as he dominated the South African GP, Austrian and American GPs, with other strong results leaving him sixth overall.
A year later things weren’t so clear-cut for the BT44B, despite an injection of capital from Martini, but he won at the old Nurburgring and finished third overall after backing that with two seconds, three thirds and a brace of fourths. In 1976 Ecclestone did a deal to run Alfa Romeo’s flat-12 engine. Carlos had experienced it in the Milanese manufacturer’s sportscars in 1974, but though powerful it was thirsty and heavy, and he was never really enamoured of Murray’s BT45 in 1976. Days after Niki Lauda’s fiery shunt at the Nurburgring, he agreed terms with Enzo Ferrari to terminate his Brabham contract and replace the Austrian. That plan backfired when Lauda stubbornly and bravely returned at Monza, obliging Ferrari to dump Clay Regazzoni for 1977. That year Niki never made a secret of his detestation of the urbane Argentine, taking particular delight in drubbing him to win in South Africa, and again in Germany and Holland. As Carlos struggled and won only in Brazil, his fragile psyche crushed by the Austrian’s campaign of open vilification, Niki went on to take his second title before decamping... to Brabham.
Carlos then enjoyed a very competitive 1978 despite the aerodynamic shortcomings of his Ferrari 312T3, and the speed of rookie team mate Gilles Villeneuve. He won four races to finish third overall behind Lotus twins Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson. But that was not enough. Reasoning that he needed a car that pushed the aero envelope to its limit, he took the ride at Lotus alongside champion Andretti, following Peterson’s death at Monza. It was another bad decision, and led to an unhappy season in which the 79 was no longer the car it had been. So at the end of a year in which insult had been added to injury when Jody Scheckter won the title for Ferrari, Carlos bought himself out of his contract and moved from Hethel to Didcot to partner Alan Jones at Williams. Jones ruled the roost at Williams and won in Argentina, France, Britain, Canada and America, while Carlos won only in Monaco; they were first and third overall. Things really became acrimonious when Carlos refused to obey team orders to let Jones by in the wet Brazilian GP in 1981, and from that point on the Australian launched a one-man war against him. Carlos, however, had the upper hand by mid-season. But Williams then struggled to adjust the FW07B to Goodyear’s tyres, after switching from the Michelins which Carlos preferred, and in the second half of the season his unusual prediction to journalist Henry gradually become closer and closer to realisation.
He took only fifth in Austria and third in Italy, and when the circus arrived in the car park at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, for the finale round, he was only one point ahead of the hungry Nelson Piquet. He took pole position on the Friday, 0.415s faster than Jones. But from the start majestic Carlos was unfathomably replaced by miserable Carlos. As Jones charged into the lead, it was as if Carlos did everything he could to make good on his gloomy prediction three months earlier. The unwell Piquet was incredibly lucky to take the fifth place he needed, and outscored him by one point. Carlos, a lapped eighth, had apparently beaten himself. Carlos never offered any real explanation for his startling fall, which remained a matter of intense speculation to the end. Many years later, he gave a curious explanation to an Argentine journalist: "When I look back and recall that as a kid I had to go to school on horseback, and I went all the way from there to being an F1 driver… it is a pleasure that nobody can take away."
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Predicting the WDC would become somewhat more simple tho…!
