Zolder – The Belgian Grand Prix

Zolder – The Belgian Grand Prix

12th May 1979

The opening race for the Procar series in Belgium was staged over 20 laps at 4.262 km each. The winner mastered the race distance of 85.240 km at an average speed of 151.321 km/h.

The Procar series: A field of madmen?

A successful and exciting opening for the Procar series. A bare-knuckle fight between Grand Prix cars and saloon car stars, that partly ended in scraps was the order of the day. Surprisingly, Elio de Angelis won. Commentary by ex-champion Quester: “In this field, there are many maniacs!”

The spectacle with the 5 fastest F1 drivers from Friday could begin. 1st Laffite – Ligier, 2nd Regazzoni – Williams, 3rd Andretti – Lotus, 4th Lauda – Brabham and 5th Piquet – Brabham. The other fixed participants, in order of the M1 practice in rainy conditions on Friday: 1st Höttinger, 2nd Stuck, 3rd Giacomelli, Hezemans, Quester, Konrad, Kelleners, Schütz, Manhalter, de Angelis, Krebs, Lafosse, Brun and Hotz on behalf of Surer. A total of 19 M1s competed. 4th-place F1 driver, Niki Lauda, chose to drive his own M1 in place of the team car (remained unused). Piquet (loose vibration damper) and Konrad (overstrained engine thermal) already withdrew during the warm-up lap.

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The race result

Zolder – The Belgian Grand Prix

BMW works cars in BMW M design
Blue text = F1 driver – Red time = F1 driver

Pos. # Name Nat. Team Laps Time T-Time
1 60 Elio de Angelis I BMW Italia 20 33:47,900 1:56,010
2 99 Toine Hezemans NL BMW Nederland 20 33:52,160 1:52,070
3 28 Clay Regazzoni CH BMW Motorsport 20 33:53,930 1:24,570
4 66 Helmut Kelleners D Eggenberger 20 34:30,390 1:53,920
5 50 Dieter Quester A Tom Walkinshaw 20 34:42,380 1:52,370
6 80 Jean-Louis Lafosse F BMW France 20 35:07,650 1:57,170
7 45 Sepp Manhalter A Schnitzer 19 1:55030
8 41 Wolfgang Schütz D Schütz Racing 18 1:54,620
1 Mario Andretti USA BMW Motorsport 15 dit not finish 1:24,600
26 Jacques Laffite F BMW Motorsport 14 dit not finish 1:24,520
44 Markus Höttinger A Team Austria 11 dit not finish 1:50,330
77 Hans-Joachim Stuck D Cassani Racing 11 dit not finish 1:50,340
70 Bruno Giacomelli I Osella 8 dit not finish 1:51,220
5 Niki Lauda A N. Lauda 6 dit not finish 1:24,650
55 Albrecht Krebs D Team Krebs 2 dit not finish 1:56,060
71 Markus Hotz CH BMW Schweiz 1 dit not finish 2:08,120
61 Walter Brun CH Schnitzer / Brun dit not finish 1:59,450
6 Nelson Piquet BR BMW Motorsport dit not start 1:24,960
88 Franz Konrad A Konrad Racing dit not start 1:52,58

The races of the 1979 season