Racing | Formula 1 | 1979 French Grand Prix — Jabouille Delivers the First Turbocharged Victory

On Sunday, 1 July 1979, Jean-Pierre Jabouille placed Renault’s number 15 RS10 on pole at Circuit Dijon-Prenois for the French Grand Prix, the eighth round of the Formula One World Championship.

Renault locked out the front row with Jabouille’s 1:07.190 lap and René Arnoux’s 1:07.450, while Gilles Villeneuve qualified his Ferrari third in 1:07.650.

Villeneuve led away, but Jabouille preserved his car and passed the Ferrari on lap 47, according to the independent race account, before drawing clear over the final third of the contest.

Jabouille completed all 80 laps in 1:35:20.420 and won by 14.590 seconds, earning Renault its first World Championship Grand Prix victory.

The famous wheel-to-wheel fight behind him decided second rather than the win: Villeneuve finished 14.590 seconds behind Jabouille, Arnoux was third at 14.830 seconds, and the official classification therefore separated the pair by 0.240 seconds.

Arnoux also set the race’s fastest lap on lap 71 in 1:09.160, but Villeneuve kept second at the flag.

The victory was the first for a turbocharged engine in Formula One World Championship competition, turning Renault’s two-year-old turbo project from an ambitious experiment into a winning alternative to the naturally aspirated cars that then dominated the grid.

The place matters because this race used Dijon-Prenois’s extended 3.801-kilometre Grand Prix course, whose Parabolique section was added after work began in 1975; the circuit’s own history identifies 1 July 1979 as Jabouille’s Renault turbo victory and the setting of the Villeneuve–Arnoux fight.

Formula One’s published result remains Jabouille, Villeneuve, and Arnoux, and no later penalty altered that podium.

The accompanying image is a map of the Dijon-Prenois layout after 1975, not a photograph of the 1979 race.

Sources: Formula 1, “1979 French Grand Prix — Race Result” (https://www.formula1.com/en/results/1979/races/414/france/race-result), “Starting Grid” (https://www.formula1.com/en/results/1979/races/414/france/starting-grid), and “Fastest Laps” (https://www.formula1.com/en/results/1979/races/414/france/fastest-laps); Circuit Dijon-Prenois, “Histoire du circuit” (https://www.circuit-dijon-prenois.com/histoire-du-circuit/) and “Contact & accès” (https://www.circuit-dijon-prenois.com/contact-acces/); Grandprix.com, “French GP 1979” (https://www.grandprix.com/races/french-gp-1979.html); Motor Sport, “1979 French Grand Prix” (https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/database/races/1979-french-grand-prix/).

Image: Pitlane02, “Circuit de Dijon-Prenois, after 1975,” CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; white background added for legibility (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circuit_de_Dijon-Prenois-1975.svg).