1951 Brazilian A1 Grand Prix

The 1951 Brazilian A1 Grand Prix was the opening round of the 1951 A1 Grand Prix season and the first to be held in both Brazil and South America. Juan Manuel Fangio took pole for Argentina.

Pre Qualifying
Since the Salvador Street Circuit didn't have room for the full 36 car grid, a one hour pre qualifying session was held on Friday morning in which all nations that finished the 1950 season outside of the top 20 would have to take part in. Only the fastest six would be allowed to proceed.

Race


While most stubbornly decided to stick with a three stop strategy in spite of the fact that fully fresh tyres here gave as many as five seconds over fully worn ones, Parsons, Niell, Bira and Kelly did four stops, the first of which was around lap 15 meaning that they had around 25 laps of having fresher tyres than everyone else. Only Parsons managed to use that advantage to its full potential by making sure that he always stopped at different points to the leaders while Niell and Bira foolishly made the rest of their stops in sequence with the more conservative strategies meaning they lost their advantage for the rest of the race. Kelly had his race ruined first when he hit the wall which together with a stop for repairs cost him a lap, then he dropped back further when he spun.

Finally there was an alternate three stop strategy which de Graffenried, Uria, Junkova, Chiron and Stuck were on, the latter two of course had their races ruined before they could work properly. This involved making their pitstops about ten laps sooner than everyone else on the three stop strategies which gave them ten laps of fresher tyres and allowing them to gain back all the time they lost from the pitstop but came with the disadvantage of slower pace once the others made their their stops. De Graffenried started out the final stint just behind Villoresi but by the time the finish came he had lost thirty seconds and was almost caught by Rubirosa.

The only crash all race was that of Erik Lundgren on lap 10 when he tried to pass Tony Gaze around the outside of a tight left hander only to whack the edge of a tyre barrier, causing enough damage to force him out of the race.

Race Results


Fastest Lap Luigi Villoresi Lap 45 1:19.031

Penalty Report
No penalties were given after the race.