1980 F1 Season

1980 is the year Williams became a championship-winning team. Alan Jones won the drivers' title with five victories in fourteen races, and the team won the constructors' with 120 points, almost double Ligier in second on 66. It was the first of the nine constructors' titles Williams would collect over the next two decades.

His rival was a 28 year old Brazilian in a Brabham, Nelson Piquet, who finished second with 54 points and three wins. The championship was decided in Montreal, the second to last race: Piquet started from pole and blew his engine, Jones won, and then he won the final round at Watkins Glen as well to end the year on 67 points.

Those 67 are not everything he scored. The rules only counted each driver's best results from each half of the season, and Jones had four of the 71 he earned on track taken away; his team-mate Carlos Reutemann lost seven. There were seven different winners, and Renault won three races with its turbo engine, the first sign of the decade to come.