312T5 (1980)

“When we got into the season, I realised the teams running DFVs had taken about three steps forward with their ground-effect cars and we had only made a small improvement over the 312 T4.”

So Jody Scheckter (right) says of the car with which, in 1980, he was expected to defend his world title.

He didn’t stand a chance.

“Our flat-12 got in the way of the ground-effect tunnels, but in 1980 we were stuck with this situation because our turbo was still a year off. The car wasn’t terrible. It was just a year out of date at a time when big advances were being made.”

Ferrari scored a grand total of eight points in 1980. And that was with Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve on the driving strength. Enough said. MH