Was F1 ever suspended in South Africa ?

A reader has emailed me and asked me to pose this question:


I say SA was excluded from the F1circuit for several years during the 1980's. A relative in Cape Town claims he watched F1 racing at Kyalami right through the 80's! who is correct?


Thanks guys! :)

Certainly, the World Championship races weren't run there any more for a while. And Sth Africa did have F5000 for a while in the seventies... and I really doubt that state of the art F1 cars ran there during the eighties...

But I can't be sure there were no F1 cars. We need Rob Young or fines or someone on the spot to answer this.

The F1 WC South African GP did not take place between Oct 19, 1985 and Mar 1, 1992. Don't know what else he could possibly refer to! :confused:

The original reason for the question was:
A relative in Cape Town claims he watched F1 racing at Kyalami right through the 80's! who is correct?

He could have seen F1 racing through the 80s... local cars.

Or maybe he spoke loosely, and was there for F1 test days?

In the 1980's the following happened at Kyalami:

1980 WC F1 Grand Prix
1981 Non-Championship Grand Prix
1982 WC F1 Grand Prix
1983 WC F1 Grand Prix
1984 WC F1 Grand Prix
1985 WC F1 Grand Prix

1986 no F1 events at all in SA.

1987 the Williams-Honda team came out to SA for tyre test of which I was there to see Mansell and Piquet.

1987-1989 the GP track was changed to the new layout because the erea of which made up the long straight was sold off to small bussiness's

1989 Mid-July? the track opened
1990 Jan Williams-Judd came out for tyre testing
1991 Jan Williams, Benetton and Tyrrell came out for tyre testing (I have some photos from the Saturday testing, not the best photos)
1991 Auguest the track was changed for the F1 race of 1992
1992 Mar WC F1 Grand Prix
1993 Mar WC F1 Grand Prix

1996 Nov williams came out for a sponsorship commitment

1999-2001 BAR and Williams came out for off season tyre testing.

Quintin Cloud
http://www.formula1results.com

I do recall that by the time of the last Turbo Years race in '85, the teams were getting somewhat hesitant about being seen to race under the apartheid regime.

The 1985 race was right at the end of the season. The championship had been decided in Alain Prost's favour, and so there was some debate amongst drivers and team personnel about whether it was worth attending.

On the day, the Ligier team was the only one that didn't show, although Prost himself was on the record as saying that if it was up to him he wouldn't be racing.

1974 SAGP was postponed from begining to end of March,due to world fuel crisis caused by mid-east war. This may be what meant by sport suspended.

Surprisingly, I think it only stopped due to the track not politics.

That would be right... how could the cigarette companies' major spokesmen speak out against anything in conscience?