It featured the 1979 World Championship of F1 Drivers[1] and the 1979 International Cup for F1 Constructors[2] which were contested concurrently over a fifteen-round series which commenced on 21 January 1979, and ended on 7 October 1979.

Cigarette maker John Player Special withdrew from F1 and Olympus moved to Wolf and Lotus landed a new sponsorship package with Martini, Tissot and Essex Petroleum.

Jody Scheckter had joined Gilles Villeneuve at Ferrari and the team produced the ungainly 312T4, which was handicapped aerodynamically by the flat-12 engine, which made ground-effect difficult.

Most people expected the Lotus cars driven by defending champion Mario Andretti, and his new teammate Carlos Reutemann to dominate but, to many people's surprise, it was the Ligier team that dominated qualifying, with Jacques Laffite on pole ahead of Patrick Depailler, leaving home favorite Reutemann to qualify third, with Jarier fourth ahead of Scheckter, Watson, Andretti, Pironi, Tambay and Villeneuve.

The race restarted after the mess was cleared, and this time Depailler set off into the lead with Jean-Pierre Jarier's Tyrrell and Watson (in his spare car) following him.

The weather was still uncertain and several drivers (notably Scheckter, Depailler, Patrick Tambay (McLaren) and Nelson Piquet (Brabham) decided to race on slicks.

Five weeks after the South African race, the field went to the United States to compete at the gruelling Long Beach street circuit near Los Angeles, California.

One week after Long Beach, the Race of Champions at the fast, undulating Brands Hatch circuit in southern England featured another victory for Gilles Villeneuve.

The Kauhsen team made its first appearance with driver Gianfranco Brancatelli but the car was a long way off the pace and failed to qualify as did Arturo Merzario in his A2 and Derek Daly in his Ensign.

His teammate Jody Scheckter was on the fourth row, alongside Carlos Reutemann's Lotus while the top 10 was rounded off by the two Tyrrells of Jean-Pierre Jarier and Didier Pironi.

At the back of the grid McLaren's woes continued with Patrick Tambay failing to qualify an old M26 after John Watson destroyed the difficult M28 in testing.

Jean-Pierre Jarier (Tyrrell) was sixth fastest with his teammate Didier Pironi matching his time, while Mass was an impressive eighth ahead of Alan Jones (Williams) and James Hunt (Wolf).

As fourth placed Jarier had disappeared with a transmission problem a little earlier Mass found himself third but he was in gearbox trouble and dropped behind Clay Regazzoni's Williams.

Patrick Depailler blew all hopes he had of a successful season by breaking both his legs in a hang-gliding accident and so Ligier asked Jacky Ickx to take over its second car.

Renault had made a big effort to be competitive in France and the result was that Jean-Pierre Jabouille and won pole with Rene Arnoux second fastest.

The Williams FW07 had been improving rapidly and new modifications to correct aerodynamic leakage and a new system to keep the skirts touching the ground at all times resulted in the car being fastest in pre-British GP testing.

World Championship leader Jody Scheckter was a disappointing 11th while Elio de Angelis impressed by putting his Shadow 12th on the grid, ahead of Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari and Keke Rosberg in the new Wolf WR9.

Arnoux finished second with Jean-Pierre Jarier (Tyrrell) climbing through the leaders in the closing stages to take third place, ahead of Watson, the fading Scheckter and Ickx after Laffite and Villeneuve both went out with mechanical troubles.

Qualifying resulted in Jean-Pierre Jabouille taking pole for Renault on the fast Hockenheim track but Alan Jones was second in the Williams and Jacques Laffite seemed to be rather off than usual in the Ligier.

For much of the race fifth place belonged to Villeneuve but he had to pit to have a rear wing adjusted and that gave Lauda the position for a brief moment before he suffered engine failure.

The field went to the very high-speed Österreichring circuit in Austria, and in qualifying once again the Renault turbo was the car to beat, Arnoux taking his first career pole, with Jones forcing Jabouille to settle for the second row.

The Renault team leader lasted only a couple of laps before the clutch finally stopped him and so Arnoux settled into second place with Villeneuve third, Scheckter fourth, Regazzoni fifth and Laffite sixth.

Arnoux continued to chase down Jones until he suffered fuel pressure problems and dropped down to sixth place, and handing second back to Villeneuve.

So Jones won again for Williams while Scheckter finished second and after Pironi went out with a suspension failure third place went to Laffite with Piquet fourth, Jacky Ickx fifth for Ligier and Jochen Mass sixth in his Arrows.

Ensign decided to give Formula Two star Marc Surer a run in its car in place of Patrick Gaillard, while Hector Rebaque had his HR100 chassis ready for the first time.

Later in the race Jabouille dropped away with engine trouble and Laffite stopped with a similar problem and so third place went to Regazzoni with Lauda, Andretti and Jarier picking up the other points.

One week after the Italian GP, the non-championship Dino Ferrari Grand Prix at the Imola circuit near Bologna was held, this race was won by Niki Lauda.

At the Île Notre-Dame Circuit in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix, it was Lauda in the news, announcing in the middle of practice that he no longer wanted to be a Formula 1 driver, after completing a few laps in the all-new Brabham-Cosworth BT49.

The main interest of the event was whether or not Jones would finish runner-up to the new World Champion Jody Scheckter or whether his Ferrari teammate Gilles Villeneuve would be able to hold him off.

On Saturday, during one of the periods when it stopped raining and the track dried out, Jones took pole again from Nelson Piquet in the new Brabham BT49 in his first ever visit to Watkins Glen.