Report
Until the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix, this was the last World Championship Grand Prix to be held on a Saturday,; [1] [2] it also was the last World Championship Grand Prix where laurel wreaths were given to the drivers at the podium. [3] The event was boycotted by two teams, Ligier and Renault, owing to mounting international pressures against tolerating the country's system of apartheid. A state of emergency had been declared by the South African government in July due to growing civil unrest nationwide, and French teams Ligier and Renault's boycotts were in lockstep with the French government's boycott and sanctioning of South Africa, [4] apparently doing so under pressure. [5] Most of the Formula One drivers, including Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and Nigel Mansell were personally very much against racing in South Africa, but the drivers held the mentality that because they were contracted to drive at every Grand Prix, they would race at Kyalami. [6]
Some governments tried to keep their drivers from entering the race. Brazil's sanctions on South Africa nearly prevented Nelson Piquet or Ayrton Senna from racing. [7]
Finland and Sweden held similar reservations regarding Finn Keke Rosberg and Swede Stefan Johansson competing. [7] Sweden's National Automobile Federation had announced Johansson could not race in South Africa before the event, [7] but he did race.
Ayrton Senna initially said he would race if Lotus raced. However, he later said he would boycott the race. [8]
Multiple sponsors also ordered teams to remove their branding from cars they backed, most notably Marlboro and Beatrice Foods.
The latter held an equity interest in the single car Haas Lola team. While Alan Jones qualified 18th for that team, his car was not on the starting grid. Officially Jones cited illness as to why he did not race, but it was widely rumored at the time that Beatrice ordered the team to boycott. [6] In 2017, Jones described a meeting with Bernie Ecclestone the night before the race, who suggested that Jones feign illness the next morning and not show up. Ecclestone described how Beatrice were under pressure in the US from activists such as Jesse Jackson not to race, under threats including strike action by African Americans working in their businesses. Only Jones and team management Teddy Mayer and Carl Haas were aware of this plan. Jones said "And so, on the Saturday morning I was gone. I just didn’t turn up. They had the car out ready to go, when they were told, "AJ’s been struck down by a virus and we are not racing"." [9] [10]
It was the final South African Grand Prix until apartheid ended, with FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre announcing days after the race that the Grand Prix would not return to the nation for 1986 because of apartheid. [5] Even without the political pressures, this might well have been the final Formula One race held at Kyalami in its then form: FISA had long since deemed that circuits where lap times were under 60 seconds were considered too small for Grand Prix racing and with car speeds increasing all the time, it was reasonable to conclude that lap times from 1986 would be under 60 seconds. Kyalami's pole position time had actually fallen by over 10 seconds since the 1981 race, and Mansell's 1985 pole time of 1:02.366, at an average speed of 237 km/h (147 mph), was over two and a half seconds faster than Nelson Piquet's 1984 pole time of 1:04.871.
During qualifying, the Brabham BMWs reached 332 km/h (206 mph) on the 1.65 km (1.0 mi) long front straight, just 3 km/h (2 mph) shy of their season's best at Paul Ricard in France some 3 months earlier.
The South African Grand Prix would only return in 1992, after apartheid ended, in a new configuration of the Kyalami circuit. Mansell would also win the 1992 race driving a Williams, albeit with a naturally-aspirated Renault engine. [11]
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Keke Rosberg 
