took a popular victory; Lauda also passed Scheckter and took 2nd; and the Wolf driver completed the podium with 3rd place. In 1978 the start/finish line was moved to the long sweeping Shoreline Drive at the bottom of the circuit, rather than starting where the pits were on Ocean Boulevard. So the race distance was 79.5 laps, and the parade lap went from the pits to the start on Shoreline Drive rather than completing a whole lap. That race was won by Argentine Carlos Reutemann, and Australian Alan Jones finished a great 2nd place for the new Williams team, their first ever podium position. 1979 saw Queen's Hairpin narrowed in order to create a more consistent track width for the start, and it got off to a confused start in which Reutemann was prevented from joining the start after trouble with his Lotus during the warm-up. The field was not stopped under orders, so Canadian pole-sitter Gilles Villeneuve continued and the field followed him back to the pits. Frenchman Jacques Laffite's engine seized and he hopped into the spare car. Reutemann went out anyway half a lap behind the others; he retired with gearbox problems. The race saw a spirited drive from Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jarier in the Tyrrell. He climbed up to 2nd behind Villeneuve in a Ferrari, although he had to drop back to finish 6th. Villeneuve won from his teammate Scheckter. In 1980 there was a number of incidents, including a messy pile-up at the Le Gasomet hairpin. Alfa Romeo driver Bruno Giacomelli spun entering that corner and came to a dead stop, with his Alfa's nose mere feet away from the apex of the corner. In a rather impatient attempt to get out of this precarious situation he had put himself in, Giacomelli had put his Alfa in reverse, and as a result, a number of oncoming cars, all attempting to avoid Giacomelli, who had reversed onto the racing line, had to come to a dead stop in order to avoid hitting Giacomelli. This created an accordion-effect accident, which led to 4 other cars also crashing, including Jarier, who had crashed a lot heavier than any of the other drivers by hitting Italian Elio de Angelis's Lotus with some force. But the worst accident was yet to come- Clay Regazzoni in an Ensign crashed appallingly when his brakes failed at 180 mph at the end of Shoreline