The Brazilian Grand Prix at the Interlagos circuit has provided several unforgettable moments of racing. Journalist and historian Doug Nye looks back at its history and at the most outstanding races held at the Brazilian track

There's a kind of fat and happy smugness which sits over Euro-centric Formula One fans of a certain age. Certainly when I grew up with racing pretty much at the focus of my entire being through the late 1950s and 1960s, the Formula One racing season commonly set off with a series of non-Championship races run at venues such as Snetterton, Goodwood, Pau, Imola, Naples and Silverstone before the serious business of the World Championship-qualifying events would kick off at perhaps Zandvoort in Holland, or around the houses of Monte Carlo.

Late in the season, from 1959, the World Championship series would actually venture inter-Continental, crossing the Atlantic to Sebring, Florida, for the first United States Grand Prix, or later to Riverside in California, then finding a semi-permanent home at Watkins Glen in upstate New York. A Mexican round followed in Mexico City's Magdalena Mixhuca park, and then the Argentine Grand Prix - which had been such an early-season feature for much of the 1950s and in 1960 - was revived.

European and British eyes swivelled round to South America, and with the addition of Formula One dates in Brazil into the 1970s, suddenly here was a truly viable extension to the calendar - initially non-Championship in 1972, and then receiving full World Championship status.

Argentina's Carlos Reutemann won the exploratory Formula One race at Sao Paulo's Interlagos circuit on March 30th 1972, driving the Brabham BT34, beating Ronnie Peterson of March, and local man Wilson Fittipaldi in his team-sister Brabham BT33. Wilson's kid brother - Emerson - had qualified on pole for this, his hometown race, in the Lotus 72. There were only 11 starters, three of whom retired with dust jamming their throttle slides after a first-corner incident threw dense dust clouds into the induction systems, and Emerson should have won - but suffered suspension failure just 5 laps from the end.

The first World Championship-qualifying Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix was then held on Sao Paulo's Interlagos circuit on February 11th 1973. "Brazil is a tremendously vital place, full of a youthful zest and a grand sense of its own developing future," the Autocourse annual wrote back then.

"Motor racing has a very wide following from the level of karting on up, and the inclusion of three Brazilians on the short roster of Formula One regular drivers is no fluke. They have a deep background of participation and popular interest behind them, and of course the fact of having their very own World Champion" - Emerson Fittipaldi of Team Lotus - "now worked the entire Brazilian nation of 100 million people into a pitch of enthusiasm such that their first World Championship Grand Prix seemed almost a religious rite. 'Emerson' was a name heard constantly in conversations everywhere, and JPS emblems were to be seen everywhere on clothing, on vehicles and in shop windows - even though Player's do not market in South America."

The Autocourse report continued: "That all this interest is not a fleeting fancy is shown by the age of the Interlagos circuit. The first race was in May of 1940. On the outskirts of the industrial capital, Sao Paulo, it is easily reached by any of the six million population who want to go. Surrounded nowadays on all sides by industrial and residential development - there are private houses literally adjoining the circuit but one cannot imagine the residents ever complaining about the noise" - the track somehow retains its rustic air. This is because the designer, by bold strokes of the bulldozer, somehow spread a lap distance of 4.946 miles into an area that one normally associates with a circuit of perhaps only 2½-miles.

"With one or two exceptions the public is not allowed into the rather narrow areas between the loops of the track, so there is little to be seen along the verges but stubby trees and the occasional photographer. However, Interlagos must be one of the best spectator circuits in the world, for it is built into the sides of a natural, hilly amphitheatre and from most areas on the 'rim' all but a few yards of the lap are in plain view.

"The ageing surface is frankly bumpy, bumpy to the point of causing concern about chassis life, but with that one reservation everyone seemed to like the track very much" - when it was first used by the Formula One circus - "Jacky Ickx, his eyes alight, called it 'a real Grand Prix circuit'. Several of the key corners, ones preceding important straights, are very fast (the first two on the lap, treated as one single arc, are 9,000rpm in 5th business) and made extra tricky by odd changes of camber and slope. While many of the slower turns on the infield (so much more imaginative than Daytona) seem much alike, they are unalike enough to cause real gearing headaches.

"Due to the hills and embankments over which the track climbs and falls, a driver going around has little sense that there is another portion of the lap adjoining his part and the feeling is of a long circuit winding by itself through the country. There would seem to be no objection at all in adopting this 'plate of spaghetti' concept to get a long lap distance into other restricted ground areas elsewhere in the world.

"The surface wants relaying, and the paddock facilities are crude, and as it happens certain points of the organisation won no friends this time, but by and large Interlagos and the Brazilian Grand Prix are worthwhile additions to the scene. Now, if they could move everything from unappealing Sao Paulo to Rio!"…and so, indeed, they would come 1978, and the Brazilian GP's move to Rio's flat shore-side Jacarepagua circuit.

But Interlagos was thus a motor racing course of longer history than - for example - Silverstone or Jarama or Zandvoort or the Osterreichring or so many of the other recognised Grand Prix venues. It had been laid out by Brazilian motor racing enthusiasts for the development and enjoyment of drivers and spectators alike, and in this it had succeeded in spades. That first Formula circus visits there in 1972-73 saw team engineers and mechanics enjoying the challenge of setting-up their cars to produce their optimum performance on this challenging course almost as much as the drivers did in racing upon it.

As the travelling circus became acclimatised to the sight of armoured personnel carriers trundling around the course to ferry police units to areas of crowd unrest, the sun-baked firemen being pelted with bottles and replying by soaking the massed spectators with their fire hoses…perhaps precisely as the overheated crowd had hoped they would… it all seemed very strange, very outlandish, very 'Brazilian' to the visiting racers, the press, and their supporters, especially so since so much of the time these antics were all conducted to the frenetic throb of some superb samba bands.

Interlagos offered us exotic new corner names to enter into the Formula One lexicon - Curva da Terradura, Mergulho, Curva do Pinheiro, Curva del Sol, Subida do Lago... local hero Emmo won in the black-and-gold Lotus 72 - from Jackie Stewart second in the midnight-blue Tyrrell and Denny Hulme third in his white-russet-black-and-gold 'YardleyMac'... World Champion Fittipaldi had stormed through every lap in the lead, and he had set fastest lap en route to his convincing victory. All Brazil exploded in delight... their boy had done the winning, beating in Stewart the very best, and the Brazilian flags flew high... and so proudly.

Into 1974 the Argentine GP/Brazilian GP travelling double became established as annual rounds 1 and 2 of the World Championship. Interlagos's weather proved to be at its most violent that year and torrential cloudbursts forced an early halt which left Emerson Fittipaldi victorious once more, but this time behind the wheel of the newly-Marlboro liveried McLaren M23, from Clay Regazzoni's Ferrari. Reutemann's Brabham had led briefly from the start until tyre trouble intervened, and Emerson duelled with Ronnie Peterson's Lotus until the Swede's car suffered a puncture.

That year the circus travelled on to Brasilia, where the non-Championship Presidente Medici GP proved to be a one-off, again led by Reutemann - again won by Emerson Fittipaldi.

In 1975 it was another Brazilian who broke the Fittipaldi stranglehold - Jose Carlos Pace victorious for Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham team. His teammate Carlos Reutemann had led the first five laps, 'Jumper' Jarier's stunning Shadow looked to be running away with the race until its metering unit seized with 8 laps to go, and the champagne went to Pace…

By 1976 Argentina was in turmoil and their national Grand Prix was removed from the calendar. Brazil looked rocky, but stood alone. This was the year of Niki Lauda (Ferrari) versus James Hunt (McLaren). Hunt took pole, Lauda's Ferrari teammate Regazzoni led initially, Niki moved ahead and pulled away until Jarier - that man again - closed to within 2secs in the scintillating Shadow, then slid off on oil. The Austrian won for Ferrari, from Patrick Depailler's Tyrrell in second place.

Argentina returned to Championship pole position in 1977, Brazil and Sao Paulo again becoming second stop for the travelling circus. Pace's latest Brabham-Alfa Romeo had led at Buenos Aires, and here at Interlagos the new flat-12 cars were quick again - Pace leading for 6 laps before colliding with James Hunt's McLaren. Eight cars crashed heavily as the overheated, sorely-tried track surface began to break up. Reutemann repeated his 1972 victory - this time for Ferrari.

The track surface disintegration did Interlagos's case no good in the eyes of officialdom. At Rio the new Jacarepagua Autodrome was poised and ready to go - the Brazilian Grand Prix was removed to the charismatic coastal city in 1978 and, after a brief return to Sao Paulo for the next two years, would remain in Rio for the following nine years, returning to the remodelled Interlagos course only in 1990.

The names had changed but the Paulistano leading characters were still there. This time it was Ayrton Senna da Silva qualifying on pole in the latest McLaren-Honda V10, and leading until Japanese backmarker Satoru Nakajima slid into him on lap 41 while being lapped - sending the Brazilian hero into the pits to have his car's damaged nosecone replaced. He resumed third, but his car's handling was impaired with the replacement nose in place, and he was unable to recoup lost places - leaving his great fan Alain Prost victorious for Ferrari, and McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger second.

The following year saw Ayrton Senna's eighth attempt to win his home Grand Prix, after six attempts at Rio, and just one here at Sao Paulo. And this time he achieved his ambition, hounded all the way by the resurgent Williams-Renaults - the only threat posed to the all-conquering McLaren-Hondas. Senna was pushed hard from the start by Nigel Mansell, but semi-automatic gearbox problems beset the Englishman.

Senna then encountered gearbox problems of his own - the McLaren progressively losing 4th gear, then 3rd, 5th and 6th. Patrese's Williams was closing fast. Typical late-afternoon rain began to sweep in across the Interlagos circuit. The track gleamed, then glistened, spray trails began to appear, Ayrton found 6th as if by providence on a full-wet last lap, teetering around with his McLaren slithering on its slick tyres... to victory.

It was Nigel Mansell's turn for Interlagos victory in the Williams-Renault come 1992. Senna notched his second true home victory there in 1993, in the McLaren-Cosworth MP4/8, after Alain Prost, then Damon Hill, had led most of the way in their Williams. Damon was beaten into second place by the Schumacher Benetton-Cosworth in 1994, after Ayrton had led for 21 laps in the Williams FW16... his last Sao Paulo appearance...

Michael Schumacher scored his second consecutive Sao Paulo victory come 1995 in the Benetton B195, and the Brazilian race was again part of a South American double-header - with Argentina returning to the calendar, but this time as the second round of the annual Championship, not the first.

For British fans, Damon Hill triumphed in the Williams-Renault FW18 at Sao Paulo in 1996, only losing his lead during the pit-stop phase - and so the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sao Paulo's Interlagos circuit has endured into the current era. The course has been amended, its amenities improved and the lap length shortened over the years. Re-aligning some of the corners shortened the lap slightly in 1979-80 and the course was completely revised and shortened from its interim 4.89-mile lap to the modern 2.68 for its revival in 1990 - and further amendments have been made since.

But still there under some of the sprawling additional grandstands and out there on the amphitheatre rim lie the now abandoned hard-surfaced remnants of the old course - that dating from 1940, on which so many of the great Brazilians of racing history cut their teeth, and perfected their craft. Where the 24-hour and 500-mile national formula and sports car races were held, where the Fittipaldi brothers and Jose Carlos Pace honed their skills, where the Lotus 72s and the UOP Shadows and the McLaren M23s proved so fast - where Lauda and Regazzoni and Reutemann waved the Ferrari flag so high - and where Senna and Schumacher and Hill and Hakkinen have shone, and where Montoya first showed his teeth, and where Coulthard's testicles suddenly descended...

Sao Paulo's Grand Prix racing circuit oozes history, another chapter of which is to be written this weekend.