Holiday Grand Prix
22. Grosser Preis von Österreich
In the fortnight between the German and Austrian GPs, Team Lotus tested rising star Johnny Dumfries for the first time but rumors grew that the team would be signing Ayrton Senna for 1985. The fact that he had a Toleman contract was a minor point. Stefan Bellof was back in action with Tyrrell but Toleman continued to run only one car, while ATS expanded to two cars, the being driven by F1 debutante Gerhard Berger.
In qualifying Nelson Piquet was pole in his Brabham-BMW with Alain Prost (McLaren-TAG) alongside. On the second row were the Lotus-Renault of Elio de Angelis and Niki Lauda's McLaren while the third featured the Renaults of Patrick Tambay and Derek Warwick. Teo Fabi (Brabham-BMW) shared the fourth row with Nigel Mansell's Lotus-Renault while the top 10 was completed by Keke Rosberg's Williams-Honda and Ayrton Senna in the Toleman-Hart.
At the start Piquet took the lead from Prost while the two Renaults got ahead of de Angelis's Lotus. Lauda made a poor start but was soon back to fourth place and on the ninth lap he moved to third. The order remained stable until lap 29 when Prost spun off on oil dropped when de Angelis's Renault engine blew up. Lauda was second and Senna fourth. This lasted only a few laps before Tambay overtook the Toleman, which went into the pits to retire soon afterwards with engine failure. Lauda closed up on Piquet and on lap 40 scrambled ahead as the pair lapped the less-than-helpful Ferrari of Michele Alboreto. Tambay's race lasted only until lap 43 when his engine blew and so third place went to the lapped Alboreto with Fabi fourth and the two Arrows-BMWs of Thierry Boutsen and Marc Surer fifth and sixth.