Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet

Motorsport venue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jacarepaguá, Rio's Vanished Circuit

Built on reclaimed marshland in Rio de Janeiro, Jacarepaguá held ten Brazilian Grands Prix in tropical heat before making way for the 2016 Olympic Games.

From the grandstands at Jacarepaguá you could see the whole track, a luxury few Formula One circuits have offered. The Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet, known to most by the name of the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood around it, was built between 1971 and 1977 where an earlier road course had been laid on reclaimed marshland. It was flat, with a long pit straight, an even longer back straight lined almost end to end with huge stands, and a run of medium and slow corners that left plenty of room to pass. The races came in Rio's hot, humid weather, usually in March or April.

The circuit opened in January 1978, only weeks before its first Brazilian Grand Prix, which Carlos Reutemann won for Ferrari in punishing heat. After two years back at Interlagos the race returned to Rio in 1981, and Reutemann won again, in the wet for Williams, having declined team orders to give way to Alan Jones. In 1982 Nelson Piquet and Keke Rosberg were disqualified for running underweight, handing the win to Alain Prost at the height of the dispute between FISA and FOCA, and most FOCA teams boycotted a race two rounds later.

Prost treated Jacarepaguá as his own, winning five of the ten Grands Prix held there, more than anyone. Piquet, born in Rio, won in 1983 and 1986, and after his third world title the circuit took his name in 1988. From 1983 to 1989 the Brazilian race opened the season. Ayrton Senna made his Formula One debut here in 1984 and became the year's first retirement, an unassuming beginning. The last Grand Prix, in 1989, was the first after turbo engines were banned, and Nigel Mansell won unexpectedly for Ferrari with Formula One's first semiautomatic gearbox.

The Brazilian Grand Prix went back to a shortened Interlagos in 1990. Jacarepaguá carried on with CART, motorcycle Grands Prix and stock cars, losing ground to other uses piece by piece, until the whole site was demolished in November 2012 to clear space for venues of the 2016 Summer Olympics. It had held 10 championship rounds between 1978 and 1989, and of all those grandstand views nothing now remains.

Every Grand Prix here

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