Since the previous year's race, the Hella-Licht corner had been converted to a fast chicane, thus increasing the length of the circuit to 5.942 kilometres (3.692 mi). The race was held over 54 laps of the circuit for a race distance of 320.8 kilometres (199.3 mi).
Rain had fallen immediately prior to the race start leaving the track wet but would not rain during the race. Tyre choice was split between wets and slicks. Mario Andretti led early until the engine failed in his Lotus 78. The track was drying by this time. Gunnar Nilsson and Jones had starred in the early laps on the wet track. Nilsson moving from 16th to second and Jones progressed from his 14th grid position to fourth. James Hunt became the race leader. Nilsson pitted to replace his ruined wet tyres on his Lotus 78 while Jones moved past Hans-Joachim Stuck's Brabham and Jody Scheckter's Wolf WR3 into second position. Jones would not have progressed further but for an engine failure in Hunt's McLaren M26 late in the race. Nilsson recovered from his pitstop to third until an engine failure claimed its second Lotus of the day. Lauda's Ferrari came on as the track dried and he moved into second while Stuck survived to claim the final podium position. Scheckter spun off leaving Carlos Reutemann in the second Ferrari 312T2 to finish fourth ahead of Ronnie Peterson in the Tyrrell P34 and the second McLaren of Jochen Mass claimed the final championship point in sixth. Despite the changeable condition, 16 cars finished the race with 17 classified. The seventeenth was Emilio de Villota, who crashed his privately entered McLaren M23 in the closing stages while on his 51st lap.
According to Alan Jones, he remembered “Happy Birthday to You” being played for him during the podium ceremony. However, “Advance Australia Fair” was actually played. “God Save the Queen” was the national anthem of Australia in 1977, being replaced by “Advance Australia Fair” in 1984, and “God Save the Queen” was not played on the podium.
It had been seven years since the last victory by an Australian (Jack Brabham in the 1970 South African Grand Prix). Jones' win had no effect on the championship points race. Lauda's second place, coupled with retirements to Scheckter, Andretti and Hunt significantly strengthened Lauda's grip on the championship, expanding his lead to 16 points.
Drivers' Championship standings
Niki Lauda – 54 points
Jody Scheckter – 38 points
Carlos Reutemann – 34 points
Mario Andretti – 32 points
James Hunt – 22 points
Constructors' Championship standings
Ferrari – 67 (71) points
Lotus-Ford – 47 points
Wolf-Ford – 38 points
McLaren-Ford – 35 points
Brabham-Alfa Romeo – 27 points
This was the 25th podium finish for an Alfa Romeo-powered car.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus: a Wikipedia article about the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix. No external sources were consulted, including primary archives, autobiographies, period programmes, or specialist publications.