The race had to be stopped soon after the first start, due to a problem with the starting lights which caused chaos among the drivers with Niki Lauda claiming that he saw "Red, green, yellow then red again". This caused 3rd fastest qualifier Elio de Angelis to hesitate badly off the line and his Lotus-Renault was almost hit from behind by several cars, with Ayrton Senna in the Toleman-Hart moving into 4th place by the time they reached Hella-Licht after starting 10th. On the formation lap for the re-start, pole sitter Piquet, who had seen the McLarens change tyres on the grid, angered the other drivers when he led the field on an extremely slow lap in an effort to not allow Prost or Lauda to scrub in their new Michelin rubber.
Alain Prost, Lauda's team mate and the World Championship leader going into the race, failed to finish after spinning off on oil at the Jochen Rindt Curve on lap 28, caused by the Lotus of Elio de Angelis when his Renault engine failed moments before Prost retired. Prost had been running a close second behind Piquet at the time of his spin. Piquet came upon the oil first and managed to keep his car from sliding off despite a twitch. Prost, however, was having gear selection problems and hit the oil, spinning off and hitting the outside guardrail almost nose first, resulting in immediate retirement due to suspension damage. Lauda moved into second and then passed Piquet for the lead, the Brazilian suffering tyre trouble. Despite a brief gearbox problem where he could not find a gear for a few hundred metres before eventually finding 4th coming out of the Texaco Schikane, Lauda went on to win his home race by 23 seconds, largely only having 3rd and 5th gears left in his McLaren's gearbox.
Gerhard Berger made his Formula One debut at the Österreichring, finishing 12th and last on lap 51 in his ATS-BMW. Jo Gartner, the third Austrian in the race, retired after 6 laps with engine troubles in his Osella-Alfa Romeo.
Both Renaults retired with engine failures, Derek Warwick on lap 18 and Patrick Tambay on lap 43.
This article is based solely on the provided corpus: the Wikipedia article “1984 Austrian Grand Prix”. No external sources, such as primary archives, autobiographies, period programmes, or specialist publications, were consulted.