France's 'golden generation' of Formula 1 race winners

The Athletic Hello friends and welcome back to and Colossally That's History, the podcast that re-appraises motor racing history. My name is Matt Bishop and I'm here once again with my good friend Richard Williams. How you doing Richard? I'm very well thank you Matt but before we get going with this week's episode I have one thing to clear up. Really? Yes. We're very fortunate to have received some extremely lovely messages and reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify but in one of them a listener in Denmark commented on being "a bit perplexed about what an anorak fact is". Now you introduce this term to the pod so for the benefit of our international audience what do you care to explain? Was it Kevin Magnuson by the way? His second cousin. Well it's all about train spotters. People who spend their leisure time on railway platforms recording railway locomotives numbers in a notebook or presumably nowadays digitally typically such men and and they are usually men aren't they to be fair. Traditionally they wear anoraks in other words water proof jackets. So over time train spotters became known as anoraks. So anorak is a friendly term I want to make that clear and it's extended meaning now encompasses anyone who follows their hobby with diligent or dare I say it obsessive attention to detail. Now I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a formal one anorak. So when we announce a fact that only people who have an obsessive devotion to formal one could know or could even be interested in we called it an anorak fact. What do you think Richard? Do you think that's cleared it up? Yeah I think so and I've always thought the people who wear anoraks are showing themselves to be practical and not vain you know which is fair enough and that sums you up and probably me too. I see myself in that description. We'll have a few more anorak facts on today's pod which is all about the golden generation of French drivers who came into bloom as it were between the late 1960s and the early 1980s and it's a remarkable story really because after going 13 years without a victory at all in the Formula One World Championship that's from 1958 to 1971 France then had 10 different winners in the next 11 years and that's considerably more than any other nation during that period as a new generation of driving talent burst through almost all mass many of them as it happens called Jean-Pierre. Quite a few. We'll come to them all. We will discuss who these drivers were and how there came to be so many of them in such a short space of time. May we yes we will and as you say it's a great list. We're talking about people like well Patrick de Pyra, Jacques Lefitte, Didier Perrony, René Arnoux and of course Alain Prost and quite a few more all of whom are household names to people who know their motor racing anoraks in other words. So now as we record this podcast in late 2024 there are two French drivers on the current 20 car Formula One grid, Esther Ban Okon and Pierre Gazzley and that feels right. Well it feels right that there should be some and two is a good number because although no nation has a divine right to expect to have any drivers on the Formula One grid, France is often considered to be the ancestral home if we can call it that of grand prix racing. We don't call it grand prize racing, do we? It's grand prix racing. For it was in France where the roots of the sport we all know and love today really took hold wasn't it Richard? Yes it was. At the very beginning of the 20th century the French public fell in love with the motor car and racing was a natural extension of that romance. The very first race to carry the title Grand Prix was organized by the automobile club de France, the ACF in 1906 and it was held over a 63 mile circuit laid out between villages on the outskirts of the city of Le Mans. And naturally enough in the early years of Grand Prix racing, French manufacturers and drivers were plentiful and so was success. The car makers Bugatti became the star name but you also had Delage, Delay, Purgio and Renault who'd actually won that first Grand Prix at Le Mans. In 1906? In 1906. And on the driver front you had people like André Boyot, Robert Benoit, Jougou, Philippe Etonsla, Jean-Pierre Vimeel, Raymond Sommer and René Dreyfus, all big names of the time. Well pronounced that little spree of names Richard by the way. Well between them they won countless Grand Prix Le Mans 24 hours and even the Indianapolis 500. But in the 1930s the French Grand Prix teams got overtaken by the Italian and German manufacturers, the likes of Alfa Romeo and Maserati and then the unbeatable Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. And many of the best French drivers of the time, people like Vimeel, have of course lost the best years of their career to the Second World War. And we should talk about them a bit before moving on to more recent history. In fact Robert Benoit, who'd won four major Grand Prix's for delage in 1927 alone, actually didn't survive the war. He was captured by the Germans in 1944 after working for the British SOE on espionage operations and he was executed at the Book and Val concentration camp. He'd been arrested along with his SOE colleague William Grover, the British Bugatti driver, who'd won the first Monaco Grand Prix in 1929 and who was also executed. There were survivors of the conflict among the drivers and they included Raymond Sommar, who was twice a winner at Le Mans in the 1930s. He was said to have shot down a Luftwaffe plane with his rifle and later escaped from a POW camp. Jean-Pierre Vimeel and his wife stored guns and explosives for the resistance. And on one occasion he managed to escape a German raid on their house by submerging himself in a nearby stream. Extraordinary stories, aren't they? Yes, they are amazing stories. They are. As for Vimeel in particular, there's no doubt that he'd have been a major star of post-war racing. You know, he was a really top talent. He won the big race at the first meeting after the hostilities were over, which was held at the border of Bologna in Paris. And he was recruited by Alfa Romeo to join their super team in 1946, winning five of the nine Grand Prix he started in the Alphetas. But very sadly, he was killed in 1949 during practice for the Buenos Aires Grand Prix. Maurent not only by his widow, but by Juliet Greco, the 22-year-old singer who was the darling of the left bank existentialists at the time and with whom he was having an affair. Had he survived and had he driven for Alfa Romeo in 1950, as he almost certainly would have done, it might well have been him and not Nina Farina, who became the first Formula One World Champion. The first Formula One what might have been story you could say. Indeed so. But instead when the World Championship began in 1950, French cars and drivers were quite thin on the ground. Talbo was the main French manufacturer of note to begin with and then Gordini, but they couldn't compete with the Alphas, Maserati's or Ferraris and later the Mercedes. And on the driver front, French did have still a handful of pretty good Formula One drivers in the 1950s. There was Louis Rosier, who was on Grand Prix podiums a couple of times in 1950 in a works Talbo and had his last race at the Noburg ring in 1956, finishing fifth in his own Maserati at the age of 50. And there was Maurice Trantignan of course, who was nicknamed L'appartoulet Rat droppings after the substance that had to be cleared out of his pre-war Bugatti's petrol tank when he got it out of storage in 1945. It's unfortunate. Rat droppings. Now there's an anerach for you Matt, because the French for anerach is in fact anorach. But although Trantignan was useful enough to win the Monaco Grand Prix twice in 1955 for Ferrari, and again in 1958 in a Cooper, he and Rosier weren't at the level of the likes of one Manuel Fanjo, Albert O'ascari or Sterling Moss. But France did have one Grand Prix driver who stood out alongside the very best of the time. And that was Jean-Bérard. Tell us about him Matt. Thank you. Jean-Bérard, yes. He never won a World Championship status Formula One Grand Prix, although he raced in 52 of them, which was quite a lot in the 1950s. I mean more than Fanjo, Fanjo raced in 47. And he, Bera, stood on nine World Championship status Formula One Grand Prix podiums. But non-Championship Formula One races were a big thing in the 1950s and in the 1960s as well. and Berra 112. them, 12. He was a brilliant driver, but erratic. When he was on it, he was magnificent, leaving no margin anywhere, and no one was quicker than he on those days. But when he wasn't in the right mood, he was a bit lackluster. He was a temperamental chap, wasn't he, Richard really? Yes, he was, which is one of the things that made him rather likeable. Very much like a bit of temperament. And yes, and as I say, he left no margin, and he did have a lot of shunts as a result. He was scarred all over his body, in fact from his many shunts. Have you seen that photograph of him with the captions all over his body? He's standing wearing a pair of shorts, and there's captions pointing out each different cut, rows, and imperfection. Sounds like a bit of a collector's item to me. Yeah, you can find it online, so worth having a look at. Anyway, wherever. Yes, so he scarred all over his body from his many shunts. And you know, in the 1955 Dunn-Drod TT in Northern Ireland, his ear was ripped off in one of them, ripped clean off. It wasn't only Nikhil Aldo who had that happen. Anyway, more than that, or as well as that, Berra was famously argumentative, and he was famously fired by Enzo Ferrari for punching the Ferrari team manager, Romulo Tavoni, in the face in a restaurant at Reims in 1959, or more specifically for refusing to apologize to Tavoni for having done so. I imagine there have been a few Ferrari drivers over the years who would have liked to punch their team managers. For sure. For sure. We can either try and think of one each now, or we can do another podcast another time. I'll give you one. Jodie Schechter felt like punching Marco Pichinini at Monza in 1979, when Pichinini said, oh, by the way, there's going to be a protest. I'll calm my not be legal. And Schechter said, what? And he went, no, I was on the jogging. Which famous South African sense of humor. Schechter was not amused. He was not amused. I'm sure he felt like punching him, but he didn't, because he wasn't like Berra. Anyway, when Berra was killed at Arvuss in Germany in a Porsche, which tragedy took place just four weeks after he'd lamped Tavoni at Reims, France was left without a truly top-blind Formula One driver. And in fact, as we've already mentioned, France would go 13 years without a win in the Formula One World Championship, which is between Trantinion and Sever. Remarkable considering the interest in the sport in France. So how did France come to have so many Formula One Grand Prix winners in the 1970s and 1980s then? Well, that's kind of the subject of this podcast, and there were a few factors. But I think the one we have to talk about first is the Winfield Racing School and its associated scholarships. Yes, racing schools became a thing in the 1950s when Jim Russell, a British driver who had seen quite a lot of success in the old 500cc Formula 3 in particular, set up the first ever institution of that type at the Snetiton circuit on an old airfield in Norfolk in 1957. And the Jim Russell Racing School was extraordinarily successful. In fact, Emerson Fittipoldy, the great Brazilian double Formula One champion, came through it as did another F1 champion, Jacques Villeneuve, and so with rather less distinction, did I? That really is an anorect-fact Richard. No, I call it something quite different, but there we are. Anyway, Russell had even helped train the actors for the 1966 film Grand Prix, which we talked about a couple of episodes back. So though he might not get lots of a claim, Jim, who died in 2019 at the very impressive age of 98, was a highly influential man in international motorsport. A visionary, you might say. And not only did he help launch the careers of many British drivers of note, he also played a big part in kickstarting the rise of France's golden generation, because it was his blueprint as well as his name that was used to start the first French school of open wheel motor racing at Manicur in 1963. And it was a chap called Bill Knight, a businessman who was a racing driver in a land speed record enthusiast who was the guy to approach Russell as they'd rubbed shoulders plenty of times over the years, and indeed Bill's son Mike, who was another racer, had attended the Jim Russell School himself. The journalist Gerard Crombach, a prominent figure in the French racing scene, was involved in identifying Manicur as a potential venue for the new project. Jabi, as everyone knew him, was a very well-connected man. In 1962, he'd founded the monthly magazine Spor Rodu, which is still going today. He was particularly close to the Lotus team, and he was sharing a flat in Paris with Jim Clark when Jim died in 1968. And if you don't mind a little digression, Matt, my favourite memory of Jabi is of the time during a race weekend at Monaco in the 90s when we stroll together down the hill from the Mirabau corner to what I still insist on calling the station hairpin. He told me the story of the time when he and his girlfriend had taken the train back to Paris with sterling moss after the race. It might have been 1961 when sterling beat the Ferraris. Anyway, the three of them caught the train, and by the time they got to Paris, the arrangements had changed. As Jabi put it, my girlfriend was no longer my girlfriend. But he didn't bear a grudge. I mean, it was sterling, wasn't it? He wasn't the first person to lose to sterling. It's a great story. That's a nice way of putting it. Anyway, it's a great story. It's a great story. And I was very glad to have overlapped with Jabi in Formula One, which I did because he died in 2005. I was the editor of F1 Racing magazine at that time, and he'd actually been very helpful to me in my early days. I'd taken on the editor ship of F1 Racing in 1996, and I gave it up when I joined McLaren in 2008. F1 Racing was a new magazine in 1996, and I think maybe Jabi saw parallels between my challenges and the challenges he'd faced in the 1960s when he'd set up sport auto. He was Swiss actually, not French. He was big in France, but he was Swiss. And I remember him once sterling me. Well, I can tell you a little Jabi story as well. I can remember him once telling me about the 1936 Swiss Grand Prix, which had been won by Burnt Rosemayer in an auto union. Of course, I was there. He added nonchalantly. It may not be the best in personation, but he had that mixture of posh English and Franco file, didn't he? Anyway, your silence suggested you're not impressed. No, I'm very impressed. Anyway, he had indeed been age seven. I mean, what a life he left. That is fantastic, isn't it? He was just one of those people. You knew a bit. You saw around. You talked around. He just embodied so much of the history of the sport, particularly in the years after. For years, he held the record for the number of Grand Prix attended, didn't he? Which I think he did. Yeah, which I think has now been eclipsed, but because there are 20-something races a year, which there used to be so many fewer. Yes, it's like comparing the staff and with Fanger, isn't it? Statistics and Another podcast. Anyway, in 1963, Jabi directed the racing school people towards Manicur, which is around 250 kilometers from Paris in a very rural location, with a circuit backed by the enthusiastic mayor of the local town. The school was initially named L'École de Pilleaux-Tas Jean-Russle, but it was renamed L'École de Pilleaux-Tas, Winfield, the Winfield Racing School, in 1963, when first Bill Knight and then his son Mike took over the running of the school from Russell. I'm not entirely sure why Winfield was the name they used. I'm pretty certain it wasn't anything to do with the brand of cigarettes that sponsored the Williams team through a couple of rather unsuccessful years in the 1990s. I'm damn sure it wasn't. I think it was used by Knight in some of his other business ventures, which included a go-cart track in Moorca. Yes, and a big part of the Winfield School from the off really was this scholarship element, which essentially gave backing to the best driver each year to progress in their career. From 1963 to 1973, the award was sponsored by Shell Fuel and known as the "Vol-Ar Shell," the Shell Steering Wheel. The trophy was actually a mounted steering wheel. Then from 1974 onwards, it became known as the "Vol-Ar Elf" after the French oil giant, which sponsored the Tural team in Formula One and helped set up a Winfield School, a second Winfield School in France, at the Paul Ricard Circuit in Provasse, where it still has its headquarters, I believe. Just to say a bit more about Elf, which some people say stands for "essence". Lubri-Can français, although others dispute that and say the name was an entirely random coinage. I don't know. I'm not. Well, either elves or I'm going with Essence Lubri-Can français because it's quite logical, isn't it? Anyway, from its very beginnings, elf used motor racing as a means of promotion. And Francois Guitet, the firm's famous marketing manager, was really the driving force behind all of that. But anyway, to get back to the point, as we mentioned earlier, straight away the school started to produce drivers of some note, of some acclaim. The first winner of the volat shell was Jean-Pierre Jossou, who went on to win the Lamont 24 hours twice, and in my view, he was a much underrated driver, quick and single-seaters actually in his youth, Formula 3, etc. Anyway, the first intake in 1963 also included a guy called Johnny Servos. Servos. Servos Gavre, who was apparently thrown off the course, but was good enough to lead the Monaco Grand Prix in 1968 in a matcha before he crashed, and to finish second at Munza before an eye injury led him to retire from the sport. But a great story, when asked why he had retired so young, at just 28, in fact, he replied to devote more time to women. Anyway, the list of top graduates from the Winfield School over the next 10 or 12 years reads like a who's who of French motor racing. Where do we start? Well, Jean-Pierre Jarrier, jumper, as he was known. Jampa Jarrier. Jampa Jarrier, absolutely, was part of the 1965 crop, for example. Now, he never won a Formula 1 Grand Prix, but he started 132 of them, taking three pole positions and three third places, not bad at all. He was pretty quick. He was pretty quick. And he all, less we forget, he all but won the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix, which of course was actually won by Jill Vilner, of his maiden Formula 1 victory. But Jarrier all but won it, because he'd been deputizing for the recently deceased Ronnie Peterson in his Lotus 79. And Jarrier outclassed his teammate, who was the newly crowned Formula 1 World Champion, Mario and Dretti. And but for an oil leak, that ended his run when he built up a fine lead, Jampa would have won that race easily. But the driver who properly kickstarted the Golden Generation from Wimfield was François Sever, who beat Patrick de Paier, another driver whom we'll discuss shortly, to the Volarschel in 1966, which entitled him to a fully sponsored drive in French Formula 3 in 1967. Matt a lot of these French drivers had their share of charisma, but Sever was pretty special, even by their standards, wasn't he? Pretty special in every way, actually, Richard. Yes, I don't know whether you teed me up to say this, but yes. Handsome, handsome with famously beautiful blue eyes, charming, a fine pianist, a paramour of Bridget Bardot, who for younger listeners was of course a model, a singer and an actress, and one of the most glamorous pin-ups of the 1960s. In fact, John Lennon married his first wife, because she looked a bit like Bridget Bardot, if I remember. Is that right? But Sever got there, whereas Lennon didn't. That's absolutely right. But more relevant for us, Sever was also very quick. Now, the Tural F1 team was sponsored by Elf at the time, as we've said, but it would be wrong to say that Sever was signed because the French sponsor wanted a French driver, or they probably helped. Actually, as Ken Tural tells it, it was Jackie Stewart, his lead driver, who recommended Sever to Ken Tural as a replacement for Johnny Servos Gava, who was also spending too much time looking after women as well. They had that much in common, and naturally Elf were delighted. But anyway, Sever and his new Tural teammate Stewart became extremely good friends. Sever looked upon Stewart as a mentor, and to his great credit, Jackie accepted the role generously and graciously, passing on as much of his knowledge as he possibly could. And Francois was an enthusiastic and grateful pupil. And when Jackie Stewart told Ken Tural, privately, that he planned to retire at the end of the 1973 season, they, Jackie and Ken, decided to ready Francois Sever to take over as the team's number one driver. And that was an important role because Tural was a super successful team in those days. Sever's teammate was to be, someone we already mentioned, Jodie Schechter. So it was a wicked irony that in qualifying for the last Grand Prix of the Formula One year, 1973, at Watkins Glen, which would have been Stewart's 100th Grand Prix start. It was Schechter. Then in a McLaren, who saw ahead of him a Tural in two halves. Jodie stopped to try to help, and as I've said before on this podcast, what he saw, he's told me, "We'll stay with him forever." For not only was the car in two halves, but so was its driver. It was Sever. A very sudden end and a very sad one. But we must go on, as F-1 did at the time, and we should probably now talk about Patrick De Paix, who, as we mentioned earlier, was beaten to the annual Winfield School Award by Sever, but in the strange twist of fate that you've just described, Matt ended up filling the suddenly vacant seat at Tural for 1974, alongside Jodie Schechter. For it was Patrick De Paix, who took Francois Sever's place. Yes, it was. Patrick De Paix actually had been inspired to race by Jean Berra, his childhood hero. Both of them started out racing motorcycles, actually. And eerily, we can say eerily, De Paix would go on to suffer a similar fate as his hero, Berra, dying at the will of a Formula One car in Germany on August 1st, extraordinary coincidence, of it was a Porsche on August 1st, 1959, in Berra's case, and an Alfa Romeo on August 1st, 1980, in De Paix's case. De Paix was actually a native of Clem on Ferrand, the home of a wonderful circuit, and it was there that he competed in his first Grand Prix for the Tural team in 1972. He'd driven him Formula 3 for Alpine Renault, and then in F2 with the Elf-sponsored Big May and Techno teams. And he was already 28 when Elf's sponsorship helped him get his drive with Ken Tural. In five full seasons with Tural, he took quite a few podiums, and the first ever pole position by a French driver in a world championship Formula One race, that was at Anders Storpe in Sweden in 1974. He also took the first of his two Grand Prix wins at Monaco in 1978, when he diced for the lead with John Watson until the Irishman's Brabham started to lose its brakes. That was a great win actually in that Tural, 008, I think, Monaco, 78 for De Paix. And his second win came at Harama the following year in 1979, after he'd moved from Tural to Ligye to join fellow Frenchman Jacques Lafitte there. Then when he and indeed Lafitte were both in contention for the world championship, which was eventually won by Shecta, De Paix had a hang gliding accident, broke his legs and was out for the rest of the season. You know, De Paix was like that. He was a daredevil. He changed smoked. He took risks. He was brave in the wet and he was at his brilliant best on street circuits. But like his hero, Jean-Berr, he had no interest in living a safe life. And as you say Richard, De Paix lived near Clemond Ferrand. And here's a story on non-Grom-Pri Weekends, if the sun was shining, as it often does in that part of France in the summer, he, De Paix, would sometimes take out his Kawasaki Z900 Superbike and ride it up and over the majestic public roads that had made up the wonderful Sharad circuit near Clemond Ferrand. Wearing a pair of shorts and a pair of tennis shoes. And I mean only a pair of shorts and a pair of tennis shoes. No helmet, not even a t-shirt. And he'd ride as fast as he could, getting his knee down, apexing within inches of the rock faces that marked those apesies, apexes, bare headed and indeed a bare-topped, amazing, crazy bit amazing, don't you think? Yeah, I do, I didn't know De Paix, but I know quite a lot of people who did and everybody had very, very warm feelings about him that he was a great guy and a terrificly quick driver. He was, he was both of those things. I never met him, but anyway, I wish I had. When he came back from his hang gliding injuries in 1980, now racing for Alfa Romeo, [BLANK_AUDIO] alongside Bruno Jackamelli. His Patrick's legs were still in great pain. He struggled in the first two grumpy of that season, Buenos Aires and Inter Lagos, but his legs continued to heal and he qualified seventh at the third race, Kyle Armi. Then fantastic on street circuits, as always, he qualified third at Long Beach and by the way the alpha wasn't a well-beater. It was also very unreliable, so his race results didn't reflect those qualifying results sadly, but had he not met his maker in that test at Hockenheim a few months later, you know, he might well have led the alpha-omeo team to much greater success. Jackamelli, a gentleman who not only liked but also admired DePierre, certainly thought that and he said it publicly too. And that feels like a good time to take our first ad break. Welcome back. We've talked about two of France's golden generation of F1 race winners so far from Sassevere and Patrick DePierre, but actually two other French drivers, one grumpy, after Sassevere and before DePierre and they were Jean-Pierre Beltois and Jacques Lafitte. Now, unlike the rest of the drivers we're going to talk about today, Beltois didn't come from the Winfield School. His background was in motorcycle where he'd won several championships in the early 1960s. He was also a mechanic for the sports car team of Rene Bonnet, who gave him his first four wheel race at Le Mans in 1963. And when Bonnet's team were taken over by the expanding Mathre company, Beltois raced the new Mathre formula 3 car with great success and then moved up through Formula 2 before the team entered Formula 1 in 1968 with that epically noisy 3-litre V12 engine of theirs. He took a few podium finishes during his five seasons in the French Blue Matras, but it wasn't until he moved to BRM that he took his first and only win in the pouring rain at Monaco in 1972. That was a brilliant victory. He started on the second row, but he'd snatched the lead by the time they got to the first corner, Saint-Davart, and he stayed there for 80 laps. I'd recommend anyone to go and have a look at that on YouTube. The footage is fantastic. Yes, it is. Great win. It is. In terrible conditions, lots of people crashed, lots of others had to stop when their electric Scott waterlogged and the conditions were so bad that the winner's average speed was only 63 miles an hour, which was 25 miles an hour down on the average speed in the dry practice session. Nice and wrecked fact. I like what Dennis Jenkinson had to say about Beltois in his race report for Motorsport magazine. Quote, "The little Frenchman was inspired and driving with almost a touch of desperation, giving the feeling that he'd rather die than give up the lead of the Monaco Grand Prix." And that would also, rather sadly, be the last of BRM's 17 Grand Prix wins. There you go. Well, Beltois was capable, but he probably wasn't in quite the same class as Jack LaFite, who was the third of France's Formula One race winners in the 1970s after Beltois, of course, as you've just described, Richard, and also Severe, who'd won at Watkins Glen in 1971. LaFite was another Winfield graduate winning the Winfield trophy in 1968. Now LaFite was quick and popular. Happy Jack, he was known as, wasn't he? He was. And I know that tobacco sponsorship is unlawful nowadays, rightly so, but it was a mainstay of Formula One in the 1970s and after that too. And I can hardly think of LaFite without also thinking of Jétan. His 1970s and 1980s ligerés were beautiful designs, weren't they? Fantastic looking cars. You're particularly fond of the T-Pock one, aren't you? The JS5, the T-Pock, with an enormous high airbox. Yes, great car. But I also like the JS11, the JS1115. I can be anorac fact-ish about it. Yeah, I love those cars. Anyway, yes, they were beautiful designs and their beauty was set off perfectly by the lovely French blue and white livery of Jétan cigarette. Yeah, and I know we're supposed to disapprove of tobacco sponsorship. And of course we do, we do. But, you know, there were some lovely libraries, weren't they? They're really nice. JPS and the more bar of cars, whether they were BRMs or McLaren's. Absolutely. Or for our ears, they're one say. They're one say it. They always look good. And even the gold leaf lotuses, they were pretty as well. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, when De Paix joined Ligier, his enthusiasm for the title sponsor's products didn't need to be faked, of course, because he was a chain smoker, as I've said. But Jétan's money was important too. It was a state-owned company and its management always wanted to support French drivers. After La Fete and De Paix, Ligier ran Didier Peroni, René Arnoux, Patrick Tombay and Olivier Panis, of course, amongst others, all French drivers. Yeah, and here I think we should give a tip of the beret to Gilles Ligier, who'd been a very successful rugby player and a slightly less successful F1 driver in the mid-60s before he launched his own team. I always like the Ligier's too. They were always nice to look at and usually competitive. And they couldn't have been more French if they'd had a string of onions attached to the rear wing. I'm just visualising a 4-1 car with a string of onions attached to the rear wing. And by the way, if someone had told Colin Chapman that it would have conferred downforce, he'd have done it. It's all Gordon Murray. Or Gerard Ducorouge for that matter. Anyway, at this point we should talk about René, I think. We've mentioned the name before, but we haven't focused on it. So, speaking of René, let's move on now to the first driver to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix for René. Not a Grand Prix, obviously, that'd have happened even before the First World War. But a Formula 1 Grand Prix. It's yet another Jean-Pierre, our fourth of the episode, I think, already. Jean-Pierre Jaboui. I reckon Jaboui is one of Formula 1's most underrated drivers of all. And I'm going to cite some anorect facts to explain why. The turbocharged engines of those early Renault Formula 1 cars in the late 70s were incredibly unreliable, ludicrously unreliable. And just listen to these stats. Jaboui started 49 Formula 1 Grand Prix, finished just ten of them and scored points in only three of them. But of those three points scoring finishes, two were wins, two. And he was consistently quicker than his younger and usually higher rated Renault teammate, René Arnou, who we'll talk about soon. Here's a stat of the 28 Grand Prix in which the two of them, Jaboui and Arnou, competed head-to-head as Renault teammates, Jaboui was the faster qualifier 19 times out of 28, which is a bit of a route. Yes, that's a very telling set of statistics. And in our last episode about Gilles Villeneuve, we mentioned that Jaboui will always have a place in history for being at the wheel of the first turbocharged car to win a Grand Prix. And it was particularly well deserved since he was the guy who'd actually done the development work on the Renault Turbo. And of course, as you suggested, that was laughed at when it came on the scene in 1977. Absolutely it was. Yep, but two years later, there he was, standing on the top of the podium, celebrating that all French win. Even though most of the attention was being taken by an epic battle for second place. And it was even more appropriate his win since he'd begun his racing career 10 years earlier at the wheel of a Renault R8 Gordini Saloon. He won a second Grand Prix for Renault at the Estariche ring in 1980, but a horrible crash in Montreal at the end of that season effectively put an end to his career in the top flight. Later on, you might remember he joined Persia helping with their successful Le Mans team. Unlike some of the guys we've talked about today, he was never one of the real aces, but as I said, he has his place in history. Can I just interrupt with one little story I've just thought of about Jaboui. When many many many years later, he went to the Goodwood Festival Speed and was asked to demonstrate the Renault RS-01, which was the 1970 original Turbo Cup. Yeah, the 1977 car. He got in it, and he hadn't been in it for years and years and years. He got in it and you just saw him looking around the cockpit and then he started running his hands over the patterned controls, the Galea the steering wheel. And he had a little moment and then he looked up and he said, "Just we stay more. I am at home. Yeah, I'm lovely." One more fact about Jaboui, if you didn't already know this, he and Shack Lafitte were married to and then divorced from a pair of sisters, Jean-Vierre van Bernadette Cotta, very French somehow, sort of a bit like a Clod Shabbarol movie with extra noise and exhaust fumes. I think you should pitch that to a film company. An art movie. Yes. Anyway, moving rapidly on, as I say, Jabouh's teammate at Renault was Renault. He of the epic dice for second place at Dijoy in 1979 and we're going to talk about him next. Arnou won the Volars Shell all the way back in 1973, the final year before it switched to elf backing and in 1980 he became the latest French Formula One race winner. He was quick too and of course he won Grand Prix not only for Renault but for Ferrari too. In fact he wasn't a mile away from winning the Formula One Drivers World Championship for Ferrari in 1983, a year in which they won the Formula One Constructors title of course. Because he ended up there just ten points behind the winner, Brabham's Nelson Pique. Shall I say this? Yes I will. And of course he, Renault, was and is a much nicer chap than Nelson Pique. But that's another podcast. Maybe. Anyway, as we said on the previous podcast Arnou really had to work hard to get into F1. He was a working class slad who'd been a mechanic on other people's racing cars before kick-starting his own racing career with that Winfield trophy win. The aforementioned Jabouh Crombach was on the jury for the Volars Shell award that year and he recalled, "I'm not going to do the impersonation. I went down to a corner with Jean-Pierre Jarrier. René was the second or third guy through. We saw him arriving obviously too fast and the car went sideways and he caught it in an absolutely beautiful way. Jarrier and I looked at each other and said, "You can tell the others to go home. What a great story isn't it?" Yeah. And actually you could make a case for Arnou being the quickest driver in F1 for a period in the early 80s when the TurboCars demanded maximum commitment. His record of 18 pole positions but only seven wins probably speaks to the fact that he was super quick but perhaps not the four-package and that maybe his cars weren't the most reliable. Probably. I always think of him hunched over the wheel. His head cramed his white helmet. Yes. Yes. Great. Anyway, that feels like a good time to take our final break. Welcome back. And we've got three more race-winning drivers to talk about in the final part of the show. All of them winners of the Volarshell or Volon-ELF scholarship at Wemfield. And the first didier Péronie. Yes. Péronie was a Parisian whose interest in motor racing came about through another French driver, José Dolm, who was his cousin and also his half-brother. They had the same father and their mothers were sisters. And if that's not very French, I don't know what is. Some of these family trees are quite confusing, aren't they? Anyway, José Dolm only started one Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in 1974 and he was withdrawn from that after the accident that killed his 30s teammate, the Austrian driver Helmut König. And he was the most horrible, ghastly accident. But Péronie, his cousin or half-brother or something, had already won the 1973 Volon-ELF and he was on his way to Formula One via the Formula Renault and Super Renault series, both of which he won before he joined Tyrell in 1978. And after two seasons with the British team, he moved to Ligier, where he overshadowed Jacques Lafitte, the nominal team leader and took his first win at Zolder. Ferrari signed him to replace Jodie Schechter alongside Gio Vilner for 1981, but in the car we've previously described as a "shitbox". The one we mentioned last week, the turbocharged 126 CK, he couldn't match his teammate's two wins. They were back together at Ferrari in 1982, but a disagreement at Imola where Péronie defied team instructions and stole the last lap win from the unsuspecting Vilner, created a rift in a formerly harmonious relationship. And tragically that froid air, that cold war, if you like, between the Frenchman and the French Canadian, was still operative at the next race weekend in Belgium, where Vilner was killed in a crash during practice. Matt, how do you think all that, that tragedy and all the controversy that preceded and surrounded it? How do you think that effect of the general opinion of Péronie? Well, I think it did, it absolutely did. And it's interesting because as you've said, when Péronie was with Lafitte at Ligia, he looked super quick, as quick as you could get, outclassing or certainly shading Lafitte, the more experienced man and the absolutely been in the team forever, as you say. But nonetheless, Péronie wasn't as quick as Vilner, almost no one was. But he was very quick nonetheless, as I say. And Imola 1982 definitely soured journalists' opinions of him. And in turn, that caused many fans to think less of him too, I think. You can only imagine what it would be like if social media had been around. Just imagine it would have blown up. You would have had to log out of Twitter for, or X, whatever you call it, for about a week, because of the toxicity. Anyway, never mind. But I just want to say something in his favour, because I never met Didier Péronie, but I always remember Malbrue's sponsorship guru John Hogan telling me that Péronie was not only a very intelligent man, but also a very congenial one, a very nice man. As I say, I never met Péronie, but I'm certainly prepared to accept Hogan's view, because they knew each other very well. Anyway, after Péronie's horrible accident at Hockenheim in 1982, from which his legs never fully healed, he became depressed. Hogan told me this as well, John Hogan. He put on a bit of weight, and it gradually began to dawn on him that the central enthusiasm, if we can call it that, of his life, racing Formula One cars, was going to remain a thing of the past for him forever. And that's a very tough thing to take for someone like him, because he was another one of our French adrenaline junkies that we've been talking about, and he couldn't stand not racing something. So he embarked on offshore powerboat racing. And in 1987, in the Needles trophy race just off the Isle of White, he crashed his boat colliebre for, it was called, after it was destabilized by traversing a wave caused by a nearby oil tanker that, I mean, to my completely inexperate mind probably shouldn't have been so close to the race action. Or maybe the race shouldn't have been so close to the oil tanker. Equally, equally. Anyway, Péronie was killed, as were his two passengers, very sad. And here's an anorac fact, after Péronie's death, his girlfriend, Catarine Gu of Fashion Designer, gave birth to twins. In honour of Péronie and Vilnerve, she named them Didier and Gil. For quite a long period, Gil Péronie worked for the Mercedes Formula One team, and in fact, he stood on the podium at the 2020 British Grand Prix to collect the constructors trophy on their behalf. He now works for Ferrari, I believe, on their endurance programme. And Arbetis enjoying it, you know, the more winners. I bet he is. I bet he is. Ah, so, on, the next driver we're going to talk about is a man who was briefly, oh so briefly, teammates with Péronie at Ferrari in 1982, Patrick Tombay, the man chosen to replace your Vilnerve in the number 27 car. He was another person, and I always thought he was a bit of a man out of time. He was a gentleman driver, sort of looking the part and always nice to have around the paddock, and capable of winning a Grand Prix in the right circumstances, as he did twice for Ferrari when he helped to lift their spirits after the Vilnerve tragedy. But again, maybe not one of the true aces. What do you think, Matt? Do you, do they have any interesting memories of Tombay at McLaren, because he spent a couple of seasons there before going to Ferrari? Well, I think by the time I got to McLaren in 2008, you know, that was, that was 30 years later, really, so there wasn't that many memories from people that I worked with there. But as you say Richard, Patrick Tombay was a gentleman. But his Formula One career started haltingly. He was brilliant, actually, in a lowly enzyme in 1977. When he was hired by McLaren for 1978, sad but true, he was outclassed in a poor car, the M26 by James Hunt, who even though James was getting bored by Formula One by that time, but he was still damn quick in qualifying especially, even if the car wasn't. I think Tombay managed to out-qualified Hunt once in that entire season. Anyway, in 1979 and 1980, now facing a formidable teammate John Watson who had replaced Hunt, as Hunt had moved onto Wolf, Tombay struggled more. Now, I've just used the word formidable about Watson. I think so. I think it's fair. The McLaren's that Watson and Tombay raced in 1979 and 1980 weren't good, but time after time, what he managed to drag decent races out of them. And by the end of the second of those two seasons, Tombay had become demoralized and he was sacked. In 1981, the next season, he raced in Formula One again, first for Theodore, then for Ligye, but he got nowhere with either. I mean, at Ligye, he had eight starts and eight DNF, I believe. Anyway, then in 1982, he was called up and by the way, I think he thought his career was over at this point, his Formula One career. Then in 1982, called up by Ferrari to replace his friend because they were good friends, Jill Villeneuve, who'd been killed at Zolder, as you've said, Patrick Tombay relocated his mojo, we could say. He won at Hockenheim that year, the day after his teammate Didier Peroni had suffered career ending injuries, as we've said, and he, Tombay, was second at Monza in front of the Diffosie. The following year, 1983, also in front of a different set of Diffosie, he won at Imola. He ended up fourth in the Formula One drivers championship standings. Not too shabby. No, and I think he did a very important job at Ferrari because then Moral was absolutely at rock bottom at the time. They'd had a decent car and they'd had two great drivers in Villeneuve and Peroni did it all gone south. And he just helped. I think by his manner and his driving, he helped steady them. I think so. A combination. Yes, he wasn't going to be the next earth and center, but he was a solid, nice, professional, unflappable, good chap. Anyway, after that, he joined Renault and he bagged a few podiums, but no more wins. However, less we forget, and I'm a little bit of a closet Tombay fan. I did meet him and I thought he was a lovely guy. I met him much later when he was a commentator, TV commentator. But less we forget, he won the Cannam Championship, not once, but twice in 1977 and 1980 in Karl Hass entered Lola's, both times, Monster Cars, Great Cars, winning, get this, winning 12 of the 16 races he entered across those two years. Definitely not too shabby. Nope. So that was Patrick Tombay. And I'm sure many of our listeners will know our final name, the one that's been conspicuous by its absence up to now, and that's the most successful of all France's golden generation of drivers, Alain Prost. In truth, Prost's accomplishments dwarfed those of the rest of them. He started 199 Grand Prix between 1980 and 1993, and he won 51 of them, along with four world titles. That brought him a lot of fans, particularly among a certain group of young drivers looking for a role model. I know his combination of speed with calmness and consistency was a very big influence on Jensen Button, for instance. But Ed and Senna's fans have a slightly different view, don't they, Matt? They do. Look, let's just get this straight. Alain Prost was clearly a great driver. His record speaks for itself. He won, as you say, 51 Formula 1 Grand Prix and 4 Formula 1 World Championship. But unlike Ed and Senna, can I allow myself to say this? Yes, because it's true. He wasn't exciting. For some people, and yes, Jensen Button is one, Jensen Button famously smooth driving style, just like Prost. He did lionize Prost because of his style and his, almost his lack of showmanship. But it's hard for me to point to a Prost win that makes the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you describe it. Let me put it that way. And this is a revealing anorac fact, I think. Whenever autosport used to put Prost on its front cover, its new stand sales bombed. The sales were always dreadful. Now you may say that autosport is a British magazine, so that shouldn't be surprising. Yes, obviously. And autosport did indeed always sell well when Nigel Mansl or Damon Hill were on its front cover. But it also sold well when Atten Senna, but not only Atten Senna, also Nelson P.K., Kecky Rosberg, Gerhard Berger etc. etc. were on its front cover. The only sure fire sales flop was Prost. It's interesting, isn't it? Yes it is, and I suppose I ought to be arguing his case, but I confess I've never been a Prost fan either. He was a bit political for my taste. And I was never sure that the professor was the right sort of nickname for a Grand Prix driver or not the kind of Grand Prix driver who appealed to me. Yes, it's a good point. Professor. That's a chess grandmother, not a former one driver. Exactly. I do have a very vivid memory of the post-race press conference at Donington Park in 1993 when Senna of course produced his masterpiece of a drive to win the European Grand Prix in the rain, driving him a clarinet that was in every way inferior to Prost's Williams. And afterwards Prost was trying to explain to the press why he could only finish a very poor third. He gave so many excuses that I was half expecting him to complain about the astray in the cockpit beam and slowing him down. And I remember Senna turning to him and raising an eyebrow and saying, "We can swap cars anytime you like." Perfect. What a rejoinder. Hmm. But well maybe that's not being entirely fair. The professor was definitely quick, no doubt about that. And his winning percentage was fantastic and he was the most successful French F1 driver of all time. And if he didn't stir my blood, then maybe that's my loss. Yes, I know, but I know where you're coming from. And I don't want to upset legions of Prost fans. But I wasn't a big fan either. And I suppose this is another podcast actually. He was a truly dreadful team boss when Ligier became Prost. I mean, Amphist did out of his depth and too often, what's the phrase, "economical with the actualité." Anyway. But he was a great driver. He won four world championships. But he hasn't managed to excite either. Richard Williams or Matt Bishop would appear. Anyway, that completes our list of what we're calling France's golden generation. The ten drivers who all became Formula One race winners within an incredible 11 season run. But actually, the Winfield School wasn't done with producing Formula One drivers or indeed Formula One race winners and even a champion after that. In 1983, both Jean-Alaisy, who was French or French, Italian, Sicilian and Damon Hill, who wasn't French at all. Damonile. Damonile. Damonile. Came through the Winfield School and four years later Olivier Panis, another French Grand Prix winner, graduated as the school's top driver. And actually, Panis's victory in the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix for Ligier stood as France's last Grand Prix victory for almost 25 years until Pierre Gasly won at Monza in 2020. Anorac. Fact. I remember Panis's win in Monaco with great affection. I was there and 12 out of 22 cars eliminated by accidents on the wet track. No one hurt. Seven classified finishes and only three cars still actually moving when the checkered flag came out. Now that's my kind of Grand Prix, Marloss. Yes. And David Coolfard wearing Michael Schumacher's helmet. Was he? He was. Anorac fact. There you are. That's a standard. In a McLaren. Go and Google it. I promise you it's the case. Anyway, the significant thing about Panis, well many things, but here's one, was that he was one of the last drivers to receive support from both Elf and Saita SEITA. The government owned parent company of Jitan and Goulois cigarettes through the La Filière driving scheme. See in those days the government made cigarettes. I know. I know. I know. Anyway, Panis says he'd never have made it to Formula One without it. But when that sponsorship dried up, I mean tobacco sponsorship was banned, of course. Grassroots Motorsport in France started to suffer. When Pannis left Formula One at the end of 2004, France was left without a Formula One driver, which seemed a remarkable thing at the time. I mean, what I'm, I suppose the point I'm making is that financial backing makes a huge difference in motorsport, particularly grassroots. Yeah. Do you think we'll ever see one country have so many different winners in one decade or so again? It's a very good question. Hey, how about this, France, maybe China one day, but that's definitely another vodka. That's provocative. Well, you never know. China might suddenly grow a fantastic interest in Formula One. And I mean, one of the sports I love, much smaller sport, snooker, the Chinese have completely, well, they haven't taken over, but they have absolutely embraced it. And they've got the resources. Oh, yes, they've answered it. The number one Chinese player, snooker, is called Ding-Zhun-Wiyang. When he started, there was one snooker club with a very poxy table in Shanghai. Now there's 1,500 snooker clubs in Shanghai. So you know, if something like that happened to motor racing in China, I could see there being six, eight Formula One drivers from China on the grid in 2040. Yeah. There you are. Okay. Anyway, moving away from China, which as I say is very definitely another podcast, I'm going to give you a poser here. If you had to pick one of our golden generation of French drivers as your favourite, and I know it's not Prost, who are you choosing Richard? Who are you going to choose? Oh, that's easy. Jacques Lafitte. Happy Jacques. Nicknamed after a song by the Who, which is quite nice. And it was a good nickname because that's the impression he gave. Happy in his work, you know? Nice smile, good hair. He was the one my wife always fancy. By the way, what's this good hair business? It's not the wrong with having no hair. Okay. Luckily, we're not being televised this morning. No, no. Good hair. We were in the crowd opposite the pits at Browns hatch in 1986, in fact, when he got involved in a multiple shunt at the start, which stopped the race. He smashed into the barrier just past us and he broke both legs so badly that his racing days were over after 174 Grand Prix, that's a lot, and six wins, not bad. He was good value, was Jacques. He absolutely wasn't. You know, but he wouldn't be my choice probably if you're going to ask me to. No, I am. You're favourite. Well, it's between two. Oh, come on. Come on, the fence. I'm going to tell you why. So for us why Sever simply because he is one of the most beautiful human beings that has ever trod this earth and a great driver. But really my favourite Patrick DePierre. Patrick DePierre because of his devil-maker attitude, his gutsy determination, the fact that he came back with them very painful legs to outclass Bruno Jacques Mellie, no mug, in an alpha. And he died the way he was always going to die because he left no margin and took noble portions. And that was Patrick DePierre. I never met him, but I would have loved to have done so. The La France. And that feels like a great place to say. And colossally, that's history and bring this very galley episode to an end. Yes, and if you'd like to share your thoughts on France's golden generation or any of the other subjects we've touched on in the series, you can get in touch via podcasts at the hyphen race.com or via social media. I'm @TheBishF1 and Richard is @RWilliams1947. And remember, if you want to enjoy ad-free listening or treat yourself to some colossally merch, merchandise, there are links to both in the episode description. So that'll do it for this week. Until next time with thanks to our tireless producer Johnny Reynolds and for you for listening, it's Orovoire from me. And it's Adieu from him. And colossally, that's history.