The curse of Frenchmen in Formula One:

Of the twelve Frenchmen to win a Grand Prix since the World Championship began, seven of them have suffered career and/or life threatening injuries or died at the wheel of a Formula One car. This gives French drivers the worst serious injury rate of any competing nation to have more than three race winners, at 58.34%. So who are these unfortunate racers:

F1's first pin up, Francois Cevert.

Francois Cevert (1973 US Grand Prix - Watkins Glen): Cevert was the young, good looking team mate of Jackie Stewart at the Tyrrell F1 team. Cevert was poised to take over the mantle of team leader from the Scotsman after he was due to retire at the end of the 1973 season. The final round of that year's championship was the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in New York State. As usual that season Tyrrell were in the hunt for the race victory, but with Stewart's third and final championship already decided it was Francois alone battling Sweden's Ronnie Peterson for pole position during Saturday morning qualifying.

On a flying lap and heading through the fast "esses" section of the circuit the Frenchman's car was a little too far to the left of the track than ideal. As a consequence of being positioned in this way left his car clipped the kerb and swerved to then right into the track side barriers. It was then pitched back across the track in a spin and into the barriers on the other side of the circuit. The force of the impact as his car hit the Armco on the left hand side of the track cut Cevert's body in half from neck to hip. After his death Jackie Stewart elected to withdraw from the race as a mark of respect and missed what would have been his 100th and final Grand Prix.

Asked later about the causes of the accident, Stewart said it his belief that a contributing factor in the accident had been Cevert's preference to take the "esses" secion of the circuit in third gear rather than his choice of fourth. Taking the corner in fourth, the Scotsman felt counteracted a lot of the nervousness under acceleration that the the short wheelbase Tyrrell suffered from particularly badly through this section of the track. Cevert on the other hand chose to take that chance and benefit from the superior throttle response of running in a lower gear.

Patrick died whilst still on the comeback trail.

Patrick Depailler (Test session at Hockenheim, August 1980): Another Frenchman who made his breakthrough into Formula One with the Tyrrell team, ironically enough as the replacement for the recently deceased Francois Cevert. He stuck with the Ockham, Surrey outfit until 1978 and along with team mate Jody Scheckter famously raced the six wheeled Tyrrell P34 with mixed results. Patrick's career was dogged by bad luck and near misses during this period. He finished second a frustrating eight times before finally claiming his maiden victory at the 1978 Monaco GP. The 1979 season saw a switch to the French Ligier team who were then in the ascendancy with their "ground effect" JS11 chassis.

Sadly for Patrick his season was wrecked after he suffered badly broken legs in a hang gliding accident mid season and he was dropped by the team. He battled back to fitness though and won a race seat at the returning Alfa Romeo team for 1980. His new team's car was quick but unreliable and it was during a late season test session in Germany that a suspension failure sent him into the Armco at the lightening fast Ostkurve. His car became inverted and slid along the top of the barriers for several hundred feet. Patrick suffered massive head injuries and died at the scene.

Turbo pioneer Jean-Pierre Jabouille.

Jean-Pierre Jabouille (1980 Canadian GP - Circuit Gilles Villeneuve): Jean-Pierre's career is synonymous with the development of the turbocharged engine in Formula One. A provision for a turbocharged unit had been written into the rulebook for decades by the time Renault took the plunge with one powering their RS01 chassis when it made it's debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix with Jabouille at the wheel. The newcomer retired on lap 17 after, perhaps predictably it's turbo failed.

In it's early outings the RS01 suffered with not just unreliability but severe and at times almost undriveable turbo lag that was particularly problematic on some of the season's slower circuits. With a lot of hard work from Renault and persistence and patience on the part of Jabouille the car's problems were gradually overcome. By the 1979 season (and particularly so after the introduction of a twin turbo version of the Gordini V6 power plant) at the mid point of the year, Renault's ground effect cars for Jabouille and new team mate Rene Arnoux were now challenging for race victories.

Jean-Pierre took a first pole position for both Renault and himself the third round in South Africa that year.
The high altitude of the circuit and the consequent thin atmosphere played into the turbo engine's hands, allowing it to breath where the normally aspirated engines were gasping for air. At the French GP at Dijon Jabouille took pole and won the race to claim his maiden victory. A further pole at the Italian GP, plus two more in 1980 and a second and final win at the Austrian GP the same year were followed by a suspension failure in the Canadian race, the impact from which led to a badly broken leg for the Frenchman, just days after he had signed to race for Ligier in 1981. He never recovered sufficiently from his injuries to be competitive in Formula One again and after four failures to qualify from four attempts for Ligier he left single seat racing behind and enjoyed a successful career in sports and touring car racing during the mid 1980s.

A senseless waste of a career.

Didier Pironi (1982 German GP - Hockenheim): Didier was another driver to rise through the ranks of the state sponsored French motorsport organisation of the 1970s and make it to Formula One. He also followed what would become a well trodden path for Frenchmen in the top tier of motorsport by racing for Tyrrell, making his F1 debut for them at the start of the 1978 season. He showed sufficient speed during his two seasons there to make the step up to the more competitive Ligier outfit who had cracked the ground effect concept the previous year with their JS11 car.

He took his first victory at the 1980 Belgian GP at Zolder and impressed so much during the rest of the season with a raft of podium and points scoring finishes that by 1981 he had been installed as the legendary Gilles Villeneuve's team mate at Ferrari. During his debut season with the Maranello team he generally did not have the outright pace of Villeneuve but was less prone to throwing it off the circuit during races. For 1982 Ferrari had finally cracked ground effect and turbo technology. They had a car that was both fast yet reliable and looked set to dominate. Early in the season however at the San Marino GP and in the midst of a FISA boycott that saw only a small number of cars competing, Pironi and Villeneuve became embroiled in a last lap controversy when Didier overtook Gilles in a move that the Canadian believed went back on an earlier agreement the two had.

Villeneuve was visibly furious on the podium afterwards, vowed never to speak to Pironi again and was killed two weeks later in the last few minutes of Saturday qualifying at Zolder. The fall out from Villeneuve's death as well an incident later in the season in which the Italian, Riccardo Paletti was killed after crashing into the back of Pironi's stalled Ferrari at the start the Canadian GP seemed to adversely affect Didier's mindset. By the time of the German GP Pironi was leading the championship and odds on for the title. The race weekend was affected by heavy rain and despite already being top of the time sheets when the weather struck he continued to lap on the limit purposely during qualifying. Whilst trying to overtake Derek Daly's Williams he did not see Alain Prost's Renault hidden in a cloud of spray.

Ploughing into the back of his countryman's car at high speed caused his car to pitch into a terrifying aerial accident that had many similarities to the one that killed Villeneuve. Pironi stated that the last thing he remembered about the accident was seeing the tree tops around the circuit as his Ferrari pirouetted through the air. It smashed down nose first, badly crushing his legs. Until Pironi's last days he swore blind that the FIA chief medical officer, Professor Syd Watkins had stated that he wanted to amputate his legs to remove him from the wreckage of his accident. In the first volume of his memoirs entitled 'Life at the Limit' Watkins insisted that his never happened and was something Pironi imagined in a delirium of pain and shock.

It took four long years for Pironi to have recovered enough to even drive a Formula One car at speed again. During 1986 he tested for the French AGS and Ligier teams and whilst still quick was also still in a great deal of pain. That coupled with various other factors convinced him to turn his back on single seat racing forever and take up power boat racing instead. He was killed doing this on 23rd August 1987 when his boat hit the wake of an oil tanker and flipped over. He and his crew were all killed instantly. A few weeks later his girlfriend gave birth to twin boys who she named Didier and Gilles in honour of the two Ferrari team mates...

Laffite did more for Ligier than anyone.

Jacques Laffite (1986 British GP - Brands Hatch): Jacques spent the majority of his career in Formula One with the Ligier team, but also had a couple of spells with the British Williams team. Unfortunately for him however, both of these spells fell during periods in which Williams were far from consistent title challengers and were rarely even in the hunt for race wins. His best days as a racing driver were with Guy Ligier's team, where he took six of their nine all time Formula One race victories. His best season in the sport was in 1979 at the wheel of the ground effect JS11 with it's distinctive "teapot" style air intake.

Laffite and Ligier won that year's opening two rounds in Argentina and Brazil, but thereafter unreliability and the rest of the field overhauling the JS11's early performance advantage saw him fall back to fourth in the championship by the season's end. This was an overall result Jacques was able to equal in 1980 and 1981, taking one win the first year and two the second. A title challenge was again undermined by unreliability both years and after a disastrous 1982 he went back for a second spell at Williams after driving for the outfit in their infancy for a couple of years starting in 1974.

Two further years followed with the team from Didcot, but points were few and far between. A final spell at Ligier beginning in 1985 seemed to signal a return to form for both team and driver as Laffite took three third place finishes that season as well as two further ones by the time the 1986 British GP at Brands Hatch came around. Going into the race weekend he was tied with Graham Hill as the driver with the most F1 starts at that point in time. However, at the start of the race Jacques' car was pitched head first into the barriers by an accident on the first lap. The Ligier was the last car in the field to still be made from aluminium rather than the much stronger carbon fibre. The front end of his car was completely crushed during the impact and Laffite sustained multiple serious leg injuries. It took nearly an hour to free the Frenchman from the wreckage. In his forties at the time of the crash it signaled the end of his time as an F1 driver. He later raced in touring cars and became a commentator on French television.

Jean Alesi was dogged by bad luck and timing in his career.

Jean Alesi (Test session at Ferrari's Mugello after the first round of the 1994 season): Jean was yet another French F1 race winner to begin his career with the Tyrrell team. His first race was at the mid season French GP of 1989 behind the wheel of the Dr. Harvey Postlethwaite designed Tyrrell 018 chassis. Steady improvement from both driver and team during Jean's first year in the sport led to a couple of respectable fourth placed finishes which laid the ground work for his spectacular performances at the beginning of the 1990 season.

At the opening race of the year and driving the old 018 chassis, Alesi shocked everyone by taking on the mighty Ayrton Senna and Mclaren, slugging it out and trading places over a number of laps round the American street circuit. He eventually finished second to the great Brazilian and did so again three races later in Monaco. His early season form was enough to put him on the radar or all the top teams, despite a combination of poor reliability and insufficient development of the car due to lack of funds causing the Tyrrell's performances to fall away. He almost signed for Williams during this period and it is one of the great "what if" moments in Formula One of how Alesi's career may have panned out if he had chosen to join them at what would have proved exactly the right time, just as they began their domination of the sport through the early to mid 1990's.

As it was he followed his heart and signed for Ferrari for the beginning of the 1991 season at precisely the wrong time, just as the team from Maranello's performance hit an all time low. He struggled on gamely driving a succession of awful cars but was dogged by the appalling reliability of the machinery at his disposal, often losing out on points scoring finishes as a result. An improvement came for the start of the 1994 season with the return of John Barnard to Ferrari who redesigned the car from the ground up. After one round of the season Jean badly hurt his neck during a testing accident at Ferrari's Mugello circuit that could have ended his career in single seaters and saw him miss rounds two and three at Aida and Imola. He was back for Monaco and while Ferrari's improvement in form saw team mate Gerhard Berger win that year's accident hit German GP at Hockenheim, Jean had to wait until the following year for his one and only GP win at the Canadian round.

For once it was he who profited from the bad luck of others and managed to cross the finishing line in first place before running out of petrol on the slowing down lap. Having weathered the worst of Ferrari's early 1990's slump he was shown the door along with Berger to make way for the Schumacher juggernaut arriving at the Prancing Horse. He saw out the remainder of his career to largely diminishing returns with Bennetton, Sauber, Prost and finally in 2001 spending the last five rounds of the championship with the Jordan team after swithing to them mid season from Prost F1 before leaving Formula One for good.

Oliver's career never recaptured it's early momentum.

Olivier Panis (1997 Canadian GP - Circuit Gilles Villeneuve): Olivier made his Formula One debut for the Ligier team in 1994 and proved outstandingly consistent, finishing 15 out of the 16 races that season. To cap this superb debut year he even managed to finish second and ahead of team mate Eric Bernard at the demolition derby esque German GP which saw most of the field eliminated during a huge multiple car pile up on the first lap. That and two other points scoring finishes was good for 11th overall in the championship. The following year he improved further on this, placing 8th overall.

In 1995 he took another second place at the season finale Australian GP, despite finishing two laps down on race winner Damon Hill. He also scored two fourth places, one fifth and one sixth. 1996 did not prove to be as successful overall, however he did achieve the crowning glory of his career by winning the Monaco Grand Prix. Despite starting 14th  he carved a path through the field in wet/dry conditions and was running in a fine third place before mechanical gremlins eliminated first Damon Hill then Jean Alesi late in the race. This proved to be Ligier's last and Panis' only race win in Formula One though. However, at the end of the season the team fell into the ownership of Alain Prost and the following year racing under the Prost F1 name looked set to continue the largely upward curve of his career to date.

A series of fantastic points scoring drives early in the season including two podiums bode well, but then he broke both his legs in a head on smash with the wall during the Canadian GP. He missed seven races of the season, but was fit enough to return with three races to spare. His form never quite matched that which he enjoyed prior to his accident sadly and in 1998 he failed to score a single point. There were signs of a recovery in 1999 as his qualifying performances improved (peaking with third on the grid for the French GP) but points scoring finishes remained few and far between. Still he had shown enough to get the attention of some of the bigger teams again and was offered a test with both Williams and Mclaren.

He opted for Mclaren and gave a good account of himself, but eventually had to settle for a drive with the erratic BAR team. He stayed with them through their metamorphosis into the Toyota works team, but a succession of substandard cars made it impossible to know if his form had ever truly reached it's pre accident levels. His final season in F1 was in 2004. Since then he has busied himself as Toyota's test driver and in other formulas of motorsport, but left behind a career that failed to reach the heights that it might have...

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