Pironi: The Champion That Never Was
David Sedgwick
First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
© David Sedgwick, 2017
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eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-340-0
Front cover: Bernard Bakalian
Back cover: Nicolas Cancelier
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Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
One – The castle at Boissy
Two – Wild thing
Three – The golden child
Four – Leader of the pack
Five – Enter the American
Six – Didi et Rene
Seven – Perfect harmony
Eight – A bigger pond: F2
Nine – Monte Carlo or bust
Ten – Stepping up
Eleven – Under uncle Ken’s wing
Twelve – Hero of France
Thirteen – School of hard knocks
Fourteen – Royal hussar
Fifteen – The French lieutenant’s Ferrari
Sixteen – Riviera days
Seventeen – In Villeneuve’s shadow
Eighteen – President Pironi
Nineteen – Calm before the storm
Twenty – Much ado about nothing: Imola ’82
Twenty-one – Summertime blues
Twenty-two – Hockenheim
Twenty-three – A love of infinite spaces
Twenty-four – The long road back
Twenty-five – Limbo
Twenty-six – The habit of perfection
Twenty-seven – Thus ends this strange, eventful history
Twenty-eight – Forever 28
Notes
Bibliography
Photographs
Foreword
The day I first came across the name ‘Didier Pironi’ is still clear in my memory. A 12-year-old schoolboy, I had just blown my entire week’s pocket money of £1 on a sticker album intriguingly entitled Formula 1. Save for a sketchy idea that Formula 1 had something to do with car racing, I knew next to nothing about the sport. I did, however, know that I loved collecting stickers (5p per packet of 5) and above all else placing them carefully into the albums provided by the Italian company Figurine Panini. Usually such albums were dedicated to football. Everton and especially Liverpool football club stickers had particularly high currency at my Merseyside primary school. Breaktimes would invariably find a gaggle of schoolboys swapping and bartering stickers with as much fervour as if on the floor of the London Stock Exchange. But Formula 1? An unknown. I believe I was the only boy in our school to have this sticker album.
Villeneuve, Andretti, Reutemann… just seeing those names – strange, foreign, exotic – was enough to hook me. However, there was one name above all others that intrigued me: Didier Pironi. ‘What a great name for a racing driver,’ I thought. I would repeat those six syllables over to myself, Di-dee-ay Pe-ro-nee. I loved the sound of that name. To me it seemed to perfectly encapsulate this strange, faraway world and the dashing heroes who inhabited it.
Anxious to find out more about this new sport, in that same year of 1980 I broke open the piggy bank to purchase my first F1 book, Grand Prix, a huge, lavish publication, the illustrations of cars, drivers and circuits having left such an impression on my young mind that I can still see them today. Indeed, one particular line of text written by motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck stood out: ‘After a race has finished,’ wrote Roebuck in his portrait of Didier, one of 20 such driver profiles, ‘you will find Pironi, showered and relaxed, watching the razzmatazz around him with a faintly mocking smile…’ A faintly mocking smile! This Pironi character sounded my type of hero – detached, ironic, cool. I liked the sound of him. I wanted to find out more.
In swift order, my hitherto blue bedroom plastered with all things Everton – mainly its star players – went red – not the red of rivals Liverpool FC I hasten to add, but Ferrari red. I had found myself some new heroes. Thanks to a consignment of back issues of the legendary Grand Prix International magazine (sourced from a local second-hand bookstore), I was able to decorate my bedroom with all things Ferrari. Nightly I imagined myself sat in the cockpit of one of these incredible machines, imagined myself as Didier Pironi or team-mate Gilles Villeneuve flying around Monza in my very own Ferrari.
When Didier crashed so horrifically at Hockenheim in August 1982, it signalled the end of not only his career but also my ability to follow him. In the pre-internet age keeping up with news of Didier was all but impossible. Save for a few occasional lines in Autosport, British motorsport forgot all about the Ferrari daredevil who had come within touching distance of the world championship. How I ached for news. Even then as a 13-year-old, I felt a sense of injustice: if only he had not gone out on to the German circuit that treacherous morning. If only. I was, however, alone in my angst, football being the only topic of conversation among my school friends.
Instead, I cheered on Arnoux and Tambay – Ferrari’s new drivers – during 1983 but it was not the same. Besides, I had started to become aware of another driver currently making waves in British Formula 3, another daredevil, of Brazilian extraction, Ayrton da Silva…
And so, gradually, Didier faded away. I still thought about him from time to time, wondered what he was doing, but in the absence of any media interest I had no alternative but to abandon any hope of hearing about him again. Until, that is, in August 1987. I can still remember that Sunday morning, a grey overcast day in Merseyside as I rode my bike through town. I also remember the shock upon picking up the newspaper in a friend’s house the following morning. Didier was on the front page of the British tabloid The Daily Express. Didier? But why? Hardly daring to look, I read the account of the Colibri accident with a trembling hand. Until that moment, I had not even known that Didier had been pursuing a career in powerboating, let alone racing in the south of England that fateful weekend. I was numb. I suppose it is how one feels under such circumstances, a realisation that somehow, however irrational, you have lost a little part of yourself. Didier was gone. It seemed unfair, cruel. Somewhere in my adolescent brain I guess I had been holding out some hope one day of cheering him on once more in Formula 1, perhaps of even meeting him face to face. I felt inexplicably sad.
The years passed by. New heroes came and went in Formula 1. I followed the career of that British Formula 3 driver now going by the name of Ayrton Senna. Didier would sometimes appear in the musings of Autosport’s Nigel Roebuck such as his 1986 book Grand Prix Greats in which the journalist penned some illuminating portraits of his favourite Grand Prix drivers. I was intrigued when Mr Roebuck mentioned that he had often been asked to write a fictional novel with a Formula 1 setting, and that if he ever did embark on such a project more than likely he would model the hero of his book on none other than the life of Didier Pironi. Not Senna? Lauda? Clearly, there was more to Didier than met the eye.
Like Mr Roebuck, I too have been hibernating an idea of my own. What if I could write Didier’s actual biography? I would then be able to fill in the gaps so to speak, to satisfy the curiosity that has always lingered and first took hold of a 12-year-old schoolboy 30-odd years ago. Would it even be possible? In summer 2014 I decided to test the water. Thus, I was very heartened when an article I wrote about Didier (‘August is the Cruellest Month’) attracted a fair bit of interest when it was published by Motorsport.com. Feedback seemed to suggest that I was not the only one interested in this remarkable individual.
A few years on, hundreds of articles and almost as many interviews later (or so it seems) I have finally arrived at my destination: Pironi: The Champion That Never Was. It has been a long and arduous task, a detective story which as well as leading to some dead ends has, occasionally, led to some moments of pure serendipity. While far from exhaustive, my hope is that this current book manages to provide at least some insights into a man whose life was a rollercoaster ride of triumph and tragedy, a life lived on the very edge, a life always and forever lived at full throttle.
David Sedgwick
Liverpool
May 2017
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to members of the Pironi-Dolhem and Weffort families, without whose help and blessing this project would not have been possible: Gilles and Didier, Catherine, Laurence, Thibault, Marie-Annick and Moreno.
For kindly sharing their memories of Didier and those golden years I would like to thank all of the following: Jean-Pierre Jarier, Jean-Louis Schlesser, Derek Daly, Jean-Pierre Jassaud, Jean-Rene Popot, Gianfranco Ricci, Eric Lucas, Gilles Klein, Piercarlo Ghinzani, Eleonora Vallone, Andrea de Adamich, Beppe Gabbiani, Ingo Hoffman, Jean-Louis Conré, Eric Bhat, Jean-Pierre and Phillipe Paoli, Francine – partner to the late Dr Letournel, Christian Courtel, Philippe Streiff, Jacques Laffite, François Mazet, Steve Leyshon, Brian Lisles, Allan de la Plante, Stephane Fruitier, Aldo Cichero, Just Jaeckin, Eric Lemuet, Mario Hytten, Dario Calzavari, Philippe Lecouffle, Gilles Gaignault, Fred Opert, Allen Brown of OldRacingCars.com
Special thanks to John Walker, one of the UK’s leading authorities on offshore powerboating, and upon whose work much of the chapters on offshore racing are based.
For kindly loaning their images to the project, special thanks are due to Pascal Auffrere, Emmanuel Zurini, Bernard Bakalian, Laurence Villaume-Dolhem, Bernard Asset, Denis Briot, St Tropez magazine, Jurgen Tap, Eric Lemuet, Christian Courtel, and Jeff Lehalle.
A special mention to Paul Reidy, secretary of The Royal Motor Club Poole, who kindly provided a copy of the official Colibri accident report.
The following list of publications were also invaluable: Grand Prix International, Motoring News, Car and Driver, Autosprint, Auto Hebdo, Autosport, Motorsport, La Stampa, L’Equipe, L’Automobile, Sport-Auto, Le Parisian. I am also indebted to GEO and Paris Match who granted permission to quote extensively from two superb articles, ‘Le Risque et le Passion’ and ‘Pironi: Sauve par l’amour’, respectively.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life!
Ulysses (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
One
The castle at Boissy
Our story starts in rural Italy, to the north-east of the country to be exact, in the years that followed the First World War. In common with customs and beliefs of the time, the family of Antonio Weffort increased its number annually with the addition of yet another child to an already burgeoning brood. Eventually, the family would number 14 children in total, all boys! In common with other families in the region, the Wefforts eked out a living from the land, but with so many mouths to feed times were tough.
Italy in the early 1920s was a country characterised by austerity. In the aftermath of war, food rationing was just one of many hardships endured by a bruised and battered population. Inflation spiralling out of control, it had even been necessary for the government to set a fixed price for bread. This volatile economic situation would lead directly to the infamous 1922 March on Rome, a revolt that would catapult Mussolini’s fledgling Fascist Party into power. For Italians, these were uncertain times.
Antonio’s second-born son, Giuseppe was just one of hundreds of thousands of young Italians facing an uncertain future, more so for those inhabitants of rural areas like Friuli, the region of north-east Italy bordering present-day Slovenia and Austria, and which the Weffort family had called home for well over a century. Like his brothers, Pepi – as he was known – had been born under the flag of Austria during the period when the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been in the ascendancy. At the outbreak of war however, 18-year-old Pepi had fought on the Italian front against the might of that very empire.
Upon his return home, Giuseppe promptly married his sweetheart Santa. The birth of three daughters consolidated a marriage that would last the rest of the couple’s lives. Eldest daughter Ilva was born in 1919, Imelda in 1923, while Maria (b. 1921) did not survive infancy. The joy of fatherhood was, however, tempered by the economic realities of the times. Italy’s transformation from poor relative to leading economic powerhouse was still several decades away. For a man with a wife and young family to support, the chronic shortage of work in post-war Italy would have been of serious concern. Labouring and agricultural work, where it did exist, was invariably poorly paid, and anyway Pepi had always been ambitious. His thoughts thus turned to France, to Paris.
The prospect of steady, relatively well-paid work abroad had been luring Italians from their homeland for a century and more. The United States, Germany, France, Argentina, the natives of Virgil’s golden land had never been afraid to seek a better life elsewhere. Stability, perhaps even prosperity awaited those willing to take the plunge. There was, however, a price to pay: the heartache of leaving loved ones behind. Indeed, by the time of Giuseppe’s departure from Italy in the mid-1920s, several branches of the Weffort family were already established in faraway Brazil where they continue to prosper to this day. Leaving the tightly knit community of Villesse would be a wrench, but it was a price that Pepi and others must have thought worth paying.
Busily establishing itself as the cultural cradle of the modern world, the Paris of the roaring twenties was a city of innovation and creativity – an ideal location for a young émigré intent on making his way in the world. Post-war gloom shed, the city was blossoming. Writers such as Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway had made the city their home. Picasso was also resident. Paris symbolised a new energy surging through the continent, a heady brew of optimism and opportunism that would continue throughout the decade right up to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. It was into this dynamic hub that Giuseppe and his young family arrived.
Initially, Pepi took work wherever he could find it. Paris in the 1920s was a city in the process of reinventing itself, many of its buildings and tenement blocks being in drastic need of refurbishment. This was also the era of Art Deco. Demand for labour – immigrant labour – was high.1 Over time, the young Friulian worked hard. As their fortunes increased, the family was eventually able to move out to the suburbs where Pepi formed his own company, Sud Est Travaux (South East Building).
Around this time – towards the end of the World War Two – Ilva met a dashing young man by the name of Louis Dolhem. The couple fell in love and married. Soon enough Louis had joined the family business, bringing his own not inconsiderable talents to the table. Intelligent, resourceful and urbane, Louis’s abilities combined with those of his father-in-law enabled Sud Est Travaux to expand ever more rapidly. In 1944 Louis and Ilva welcomed a son, Louis Joseph (José) into the world.
Louis’ antecedents are somewhat obscure. Save for the fact he seems to have originated from northern France, his family background is indeed rather sketchy. For here was a young man who conducted his affairs with the utmost discretion. If he tended towards reserve – on occasion reticence – such dispositions were more
than offset by action and endeavour. As far as Louis was concerned actions spoke louder than words, a tendency both his sons would come to share. In his youth, he had harboured ideas of racing cars, but strapped for cash had been unable to pursue his motor racing dreams. Instead, he had taken up long-distance cycling. Events such as the gruelling 156km Montceau-les-Mines race attracted not only amateurs such as Louis, but also the likes of Jean-Jacques Lamboley who would progress to national and world championship glory. Competing was in Louis’s blood, another trait that he would pass on to both his sons.
Cycling achievements aside, he first comes to prominence during the Second World War when fighting for the French resistance. After capture by the Nazis, the resourceful young man promptly escaped from Dachau concentration camp riding a bicycle disguised as a German soldier! A little while later he became a prominent figure in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI), the resistance groups who did so much to aid the allies from 1944 onwards. Louis became commander of the Livry-Gargan group taking part in and organising espionage and sabotage activities that involved a high level of personal risk; bravery – yet another quality he would pass on to his progeny. While performing these critical duties he made contact with another young man of equally fierce independence and patriotism, Charles De Gaulle. The two men would remain connected long after war had ended. Later, as his political ambitions increased, Louis would become acquainted with the great and good of French politics including future president, Jacques Chirac. War hero, athlete and businessman, Louis undeniably oozed charisma. In post-war Paris, the name of Louis Dolhem was one to be reckoned with.
Post 1945, business was booming for the Franco-Italian enterprise. Amongst their many other gifts, Italian émigré and French freedom fighter were imbued with a definite entrepreneurial bent. Ably supported by the female half of the family, Louis and Pepe steered Sud Est to ever more prosperity. At its peak in the 1960s, the company would boast a workforce of several hundred, many of them, like Pepi, Italian expatriates to whom the firm were only too happy to offer employment.
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