Finishing in third place overall in the final standings gave little cause for celebration. Niggling problems with punctures, spark plugs and a frustrating quest to secure high quality engines had conspired to thwart his ambitions. Worse still, the man who had now become his arch-rival had made a spectacular return from the wilderness: Rene Arnoux was Formula Renault Europe Champion 1975. Promotion to the Martini-Elf F2 team awaited – a prize that would surely have fallen Didier’s way had he scooped the prize.
‘Looking back, I realise that bad luck played a big role, and I'm really bitter,’ Didier told Sport-Auto when reflecting upon his season. The thought of remaining in the lower formula while Rene moved upwards and onwards was hard to stomach. As matters stood, there really was only one viable option: another season of Formula Renault Europe, a step neither forwards nor backwards.
So where did he now stand in the Elf hierarchy? It was a question that would not go away. Just as his rivals from these golden years – Sourd, Snobeck, Dallest and several other fine drivers – would contrive to miss the cut in the scramble for entrance to the international sphere of motorsport, at the end of 1975, Didier too wondered if his career might have similarly stalled.
There was only one solution: go back to the drawing board. Team Pironi needed a fresh start. In his capacity as chief mechanic, Daniel Champion started work re-imagining the team. Engaging the services of engine specialist Bernard Mange7 (‘Nanar’) had been an inspired decision. Engine performance had improved significantly. The addition of aerodynamicist Gérard Duhomet and mechanic Jean-Louis Conré for the forthcoming campaign further strengthened the squad. Didier might have been yearning after Formula 2, but with a highly skilled technical team to back him up, not to mention another generous budget courtesy of Elf, prospects for the coming season did look extremely good. Still only 23 years of age, the young Parisian automatically became a very hot favourite for 1976.
Seven
Perfect harmony
In many ways, the season ahead would develop into a curiously anti-climactic affair. With all the munificence of Elf and Renault behind him anything less than a conclusive march towards the title would represent a serious disappointment. Not only this, but Didier was acutely aware that 1976 would be his fourth consecutive year as a Formula Renault driver, one season more than ideal.
‘It is imperative I win this year,’ acknowledged Didier. ‘I want very badly for this to be my last season in Formula Renault.’ Failure to graduate with honours come season’s end would represent a profound, if not lethal setback to his F1 ambitions. Pressure and yet more pressure. The boss gathered his new team around to deliver a pep talk:
‘We were not successful last year because we didn’t do enough when it was needed, you and me. If we do not take the title this year, Elf for sure will cut us off. There is only one escape route: to deliver a flawless championship. Full steam ahead!’
The subtext was clear enough: 1976 had become a make or break year, a must-win. A fifth season in Formula Renault was as unimaginable as it was impractical.
Poor Richard Dallest, fast, consistent and loyal to his team-mate/manager found himself out in the cold. Ecurie Elf had effectively scaled down to a single car team; nothing but nothing was going to stand in the way of their favoured son in 1976. Inevitably, resentment was never far away. It had been the case at Pilot-Elf and it was still the case in Formula Renault.
‘It is true that not everybody likes me. I regret it sincerely, but if it happens, it’s my fault,’ Didier told Sport-Auto’s Francis Reste in a candid interview prior to the start of the new season. Referring to his privileged background, the pilot revealed a hitherto carefully concealed sensitivity.
‘Sure, I have had more facilities than others, but what can I do? I chose a democratic driving school, and won. It’s not my affluence that convinced the jury.’
The suggestion that money rather than talent explained his rise in the sport clearly hurt. Didier’s response was typically abstruse: ‘I have never wanted to give proof of demagoguery and disguise my ancestry.’ Demagoguery? Not the sort of word to feature too prominently in the vocabulary of your average racing driver. Essentially, Didier was saying there was no point in hiding his wealth – to do so would just add more fuel to the fire. Better to face the cynics and critics full on. It was a battle for credibility he would face throughout his motor racing career.
Niki Lauda had bought a place in F1 before him and Ayrton Senna would do much the same after him. While the Austrian and Brazilian legends had unashamedly used family money to further their ambitions, it was a point of pride in Didier that his own career had not been financed by his own family fortune, rather the support of Elf. Of the many items that can be bought, talent is not one.
On the eve of the new season, optimism flowed through the old stone house. A communal hub to a constant stream of racing folk, the house on the corner was busier than ever. As many as a dozen people would sit down to lunch as the clock struck noon. F1 Tyrrell star Patrick Depailler bid adieu to the residents one day clutching the sketches of the team’s bespoke braking system – a Daniel Champion innovation that would be taken up by the Tyrrell Formula 1 team. Team Pironi would hit new heights of professionalism in this most crucial of years. They needed to.
It was not all work though. The gang knew how to have fun. Confrontations on the Circuit 24 Scalextric racetrack took on epic proportions. ‘Didier was exceptional, in fact he was unbeatable, I tried everything – changing cars – but nothing worked!’ recalled one colleague who foolishly agreed to take up the gauntlet of a friendly race with the remote-controlled cars. When José called by the brothers would go off into the countryside on trials or quad bikes. Upon their return, they would feast on dishes cooked up by Agnes and Daniel Champion’s wife. Although Formula 1 had always been the goal, these golden days in the unassuming little town – part of a community of friends and rivals chasing the same dream – were among the happiest days of Didier’s life.
He might have been a hard taskmaster, but Didier always balanced his fierce ambition with an impish sense of humour. At the end of the working day, the old house invariably echoed to the sound of laughter. The boss liked nothing more than to play a prank on friends or an unsuspecting guest, a light and frivolous side of Didier known only to the close-knit Magny circle.
Accusations of ‘coldness’ and ‘aloofness’ would dog the pilot all the way through his career, at least from a certain section of the press unable to fathom the Parisian’s nuances of character. ‘The truth is that I am shy,’ explained Didier. ‘It’s that I’m not sure of myself, and I always want to know what people think about me.’ Wealth had conferred privilege and with it a tendency to restraint, but it had not blunted the young man’s sensitivity – far from it. ‘I need to be reassured, and understood; unfortunately this is not always what happens. This lack of security in me is probably due to the way I was raised, and I have perhaps not been confronted with certain realities when I was young enough.’ It had indeed been a charmed life, but one according to Didier that might have paradoxically rendered him more vulnerable than he might otherwise have been.
Meanwhile, in the old shed just down the road, Daniel and the team set about furiously modifying the MK18, the latest creation to emerge from the drawing board of Tico Martini. Conré and his fellow mechanics had carte blanche to extract all they could from the MK18. As far as expertise and motivation were concerned, Team Pironi compared more than favourably with any outfit in the business. ‘An F1 team competing in Formula Renault,’ they said. A team combining the talents of Daniel Champion, ‘Nanar’ and Duhomet was one to be respected. Credit where it was due, Didier had created a crack operation of specialists in this somnolent corner of France.
By the time of the first race at Le Mans’ Bugatti circuit, the team had already considerably reduced the weight of their MK18. Competitors scratched their collective heads. Martini found himself under siege from customers demanding to know how their rivals had
managed to gain such a distinct advantage so early into the season.
‘Didier was always introducing all sorts of changes to his car,’ recalls Jean-Louis Conré, ‘whether it was brake discs, springs, ailerons with adjustable flaps, as well as the mechanical brake distributor picked up by Tyrrell.’
Working on a principle pioneered in aviation, aero efficiency was greatly enhanced with the manufacture and integration of a series of three ‘flaps’ to the car’s rear wing. Duhomet had adapted the concept from the French Caravelle jet airliner. Team Pironi had themselves a car that was literally capable of flying.
Securing a sponsorship deal with the helmet manufacturers GPA further augmented the team’s financial health. All told, prospects were looking very good. Could anyone stop the Pironi steamroller?
Old rivals apart, Alain Cudini’s return to the fray ensured nothing could be taken for granted. Nonetheless, Didier was cruising to victory in the opening race when he ran out of fuel in sight of the finish, allowing Snobeck through to win by just over a second. Sure enough, Cudini scooped the laurels at round two at Nogaro with a characteristically assured drive, but only after Didier had retired. 1976 was up and running. All he had to do now was win a race!
And oh how he did.
It was a very different-looking Didier who took the flag well ahead of the pack on 2 May at his home race at the Nevers circuit. He may have temporarily lost his long locks, but his potency had remained intact. It was the first in what would turn out to be a run of eight consecutive victories! Shock and awe: Team Pironi had unleashed their power. The competition was rocked on its heels. Monaco, Belgium, Germany – it did not matter where the series went, there could be only one winner.
Aiming for a ninth straight win on 4 July at Ricard, the Ecurie Elf finally came unstuck. Forced into the pits from the lead to reconnect a faulty spark plug connection, Didier put on a virtuoso display just for the sheer hell of it, setting and breaking the lap record no fewer than seven times in a drive, which brought him back up to ninth place. While Lauda and Hunt were ripping it up on the Grands Prix circuits during that long, hot summer of ’76, Didier was cruising. Autumnal visits to Italy resulted in effortless wins at Imola and Monza.
A team working in harmony, 1976 became a season of unsurpassed dominance. Cudini and Snobeck tried their hardest, but since the season had begun in April the result had never been in doubt. Team Pironi personnel became accustomed to ending races perched on their employer’s monocoque, lapping up the spoils of victory.
In the middle of this astonishing season, Didier had his first taste of the Le Mans 24-hour race, Elf’s idea. Falling on 12/13 June, sandwiched between races in Pau and Hockenheim (races which Didier won), the Formula Renault Europe championship leader joined a team made up of sports car ace Bob Wollek and Marie Christine Beaumont, both of whom were delighted to learn the identity of their co-driver. Didier was, after all, on a hot streak. After Beaumont broke the clutch, the trio limped home in 19th position. ‘I’m pretty happy to have been involved, despite the mechanical problems,’ commented Didier, ‘but I like to win.’
Getting to the finish line – albeit down the order – was a marginally better result than that achieved by José who had teamed up with Jabouille and Tambay in the Renault-Alpine 442. Le Mans was just another adventure. ‘A dilettante’ according to a family friend, unlike his half-brother, José never truly developed his motor racing career in any meaningful way, despite being possessed of more than his fair share of talent. It was a major point of departure between the brother-cousins.
Detour over, it was back to the bread and butter of single seater racing. Pironi and Elf duly collected their second Formula Renault title together. Say what you like about money or favouritism, theirs was undeniably a winning partnership.
It almost ended in grief, however, following another win at Albi in October. Didier had elected to fly down to the nearby La Sequestre aerodrome, thus bypassing what would have amounted to an arduous five-hour drive from Magny. After collecting his 11th winner’s trophy of this incredible season the victor took off the next morning in his single-engined craft, but high winds forced Didier to plot an alternative flight path. Together with Agnes, the pilot set off anew. Just over an hour into the flight, the young couple flew straight into a fierce storm plaguing the Haute-Vienne region. It was a hair-raising moment. The little plane was badly buffeted, Didier drawing upon all his skills to avoid a potentially serious incident. Eventually he was able to make an emergency landing outside the city of Limoges. It had been a narrow escape.
All in all 1976 had been everything Didier had hoped for. He had restored his reputation and was headed for an F2 ride with the Elf-backed Oreca team where he would once again partner with Rene Arnoux. ‘He downright amazed me,’ noted Christian Courtel when giving his thoughts on the campaign. ‘I followed that year and I have rarely met such a determination in a pilot!’8
Even the eye-catching debut of the runaway Formula Renault leader back in Dijon could not dent the sweet taste of a job well done. Such had been the progress of Pilot-Elf’s 1975 winner, Alain Prost had been invited to step up into the European series even before he had competed his first year in the sport. The 20-year-old had made quite a splash at Dijon, winning a heat and setting fastest lap on the way. In his autobiography, Prost claims he caught up with Didier in the final lap and was preparing to pass the leader when his car failed him. Whatever the truth, a very potent threat had just joined the Elf stable. Arnoux, Prost, Tambay, all products of France’s thriving junior motor racing programme and now, along with Didier, all aiming to assume the mantle of France’s undisputed number one racing driver.
On the occasion of Didier’s 12th win of the year at the season finale at Imola, Prost was looking to win his 13th race in the 13th and final race of the national championship down in Pau. A mechanical issue robbed Prost of the perfect season, prompting François Guiter to solemnly declare: ‘Neither of my two drivers are able to win all the races in their challenge! Where are we going wrong?’
In Prost, Monsieur Guiter had unearthed yet another major talent. Didier had a serious rival for the affections of Elf’s sugar daddy. For now, the two drivers moved in different circles, but only the most wilful of individuals could fail to see that these two were on flight paths that must surely one day converge.
Eight
A bigger pond: F2
It was all change at the end of 1976. After four long years, Didier was finally moving up to Formula 2. Old friend and mentor Tico Martini had thrown the young driver a lifeline for which Didier could hardly express his gratitude.
‘My greatest professional satisfaction,’ he later told Johnny Rives, ‘is the end of 1976 when I knew I was going to F2 with Tico Martini and Hugues de Chaunac. Tico is the person who knows me best and I believe is most able to pass judgement on me. It made me happy to know that Tico was doing everything for me to be on their team.’9
Although the Elf-Martini F2 team also had its base in Magny, the newly crowned Formula Renault Europe champion deemed it prudent to move away from France’s motorsport ‘village’. Didier wished to promote himself as an international driver. The time was ripe therefore to take a step back from this epicentre of French motorsport, to pastures new. Magny had served its purpose. The old team were disbanded. Daniel accepted an offer to join Renault’s fledgling F1 team as assistant to Jean-Claude Guénard. It wasn’t easy, breaking up this bohemian family after a three-year adventure where loyalty and friendship had seen them through the good as well as occasional bad times.
Overnight, the dynamics of Team Pironi had irrevocably changed. Stepping up on to the next rung of the motor racing ladder meant leaving behind the relative parochialism of what was in effect a cottage motorsport enterprise with Didier as its patron. Rightly, he had sensed the danger of inertia.
The young couple settled in Chantenay-Saint-Imbert, a small town 20 miles south of Magny. A loan secured, Didier and Agnes moved into an old farmhouse set withi
n lush green meadows. After three years of hectic living in that old stone house of multi-occupancy, here was an oasis of calm. Several months of hard work restored the building to its former glory.
On the competition front, 1977 would test the young lion’s abilities to the maximum. Counting amongst its ranks the likes of Arnoux, Cheever, Rosberg, de Angelis, Giacomelli and Daly, F2 was a hotbed of motor racing talent. Fields were further enhanced by guest appearances from current F1 drivers Mass, Laffite, Regazzoni and Jones. Ever the mercurial nomad, even José popped up for a one-off appearance in Renault colours at Rouen. And with Chevron and March heavily involved, Martini would not have things all their own way in the chassis department either. On the engine front, BMW, Hart and Ferrari could boast power outputs to rival the 300hp of Renault’s own V6. Ultra-competitive, cut-throat even, Formula 2 was the ultimate challenge not only of a driver’s speed, but also character, temperament and resolve.
The question uppermost in the mind – at least in the French media – was the question of which of the Martini-Elf drivers would prevail, Arnoux or Pironi? A season of F2 already under his belt, Rene had an undeniable edge. As was the case with their Formula Renault duel of two years earlier, a greater prize loomed on the horizon. It was hardly a secret that Renault and Elf had been preparing to embark on a campaign to crack F1 itself, 1977 being the year their prototype yellow and black ‘teapot’ was scheduled to debut on the Grands Prix circuit. While F2 was a useful training ground, Formula 1 was the goal. The Regie’s involvement in F2 these past two years had merely been preparatory work prior to launching their future project. Provided they performed as expected, the two young guns currently employed in its F2 team could surely dare to dream of an F1 ride in yellow and black colours. It was a tantalising prospect.
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