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Get up to speed with the new generation of French F1 drivers
After a relatively quiet few years in Formula One, France is once more heavily represented in the sport thanks to a new generation of drivers including Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon.
There’s a Gallic flavour to F1 at the moment. There are four Francophonic races on the calendar, including a resurrected French Grand Prix; Renault are returning to form; and there's a glut of drivers who are either French or owe their place on the grid to the country's racing programmes.
Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly, who will be driving for Red Bull Racing in 2019, and Racing Point’s Esteban Ocon are the only Frenchmen racing in Formula One in 2018, but Geneva-born Romain Grosjean, who holds dual Swiss-French nationality and races with a French licence, and Charles Leclerc, who is Monégasque, also graduated through the French racing set-up.
In a field of just 20, that’s an awful lot. So what is France doing right?
Pierre Gasly pondering his move to Red Bull Racing (maybe)
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
In the past, it wouldn’t have been questioned. France is the ancestral home of motor racing and there have always been French drivers. The numbers have fluctuated over the decades but the presence was always steadfast.
During F1’s pomp at the start of the turbo era, French single-seater racing had a golden generation all of its own, fielding six or more drivers with regularity. In 1980, four of those drivers scored F1 victories – all of them driving for French teams. And Alain Prost, the future four-times world champion, was not one of them.
But nothing lasts forever and eventually French influence faded. Prost retired in 1993. Jean Alesi and Olivier Panis took solitary victories after that, but the party was over. French drivers of the past had graduated through a grassroots karting base, internationally renowned driving schools, and a strong national Formula 3 class, often with scholarship funding from largest French firms.
As sponsorship from the likes of Elf and SEITA – the state-owned French tobacco monopoly – dried up, so strength at the grassroots level declined. When Panis bowed out of F1 at the end of 2004, the sport was left with a grid shorn entirely of French drivers.
“I think I was the last driver supported by Elf and Gitane Blondes,” says Panis. “If I didn’t have those sponsors I would never have made it into Formula One. We had fantastic support from Elf and SEITA, who were really keen to put French drivers in F1. Nobody really replaced that sponsorship, which is why we have lost tracks and a lot of junior series.”
Romain Grosjean
© GEPA pictures/Red Bull Content Pool
Since Panis’s departure, and a French-free 2005, there has been a gradual recovery. Franck Montagny, Sébastien Bourdais, Jean-Éric Vergne and Charles Pic have all carried the tricolour onto the grid, while Jules Bianchi, who raced for Marussia in 2013 and 2014, was tipped for greatness before his untimely death in 2015.
These drivers, together with Grosjean, and now Ocon, Gasly and Leclerc, haven’t risen to the top of the heap in isolation. The governing body of motorsport in France, the FFSA, has been more active at the grassroots over the last decade. The French mega-corporations, haven’t returned in force, but there have been other paths for young French drivers to take.
Esteban Ocon (right) during the 2015 GP3 series
© GEPA pictures/Red Bull Content Pool
Esteban Ocon, third on the grid in Belgium, has perhaps the most dramatic story to tell. Convinced of his talent, Esteban’s mechanic father Laurent invested heavily in his son’s future, selling the family home to finance his racing. The following years saw the family living out of a caravan, leading a nomadic existence as they travelled to and from karting events across Europe.
“I'd come out of school, get into our truck and we’d drive 13 hours to Italy to a race track,” says Ocon. “I wasn’t running around everywhere like the other kids, playing football and that kind of thing. I was staying always with my dad, working on my kart, building the tent. We did everything ourselves.”
Ocon won the French Cadet Championship and the KF3 title. Aged 14, he was runner-up in the WSK Euro Series, and talent-spotted by Éric Boullier, then CEO of the Gravity Sport Management stable and later team principal of the Lotus (Renault) and McLaren Formula One teams.
Gravity bankrolled Ocon’s path into single-seater racing, culminating in European F3 Championship victory. It nearly ended there for Ocon, but the youngster convinced Mercedes' F1 executive director Toto Wolff to bring him into the fold. He seized the opportunity with both hands and won the GP3 title at the first time of asking before moving to F1 via a brief stint in DTM.
Charles Leclerc on top of the podium
© GEPA pictures/Red Bull Content Pool
Working much like the A&R department of a major record label, the driver management agencies invest heavily in these young drivers, guiding them to the right seat and bearing the cost of expensive junior racing in the hope of a return later in the drivers’ career.
While Grojean and Ocon had backing from Gravity, Leclerc followed in the footsteps of Bianchi at Nicolas Todt’s All Road Management agency.
“My job is to find the best talent,” says Todt. “I like to find the diamond that needs polishing. I did that with Jules, and now with Charles Leclerc. I signed him when he was 13. He was in go-kart but had no more funding to continue. Many people thought very highly of him, though – including Jules Bianchi. I funded him in karting, then he did FR2.0, F3 and then GP3, where he joined the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2016.”
In-house junior programmes have largely replaced those academies bankrolled by sponsors, with teams – particularly (but not exclusively) works teams – choosing to grow their own. Grosjean had assistance from a previous iteration of the current Renault Sport Academy. Leclerc and Ocon have taken their final steps into F1 with the Ferrari Driver Academy, and Mercedes Junior Driver Programme respectively.
Pierre Gasly, however, has had a slightly longer association with the Red Bull Racing Junior Team. Part of the programme since 2014, he's the latest in a long production line that boasts six drivers in the 2018 F1 field.
Gasly won the GP2 title in 2016, but Red Bull Racing didn’t have a seat waiting in either of its teams for 2017. Pierre was duly packed-off to race in the Japanese Super Formula series.
"That year was really challenging,” he says. “I was going to Japan at least once a month, always going for a week or 10 days. I was also going to all the F1 races as well, and doing simulator work for Red Bull. I think I did 115 flights last year! But I just wanted to give everything I had. I took it as another chance to learn and to improve myself as a driver.”
“It’s so much work, but I enjoy it so much and, for me, life could not be better than it is now,” he says. “I think all kids dream about driving these cars and, to be honest, it just gives me such a great feeling to go out on the track and fight to be the fastest."
Pierre Gasly before his ninth-place finish at the Grand Prix of Belgium
© Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
