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Former Formula 1 Driver Jabouille Died At The Age Of 80
Former French racing driver Jean-Pierre Alain Jabouille passed away at the age of 80. Double F1 race winner and two-time Grand Prix winner Jabouille was the one who took Renault’s first-ever Formula 1 win at the French Grand Prix at Dijon-Prenois in 1979 with a turbocharged engine.
This success was not only a milestone for Renault but was the first-ever grand prix win for a turbocharged engine. Throughout his career in racing, he raced around 55 Formula One Grands Prix and has raced for Alpine, Matra, Sauber, and Peugeot.
The driver and engineer Jabouille’s death was quite heartbreaking news for the fans of the racer. He was closely associated with Renault for whom he contested in most of his grand prix.
Know More About Former Formula 1 Driver Jabouille
On Thursday, the Renault-owned Alpine team paid tribute to the late racer commending that Jabouille spearheaded Renault’s journey into F1 in 1977 with his resilient and dare-to-do mindset. They even remarked Jabouille as a humble racing driver, brilliant engineer, and a pioneer of their sport
The Paris-born 80-year-old racer started his career in racing in the 60s and made his debut in a one-off outing in European Formula 2 at Hockenheim in 1968. He was around 26 years old by this time and hadn’t made his international single-seater debut yet.
Later, he became a test and development driver with the Société des Automobiles Alpine manufacturer. And with this, he started his first Le Mans 24 Hours in the same year and began a run of 14 appearances at La Sarthe that extended over a quarter of a century and even managed to achieve the podium four times.
Jabouille’s success after joining Renault helped him for the second time when he achieved another triumph at the Austrian Grand Prix. He acquired six pole positions and with this, he put a stop to his Formula 1 career with 21 points.
And after retiring from the position as an F1 driver, he continued as a team manager of Ligier for a few more years. Later, he started to work as a motorsport boss at Peugeot.
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In 1980, he took two poles and even won the Austrian Grand Prix. But due to a suspension failure while participating in the Canadian Grand Prix, he was injured with a broken leg. This incident occurred right after the racer signed a contract with liger in the year 1981.
Jabouille was born in Paris, German-occupied France on 1 October 1942 and has worked with Frank Williams Racing Cars, Surtees, Tyrrell, Renault, and Ligier. Because of the injuries he had in his career during the early 80s, he couldn’t participate in the first two races of the 1981 season.
And after testing his physical stability, it came to know that he wasn’t ready to get back on track as he failed to qualify for two of his four attempts. As a result, he made the decision to retire from Formula One and in 1982 he became manager of the Ligier/Talbot team.
Retiring from Formula 1 racing, Jabouille returned to racing by half of the 1980s diving the French Supertouring Championship. He even joined Peugeot in order to support the design of their sports car program at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
And in 1994, the Paris-born former Formula 1 racer succeeded Jean Todt, a French motor racing executive, and former rally co-driver as director of Peugeot Sport. But since he wasn’t very successful in this field he was taken over in 1995. And after this, Jabouille found his own sports car team in the ISRS.
