#topic: driver profiles

[flymula1]

It's February 22nd, which means this is, among other drivers according to the homepage of StatsF1, the birthday of Niki Lauda! Aka the most powerful and notable rat in history (very positive).

I scanned a batch of magazines today because I didn't have anything that seemed like it fit for the occasion, until I came across this in issue 295 of Auto-Hebdo, from November 1981, which featured not only the official announcement of Niki's comeback to F1 with McLaren for 1982, but also an interview of the man himself. It has highlights such as "death has never made me shiver even once" and "I'm ugly and I know it".

Happy birthday Niki! I promise you're not ugly.

[flymula1]

This article, named "Rising Stars", is from Sport-Auto issue 201, from October... 1978. I'm not kidding, I'm not mistaken about dates - fellow nerds will recognize the racing suits and cars featured on the photos in the article.

What more can I say? It's from October 1978. I can tell you about the contents - two interviews, same questions for both drivers, their hardships with debuting in F1, choice quotes on top of the pages. But all of this pales in comparison to this article's very existence.

[flymula1]

It's February 24th, and you know what it means: it's time for me to post something about Alain Prost again, since it's his 71st birthday today!

I happened to stumble upon the perfect thing for the occasion by batch-scanning magazines again, and it's this article from Sport-Auto issue 239 (December 1981), named "Alain Prost: An Astonishing Prodigy", which was apparently written by Keith Botsford from the Sunday Times, but which was translated for a French audience. As you can tell by the length of the post, it's mucho texto, but I'm not posting here for that - well, it's interesting, I'm sure someone here will be glad to read it, but since an English version must exist out there already, it's less rare than what I usually post per say.

I'm of course posting it for the pictures, like have you seen these photos? Some of them are just for this community!

Happy birthday, Professor!

[flymula1]

So, forty years ago, on October 6th, 1985, the long-enduring curse of France never getting a single driver of theirs an F1 championship title was finally broken by Alain Prost - to this day still the most succesful French driver in F1 history.

I, uh, don't own anything from 1985. Perhaps I should, but I don't. So, instead, I have an article from Sport-Auto issue 217, dated February 1980, that introduces (or reintroduces) the readers to their newest French driver in F1. Alain had already debuted by that point, and had even scored his first championship in his very first F1 GP in Argentina, but the article is nonetheless introducing him as an F1 driver now, after having followed him since his Formule Renault days. He even gets to talk about how he got to McLaren, replacing fellow Frenchman Patrick Tambay there.

Notable thing: the line "Watson like a big brother".

Happy 40th anniversary to your first title, Mr Professor!

[flymula1]

While rescanning issues whose scans I had lost, I stumbled upon this that I hadn't scanned the first time around. This is a two-page article named "The Brazilian Wheat Which Rises", from Auto-Hebdo issue 282 (September 3rd, 1981) and it's about a young kart driver, who recently, debuted in single-seaters named Ayrton da Silva.

Yes, da Silva. Have you never heard of him? Or his Brazilian-flag-inspired helmet?

The guys over at Auto-Hebdo did guess one thing right, and that this young kart driver would soon join the names of Emerson Fittipaldi, Carlos Pace and That Other Guy of Brazilian motorsports. It's insane how much they called that, because Ayrton wasn't even going by the name he'd end up famous under, and he was just in Formula Ford at the time. French motorsports publications dind't really pay that much attention to it, usually, since Formule Renault filled that role in France at the time.

All in all, insane pull, and that's from the same issue as - ah, I'll repost it later. I scanned it better this time and, truth be told, I was always sad my first post about this issue flopped, so you're getting two posts today. Courtesy of this article driving me insane.

[flymula1]

It's a bit of a random pick for a post, but the front page from that article has caught my attention over and over again, so I may as well give it to y'all.

This is "Jody Scheckter: a Champion Ill at Ease", from Sport-Auto issue 223 (August 1980). You can guess by the title, picture and date that this is about Jody's Bad, No Good, Terrible Formula One Season, where French journalist José Rosinski got the occasion to tell French motorsport enthusiasts all about the struggles of a man you'd barely hear about in the land of the baguette, which includes a couple of quotes.

This article mentions the reason for its timing: Jody had just announced he'd retiring from racing at the end of the season, which as we all know, kind of got us to why this blog exists (that and my weird fixation on the 99 French GP). In the meantime, have a midway retrospective! In baguettese. Typical flymula1 blog fair.

[flymula1]

A short but interesting post for today - "Jody Scheckter: A Year in Elf-Tyrrell" from Sport-Auto issue 154, from November 1974, written by none other than Sport-Auto's main guy, Gérard Combrac. In it, Jody tells us about his first season in the team, how it was compared to his previous seasons in F1, his relationship to Ken Tyrrell, etc. The last paragraph is the opposite, with Ken Tyrrell speaking about how he even ended up hiring Jody, it's quite cool actually!

And the main photo serves a lot.

[flymula1]

I'm bald and don't have shit for Eddie Cheever's birthday scanned and it's late so I can't pull out my stash, so have something that has nothing to do with it - a quick section of Sport-Auto issue 154, from November 1974, which is named "Fangio's Heirs". It's mostly about Emerson Fittipaldi and Carlos Reutemann, as you can see, both for Emmo's second title and Carlos being then fairly new to F1. Oh, how time flies.

It also features a quick summary of the 74 season and a snapshot of the 1975 list of teams with their drivers, oh my...