Nico Rosberg celebrates victory at Suzuka in 2016

I raced in Formula 1 for five years at a dangerous time when you knew that at least one driver on average would probably be killed or maimed each year. The 1982 season, however, stood alone as a time when the sport was changing fast and drivers were strapped into projectiles that were just downright dangerous. It proved to be one of the wildest years ever.

For me, getting the Williams drive was a fantastic opportunity, but my season as Keke Rosberg’s team-mate turned out to be a bit of a mish-mash. I showed plenty of promise, but in the end I didn’t get the results. I’ve often wondered why – and never really delved deep into the reasons until writing a book.

My first race with Williams was the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder. During qualifying, Gilles Villeneuve was killed when he tried to pass Jochen Mass during his final do-or-die qualifying run. Villeneuve was perhaps the bravest driver in Formula 1, driving for the greatest racing team of all, Ferrari. However, in a fit of rage, following his team-mate Didier Pironi’s reneging on an agreement in the previous race at Imola, he allowed circumstances to dictate his behaviour and pushed just a little too far.

Formula 1 car rear view with Fly Saudia wing passing under Shell sign, black and white photo. — His debut race for Williams was Round 5 at Zolder – and a case of rear-brake lock-up syndrome

I was sitting in the pitlane when the red flag came out to stop the qualifying session. Nobody really knew what had happened because in those days the pitboxes didn’t have live television coverage. Through my helmet intercom I could hear Frank Williams in discussion with various people. His chief designer, Patrick Head, informed him that Villeneuve was “out of the car”. What we didn’t know at the time was how he got out of the car.

Keke led the race until a mistake on the last lap, caused by worn tyres and locking rear brakes, let John Watson through to win for McLaren. While I was running sixth, the same dreaded rear-brake lock-up syndrome that the team had been fighting struck me. The Williams FW08 was a lightweight, short-wheelbase, go-kart type of car that was prone to locking its rear brakes. I could see that Eddie Cheever was catching me in his Ligier and I braked a smidge too late on well-worn tyres. Just as with Keke a few laps later, the rear wheels locked and I slid off the road. It wasn’t a good debut.

“I suddenly saw that Pironi’s Ferrari was right in front of me”

The highlight of my 1982 season was the Monaco Grand Prix. I have always considered that the reason I didn’t win the race can be traced back to the first practice session. At one stage I was fastest in that session, before my Cosworth engine blew up. As the spare car was set up for Keke, the team rolled its fourth car (our test car) up to the pitlane for me and began to do some final preparation on it. I was never as comfortable and never as fast in that car. I qualified eighth, two places behind Keke. When everything has to go right to win in Formula 1, my destiny had already been compromised by being forced into that fourth car.

Formula 1 car number 5 with Saudia and TAG logos cornering as marshal holds flag, black and white photo. — Daly was among the points in the Detroit GP

LAT Images

After what happened in 1980, I was far too careful at the first corner and Nigel Mansell – another dreamer like me but one who went on to become world champion – slipped by in his Lotus. That became a big issue because it took me a long time to get past him. I remember catching Keke, and then, almost in slow motion, I saw his right-front wheel hit the kerb at the harbour chicane, breaking the push-rod, and the wheel begin to wave in the air as he slowed and retired from the race.

Lap after lap, I was so focused and on the limit – maybe even a bit over the limit at times because I viewed myself in catch-up mode. I could feel the car dancing across the road as I pushed harder and harder.

“As the season unfolded, the missed opportunities piled up”

When rain came with just three laps to go, I thought I could take advantage, because I was always good in the wet. The track was slippery and unpredictable. I remember seeing Alain Prost’s Renault, which had been leading, smashed in the middle of the road. What ultimately ended up costing me the race was a half-spin at Tabac corner. I was so sideways that my rear wing hit the guardrail, but the impact actually got the car straightened up and I continued on my way. I hardly missed a beat and didn’t lose any positions.

However, the knock at Tabac had severed the rear wing from its gearbox mount. I didn’t realise at the time that the oil cooler for the gearbox was attached to the wing, so as I continued round the lap, the gearbox oil pump was now depositing the all-important lubricant onto the track.

Formula 1 car number 5 with TAG and Mobil logos racing past blurred grandstands, black and white photo. — Daly’s Italian Grand Prix didn’t even last the first lap after being hit by Roberto Guerrero

LAT Images

Back then we had no radio communication between the pits and driver during the race. When I passed the pits, I could see Charlie Crichton-Stuart, Frank’s friend, waving at me to slow down because the team knew that the gearbox, without oil, would probably fail before the chequered flag. My oil spill helped me momentarily because it caused Riccardo Patrese to spin out of the lead in his Brabham. Patrese never knew why he spun until he read an interview I did 30 years later. We’ve laughed about it many times since. After Patrese’s spin, Didier Pironi’s Ferrari and Andrea de Cesaris’s Alfa Romeo had brief spells in the lead until they both had problems, Pironi with a misfiring engine and de Cesaris running out of fuel. And so, although I didn’t know it, I took the lead!

Going through Rascasse to start the last lap, I could hear the gearbox making noises. Without oil, it finally cried enough and my car ground to a halt – one lap shy of winning the Monaco Grand Prix. It was a dramatic race with numerous potential outcomes in that final period. I stepped from my car not knowing that I was leading, nor of course knowing that I would never race in Monaco again.

Three weeks later, Pironi qualified on pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. He stalled his Ferrari engine at the start, causing mayhem as everyone tried to navigate around him. From my position of 13th on the grid, I could see that something unusual was happening, but from so low to the ground in the car I couldn’t see what it was. I was probably in third gear doing well over 100mph when I suddenly saw that Pironi’s Ferrari was stationary right in front of me. If I didn’t do something drastic, I was about to smash straight into it.

With racing engines screaming all around me, I didn’t have time to think and could only react. I yanked my steering wheel to the left and just missed Pironi’s car. In a breathless, subconscious blur, I somehow managed to avoid catastrophe. At the very moment I realised the imminent danger, Mansell was starting to draw alongside me on my left. He saw what I saw, and his mental processing told him what I was about to do to save my life. In an almost synchronised panic move, he yanked his car left as well, perfectly timed with my avoiding action, and we both swerved around the potential crash in unison.

Three Formula 1 cars racing Monaco street circuit with marshal holding flag, black and white photo. — Nigel Mansell leads Daly in Monaco – the one that got away

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Riccardo Paletti wasn’t so fortunate. He was towards the back of the grid and doing about 120mph when he came upon the stranded Ferrari. He didn’t have enough time to react and his Osella slammed into it. He suffered massive injuries and, just as the rescue workers and doctor reached him, his car exploded into flames because of a ruptured fuel cell. Paletti’s mother was in the grandstand and saw her son’s life end without him ever having completed a race in his Formula 1 career and just two days before his 24th birthday.

I was struggling to match Keke in qualifying and the trend continued at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. In the race I ended up a lap down with nothing to show for my efforts except for an on-track tussle with Michele Alboreto in his Tyrrell. After the race he charged into my pit and took a swing at me, shouting, “Bastardo… next time I keel you.”

He was mad that I’d raced him so hard down the front straight and into Tarzan corner. The tussle went on for many laps and I wasn’t going to make things easy for him. Eventually I squeezed him as much as possible until we touched, and we both spun. After we gathered ourselves up, I finished fifth; he was seventh. He was livid and wanted a piece of me.

Matt Bishop: How many F1 titles would Didier Pironi have won?

Didier Pironi’s devil-may-care attitude brought tragedy and disaster to his short career. What could he have achieved in an alternate version of his story? asks Matt Bishop

5th August 2025

By Matt Bishop

Just four weeks later, at Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix, Pironi’s career ended violently while trying to pass me during untimed practice in wet conditions. Having qualified his Ferrari on pole position, he was testing a new prototype rain tyre for Goodyear and was over 2.5sec quicker than the next car. He was demonstrating superb pace given the conditions but made a slight misjudgement.

I was following Alain Prost’s Renault down the high-speed straight heading towards the stadium section. Pironi was catching us both. I presume all he saw was a big ball of spray. Perhaps he thought there was just one car creating the spray. As we approached the stadium right-hander, I pulled over to the right indicating that I was slowing and going to the pitlane. I can only surmise that he thought the road was now clear and he accelerated past me before realising that I was following Prost. He didn’t have time to brake sufficiently and smashed into the back of the Renault.

Two Williams FW07 cars with Saudia and TAG logos in busy pit lane, black and white photo. — Daly and Rosberg, pits, British GP

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As the season unfolded, the missed opportunities piled up. At the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch I finished fifth when really I should have been on the podium. I made a pitstop for new tyres and was delayed because my tyres were somewhere other than ready to go on my car. I think Keke had stopped twice and took my tyres. This was typical of the type of support I was now receiving from the team because of the strong focus on Keke.

A week later at the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, I was running strongly, ahead of Keke, when I got a puncture. Frank thought that my soft-compound tyres had just gone off and elected to put me on the harder compound. That effectively killed my lap times. During qualifying at Hockenheim, I lost a front wheel on my out lap with new qualifying tyres fitted. This was a terrible mistake by the team because, at last, I was now using a more powerful Cosworth engine.

Williams had commissioned specialist engine builder John Judd, who built my Formula 3 engines, to create a single-cylinder test-bed engine to the exact measurements and specifications of a Cosworth DFV and try to modify it to get more power. Judd’s efforts were successful and, when incorporated into a race engine, delivered an extra 40bhp. This was big stuff. That much extra power would transform the outcome of every qualifying session and every race. Because the supply of these engines was limited, only Keke usually got them.

At the next race in Austria, I lost another wheel, a rear one, which caused me to switch to the spare car. At this stage of the season, it was obvious that attention to detail was sorely lacking on my car. Again I was slated to use one of the more powerful Judd-modified engines but it misfired off the startline. Someone hit me and the knock broke part of the suspension. I should never have been in that position to get hit in the first place but, with the wheel falling off my regular car, I was again forced into the spare and that caused my potential good result also to ‘fall off’.

I never out-qualified Keke until we got to the Swiss Grand Prix, held at Dijon in France, but it wasn’t a legitimate effort. There was a section of the track where, if you missed your braking point, you could simply go through the run-off area and rejoin after a massive shortcut. I was running about 6sec behind Watson when I went through this run-off area. I stopped my car and waited for Watson to pass before resuming, now only about 3sec behind him. By the time I flashed across the start/finish line, the electronic transponder timing system had no idea what had happened, and my sizzling lap time was officially registered.

To get away with something like that, a confluence of circumstances had to align. Normally when a car missed a chunk of the track, the flag marshals posted there would report it to race control via radio, and the lap would be deleted. My guess is that the marshals’ post at this particular position didn’t have a radio connection, or it wasn’t working properly, and consequently a quirky qualifying time was recorded forever. At the end of qualifying, I told Charlie Crichton-Stuart what had happened and he immediately insisted that nobody tell Keke. Ironically, Keke scored his only win of the season that weekend.

Close‑up of Formula 1 driver in cockpit wearing Daly Ireland helmet and orange gloves, black and white photo. — Was Daly given equal footing at Williams with the team hellbent on Rosberg winning the title?

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Unfulfilled promise continued at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza when Roberto Guerrero clattered into the back of me at the first chicane immediately after the start. That left just the final race, in Las Vegas, where I was again at a disadvantage without the more potent Judd engine. I had a good run to finish sixth while Keke’s fifth place allowed him to claim the world championship title.

I often wondered whether the playing field was level for me. I’d raced against Keke Rosberg in Formula 2 and never had trouble being at least as fast as him and mostly faster. Yet, in qualifying in the Williams I wasn’t even close to him. I didn’t suddenly forget how to drive and, likewise, Keke didn’t suddenly unleash something he’d never displayed before.

In Detroit, Patrick Head said to me that the team would have to work harder to get me qualified closer to the front. He recognised that my lap times during the races were much closer to Keke’s and often better. Those words were hollow because he never followed through to ensure that I at least had a fair shot.

Unfortunately, I never clicked with Patrick like Keke did, or certain other drivers did. I don’t think he ever liked or respected me. I still remember an off-the-cuff remark he made about me ruining his aluminium chassis with salt residue because I perspired so much. Al Unser Jr tested for Williams on one occasion and also came away with a dislike for Patrick.

Keke was undoubtedly lightning-fast, but he didn’t suddenly gain that ability during qualifying. I often wondered why I appeared to struggle. I don’t know the full answer, but after some careful research I have a good idea.

At the end of my Formula 1 career, a lingering question hung over me for years: how did Keke Rosberg suddenly appear to get significantly faster than me in qualifying in ’82? Many years later I delved into the numbers.

“Williams was slowly killing off my F1 career by favouring Keke”

At Williams I competed against Keke 12 times. To all intents and purposes, he out-qualified me every time, if I overlook my illegitimate lap at Dijon. Frank Williams invested heavily in engines because by this time turbocharged engines – as used in 1982 by Brabham (BMW), Ferrari, Renault and Toleman (Hart) – definitely had the advantage. When he commissioned John Judd to modify the team’s Cosworth DFV engines, the result was the impressive power increase. It wasn’t until the seventh of my 12 races, in France, that I had use of a Judd-modified engine complete with its game-changing chunk of power in the back.

The 1982 season was also the year of underweight cars. There was turmoil going on between the turbo-equipped teams and the normally aspirated teams in a bid for supremacy and the weight limit of 580kg favoured the turbo teams. Some normally aspirated teams found a way to circumvent this limit. As the rules in place at the start of the season allowed cars to be replenished with cooling liquids after qualifying and the race before being weighed by the scrutineers, Brabham and Williams came up with the idea of ‘water-cooled brakes’ as a means to run lightweight cars that were way under the weight limit. First used at the Brazilian Grand Prix, this trick involved fitting a water tank that was quickly emptied – supposedly for cooling the brakes – once out on track. In Brazil, water-cooled brakes allowed Nelson Piquet to win on the road for Brabham (still with a Cosworth engine early in the season) and Keke to finish second for Williams.

Formula 1 car number 5 with Saudia and TAG logos racing past spectators, black and white photo. — Daly survived the season, but the casualty rate in ’82 was high, leading to regulation changes

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Although water-cooled brakes were banned before I got to Williams, there was still an understanding that the new short-wheelbase Williams FW08 was able to run underweight.

As Niki Lauda observed, the problem with the water-cooled brakes saga was that Frank’s new car was too quick too soon, and its times in Keke’s hands got tongues wagging. If it had been only, say, 20kg under the 580kg limit, perhaps nothing would have been said, but the advantage was much more than that. When the water-cooled brakes were banned, the advantage was still there, but not as much as before. Anyway, the lightweight cars were built and available for combat, and it was common knowledge that Williams had one of the lightest and used it often for key laps. How else can you explain Keke’s speed during qualifying?

An overall view of my season at Williams could be summed up as poor qualifying. That meant that in the races I got caught up in other people’s accidents and had to strain the car and tyres too much too soon to try to get good results – just like in Formula 1 today. But why was I suddenly so bad in qualifying? Remember, I already had a track record against some of the fastest drivers in Formula 1, as with Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jarier when we were teamed together at Tyrrell in 1979–80.

In our first race together at Zolder, Keke was 2.3sec faster than me in qualifying, but his fastest race lap was 0.2sec faster. Why wasn’t he able to produce the same scintillating form in the race? Being 2.3sec faster in qualifying is impossible unless my car had something seriously wrong with it – which it didn’t. If Frank thought I was 2.3sec slower than Keke, he should have fired me – but he didn’t.

At Detroit, my third race with Williams, he was 2sec faster than me in qualifying, yet only 0.06sec faster in the race. Although on that occasion I was told that my car had a broken shock absorber during qualifying, the pattern was nonetheless the same. This race was held in two legs because of an early red-flag stoppage. I performed strongly and actually caught and passed Keke in the second leg, but the deficit from the first leg gave him a finishing position ahead of me, fourth to my fifth.

At Brands Hatch, one of my favourite tracks, he was 1.4sec faster than me in qualifying, but I was a second faster than him in the race. He didn’t forget what to do overnight and, likewise, I didn’t bring a bag of magic with me on race day. No one knew Brands better than me and certainly not Keke. No one in Formula 1 was 1.4sec faster than me at Brands in equal cars. If Frank thought that I was, in addition to what happened at Zolder, he should have sacked me there and then. He would have been justified.

Instead, when I look back today, Williams was slowly killing off my Formula 1 career by favouring Keke so heavily. Williams’s original driver choice for the No5 car, Carlos Reutemann, ended his own career with his sudden retirement two races into the season, and then his replacement driver was also systematically marginalised by the team.

At the French Grand Prix, Keke was a second faster than me in qualifying, but his best race lap was slower than mine. What might explain his meteoric form in qualifying? Was there a special (lightweight) qualifying car and more powerful Judd-modified engine available to him? Knowing what the facts scream, most people would say: “Yes.” It appears that my career was being sabotaged.

In race trim I was faster than Keke in Monaco, Canada, Britain and France. In Detroit, Holland and Germany, my race fastest lap was less than a tenth slower than his. By the time of the last race in Las Vegas, chatter about a lightweight qualifying car for Keke was pretty open. The secret was out. Las Vegas was an anomaly as I was 0.53sec slower than him in qualifying and 0.46sec slower in the race.

Considering that I lost a wheel during qualifying in Germany and again in practice in Austria, would it not be fair to question car preparation on my side of the garage? Then there were two first-corner collisions that took me out in Austria and Italy, both instances where my handicapped qualifying performance put me further down the grid and in a vulnerable position in the first-lap mayhem.

I believe the facts show that Frank and Patrick sacrificed my career and the constructors’ championship for focus on Keke. On reflection, in one key respect this didn’t make sense from the financial point of view because, just as it is today, most of the prize money was paid according to finishing position in the constructors’ championship.

I understand that I wasn’t their first choice for the seat – Reutemann was – and in a situation like that I was always going to have to do something special to win over their confidence. With what I now believe happened, however, that was all but impossible.

Extracted from Serial Survivor, by Derek Daly, published by Evro Publishing, on sale in May priced £60 ISBN 9781918070033

Nico Rosberg celebrates victory at Suzuka in 2016

Matt Bishop meets: Olivier Panis

Olivier Panis has always struck me as a man of charming contradictions. Whenever I have met him, which has been often over the past 30-odd years, particularly during his Formula 1 career, he has always been polite, warm and funny. He is the sort of fellow with whom dinner is washed down with good claret and, now that he is retired, might easily drift into immoderate laughter over a second bottle.

Yet beneath the easy grin lies a hard edge. He was fearless in a racing car and, by his own admission, he is capable of real steel when circumstances demand it. In his F1 heyday he was also, shall we say, not entirely averse to the occasional airborne celebration – those who flew home from grands prix on Air France in those days will remember the business-class cabins sometimes becoming rather lively places once the champagne corks had begun to fly.

He was also quick, very quick, but fate offered him only one genuine shot at grand prix victory. When that moment arrived, in the wet-dry-wet 1996 Monaco Grand Prix, he seized it with both hands. Three decades later his bittersweet tale still has the power to shock: unlikely triumph in Monte Carlo followed 13 months later by near-tragedy in the Canadian Grand Prix. He has plenty to say about both those days.

Young child driving small vintage go‑kart on paved surface near building, black and white photo. — Oliver Panis behind the wheel at four years old; despite the smile, it wasn’t fast enough for him

Sygma/Ercole Colombo via Getty Images

But, first, let us go back to the beginning. He smiles as he recalls the boy he once was. “I was a good kid, quite quiet, pretty easy-going, not naughty, but I never liked people giving me shit. I’m still like that actually” – and there, straight away, you see evidence of the hard edge and the real steel that I mentioned earlier.

He was born in Lyon, the son of a mechanic. “I have one sister, four years younger than me. My father is 85 and my mother is 80. My dad, Philippe, ran a garage. I spent a lot of time there when I was growing up, helping him. I fell in love with cars very young. We were working on normal cars, not fast cars: Renaults, Peugeots, Citroëns.”

Formula racing car number 12 with Elf and Gitanes logos speeding on track, blurred background, black and white photo. — Runner-up in French Formula 3, 1991

Despite the humdrum nature of the motors on which young Olivier was cutting his automotive teeth, motor sport was also part of his environment. “My father did some hillclimbs in a Ferrari [a Cegga Ferrari V12 to be precise], which he bought from a guy in Switzerland, Georges Gachnang, starting in the late 1960s, soon after I was born. So I was exposed to racing from very young, and I first tried a go-kart when I was just four years old. I didn’t like it much, because it was a kids’ go-kart, pretty slow. But six years later, when I was 10, when I tried a faster kart, I loved it, and I was immediately quite good.”

“At Interlagos in 1994, only one F1 driver came up to me, welcomed me, and that was Senna”

The father-and-son apprenticeship that followed was classic grassroots motor racing. “My dad was my kart mechanic for three years, I started getting podiums and wins, and when I was 13 we were contacted by Tony Kart. I raced a gearbox Tony Kart after that, entering the world championship, and the best driver I was racing at that time was [Gabriele] Tarquini. Actually, I was heading for the world championship one year, 1982 I think it was, but my engine exploded on the second-to-last lap. I was always super-unlucky in karts.”

He was a teenager in the golden age of French F1, when Tricolores seemed to flutter everywhere in grand prix paddocks. “I loved all the French guys in F1 at the time – and there were so many – [Alain] Prost, [Patrick] Depailler, [Jacques] Laffite, [Jean-Pierre] Jarier, [Jean-Pierre] Jabouille, [René] Arnoux, [Patrick] Tambay, [Didier] Pironi – but at that time, in my teens, I didn’t know much about any other series to be honest. So my heroes were those French drivers – then, a bit later, [Ayrton] Senna of course and also [Nigel] Mansell. I always loved Mansell.”

formula3000_spa_podium_avon_winner — A first taste of racing success arrived in 1993 when Panis won the International Formula 3000 title with DAMS – including a Spa win

When he finally made it to F1, one of those heroes made a quiet gesture that he has never forgotten. “When I started in F1, at Interlagos in 1994, only one F1 driver came up to me, welcomed me, and was interested to say hello to me, and that was Senna. That meant a hell of a lot to me, and I can say that he was a brilliant driver – obviously – but also a fantastic person. Honestly, he was one of the best human beings I ever met in F1.”

Before that, Panis’s journey through the junior formulae had been brisk and purposeful: French Formula Renault champion in 1989, runner-up in French Formula 3 two years later, then the big one, the International Formula 3000 title in 1993. “Up to then I’d been supported by Elf, Gitanes and Gauloises in Formula Renault and Formula 3, then the cigarette sponsorship laws changed, so before the 1992 season [Jean-Paul] Driot [the DAMS boss] asked me how much budget I had. Well, I didn’t have enough for Formula 3000, and I told him that. But he told me not to worry, and he arranged support from not only Elf but also the French government, then he said to me: ‘You have one year to learn, and one year to win. If you don’t win in the second year, you’ll be going home.’

“I ended up P14 in qualifying. It was painful. But I said, ‘Don’t worry. Tomorrow we’ll score points’”

“It was tough, but it was fair, and I did it – and, after that, the Elf guys arranged for me to have a Formula 1 test at Paul Ricard, with Ligier, against [Éric] Bernard and [Emmanuel] Collard. So it was a shootout. I was quickest, and Ligier chose Éric and me to race for them in 1994.”

formula came in 1994 — A shift up to Formula 1 came in 1994, with Panis showing his potential with a second-placed finish in the German GP – his first F1 points in the bag

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Thus began Panis’s F1 career with Ligier, a once sporadically brilliant team now well past its prime. “Well, 1994 was hard, because Ligier was in a bad situation financially by then, and my contract was race-by-race, so I never knew whether I was going to race each weekend until just a few days before. But I did an OK job in those circumstances, especially for a rookie. I learned fast and Éric was a fantastic team-mate, older and more experienced than me, and he helped me a lot. At Hockenheim I finished second, my first F1 podium, which was a bit lucky but still great, and I also scored points in Budapest and Adelaide, so when [Flavio] Briatore then bought the team he gave me a proper two-year contract for 1995 and 1996, because he said I’d been doing a good job.”

Momentum came. “Yes, ’95 was a good season – second in Adelaide and I delivered good points finishes in Barcelona, Montreal, Silverstone, Budapest and Suzuka.”

Then there was Monaco in 1996, that improbable Sunday in May when chaos, bravery, instinct and a pinch of providence collided magnificently. “In the two races before Monaco –Nürburgring and Imola – I’d failed to finish. But before Monaco I’d been testing at Nogaro, working on high-downforce configurations with the Ligier guys and engine driveability with the Mugen-Honda guys, and I thought our car was going to be not too bad for Monaco. So I was confident that I’d be able to score points, but no more.”

“Alain Prost was a fantastic world champion, but being a team principal is a totally different thing”

Practice suggested promise; qualifying delivered frustration. “In first practice I was sixth – pretty good – then in second practice only P13, but the car still felt OK. Then in quali we were unlucky. In those days you had four sets of tyres, and four quali runs therefore, and I was right up there after the first run. Then I had an electronics issue on the second run. We tried to fix it, but we couldn’t, so that spoiled my third run as well. We had a spare car, but [Pedro] Diniz [Panis’s Ligier team-mate] had crashed his race car so he was in the spare car. I was waiting for my chance to have a go in the spare car, then Pedro crashed that, too. So I ended up P14. It was painful. My engineers were upset – one of the Japanese guys was even crying – but I said, ‘Don’t worry. Tomorrow we’ll score points.’ To be honest I only said it to try to lift their spirits.”

Ligier JS43 car number 9 with Gauloises logos as driver waves French flag in victory, black and white photo. — Jubilant Panis at the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix, with flag, having started from 14th on the grid

LAT Images

The next morning the clouds hung low over Monte Carlo. “Overnight they’d found and fixed the electrical problem, and the next day I was quickest of everyone in the warm-up. I said to my wife, Anne, ‘I’m going to get a podium today.’ To be honest, she laughed at me, because no one gets a podium at Monaco from P14 on the grid.”

What followed will go down in history as one of the sport’s most remarkable races. “It was wet at the start and, after being quickest in the warm-up, I was very confident, in spite of the rain. I asked to have the car completely full-up with fuel, so as to be able go long on the first stint, which the engineers thought was a bad idea, but I persuaded them. At the start the track surface was very slippery, but the car felt good, I felt good, and I overtook half a dozen cars very early on – [Mika] Häkkinen, [Martin] Brundle, a few others too – and there were plenty of shunts ahead of me.”

Three Formula 1 drivers on podium with trophies, center in Parmalat suit raising cap, black and white photo. — Monaco was Panis’s first and only F1 win; just three cars finished the race, with David Coulthard and Johnny Herbert trailing

Then came the crucial moment. “Around lap 30, the track began to dry, and I saw that [Damon] Hill, who was leading in the Williams, was making a pitstop to switch to slicks, and I said, ‘I want slicks now.’ The engineers weren’t convinced, but I insisted. So we made a pitstop, and I went back out onto the circuit in P4, behind Hill, who was leading, [Jean] Alesi [Benetton] in second, and [Eddie] Irvine [Ferrari] in third. Everyone knows how hard it is to overtake at Monaco, but I thought I’d have a chance against Eddie. I grabbed it at the Loews hairpin, and it was a risky move, because nine times out of 10 you end up in the barrier if you try to overtake there, but I managed it, so now I was third, with more than half the laps still to run.”

The race, as so often in Monaco’s labyrinth, was far from finished with him. “After that, I said to myself, ‘Wow! I’m in P3,’ which I could never have predicted, so I decided to start pushing very, very hard. Then, on lap 39, I saw smoke again, and it was Hill, whose engine had blown, and my engineer said, ‘Be careful on Damon’s oil.’ But by the time I’d heard that message it was too late, and, at the exit of the Tunnel, I’d spun on Damon’s oil. I was so lucky. I did a 360-degree spin, I hit nothing, and I got going again. So now I was in second, behind Alesi, who was now leading.”

Racing History

The times Ferrari raced in F1 without their iconic red livery

Let’s revisit the times that Scuderia Ferarri didn’t run its iconic red livery, and instead opted for blue, yellow and even green

19th July 2025

By James Elson

Then fate intervened again. “Twenty laps later Alesi stopped with suspension damage, and I was in the lead. But [David] Coulthard [McLaren] wasn’t far behind me, so I had to keep my speed up.” Fuel anxiety added one last twist. “A few laps from the end, my engineer told me I was running low on fuel, and that I would need to make a splash-and-dash pitstop. I said, ‘No way!’ We had a discussion, and I said, ‘No, I’m leading the Monaco Grand Prix. Maybe I can win it. If I splash and dash, I definitely won’t win it. Tell me how much fuel I have to use per lap, and I’ll drive to make it work.’ And, lap by lap, I began to work out how to make it work – changing gears early, not using sixth gear at all, lifting and coasting, all that – and I also knew that the two-hour-limit rule would apply. The race was scheduled for 78 laps, but the two hours came after 75 laps. That helped us, and we won.”

Two team members in Gauloises uniforms smiling and lifting large trophy together, black and white photo. — Panis and Prost, Spanish GP ’97

Gilles Levent/DPPI

Even the victory lap was touched by theatre. “On the parade lap, as I drove down towards Mirabeau from Casino, a French guy stepped onto the track and gave me a French flag – Le Tricolore – and I waved it as I drove around the rest of the lap, then I stopped in the pits. When, later, one of our mechanics tried to fire up the engine, he couldn’t do it, because the fuel tank was completely empty. So I was a lucky boy in many ways – I nearly spun off, I nearly ran out of fuel – but I’d won the Monaco Grand Prix, and it was a special day. It was a special day in many ways in fact.”

“There was a lot of potential at Toyota. We had good resources, good facilities and good people”

How special? “Very special. Look, I don’t want to compare myself to Senna – never – but that day I think I felt a little bit like what he described when he drove that amazing pole lap at Monaco in 1988. You know: an out-of-body experience almost.”

His win changed everything. “Oh yes, totally. Everything was different for me after that. Everyone in F1, and outside F1 too, suddenly saw me in a new light. It changed my life completely, honestly.”

The following year began brightly with Prost Grand Prix, which was Ligier renamed. “Yes, that 1997 Prost was a really good car – well, let’s be honest, it was basically a Benetton copy – and that 1997 Bridgestone was a really good tyre. So that could have been a very good season for me.

“Actually, I could have won in Barcelona that year. I was in second place, 10sec behind [Jacques] Villeneuve’s Williams with 15 laps to go, and catching him fast, when I came up to lap Irvine’s Ferrari. Even though the marshals waved blue flags at him, he didn’t let me pass him for seven laps, and by that time he’d delayed me, and Villeneuve was now 16sec ahead. I drove like crazy after that – flat-out – taking 1.5sec per lap off Jacques, but by the end I was still just over 5sec behind him. That should have been a win. I went to see Eddie afterwards, and I said, ‘That was ridiculous.’ He laughed, then he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ But, you know, that was Eddie.”

Two Gauloises Formula 1 cars racing side by side with Marlboro banners in background, black and white photo. — By 1998, Panis was driving under the Prost banner alongside Jarno Trulli, but neither driver had much trust in the car

Sutton

At that stage the F1 drivers’ standings looked improbably promising. “I was lying third in the world championship as we arrived in Canada. Could I have been champion that year? No, I don’t think so, but I would have done well, a few podiums, perhaps a couple of wins. Maybe I could have finished in the top three.” Instead came a crash in the 1997 Canadian Grand Prix, violent enough to fracture both his legs and threaten his entire career.

“I always knew this sport was dangerous. Where I crashed was a high-speed section of the Montreal circuit, and both my legs were broken. My first thought was: can I move? I wanted to know whether or not I’d been paralysed. So I started to try to get out of the car, then the marshals helped me onto the grass beside the track, then an ambulance arrived, then a helicopter, and off I went.”

He was remarkably calm. “I could see that my right leg was in trouble – worse than my left – but I knew that I wasn’t paralysed because I could feel and move my body. So it was bad, yes, but I wasn’t panicking. And when I got to the hospital I asked the surgeon, ‘Will I be able to race again?’ And he said, ‘Your left leg isn’t too bad, but we’ll have to be careful with how we treat your right leg over the next 24 hours, but, yes, I don’t see why you shouldn’t recover well enough to race again one day.’ After that I felt almost OK. I felt pain, yes, and I realised that healing would take some time, but my focus was already on racing again, and I’d been told that it might be possible. So, yes, I felt OK.”

Person performing abdominal crunch on towel with trainer supervising in gym, black and white photo. — Physiotherapy followed after Panis’s potentially career-ending collision in the 1997 Canadian GP

Sygma via Getty Images

It was here that Panis’s character revealed its iron core. I ask him whether he is a hard man, and he chuckles then shrugs. “I think I am. I’m a nice person, an easy person, but I can be tough when I need to be. If you try to fight me, you’re dead.”

His comeback later that 1997 season was almost absurdly brave. “Before Nürburgring I did a test in an F3 car at Paul Ricard, then another test in my Prost F1 car at Magny-Cours. The F3 test was fine but painful. I did 50 laps, no problem. And at Magny-Cours, in my Prost F1 car, I said to myself, ‘If I can’t take the left-hander after the pits flat-out on my second flying lap, I won’t return to F1.’ Alain [Prost] told me not to be a hero, to take things easy, but, no, I was determined to set myself that challenge. Well, I did it: I was flat through that corner on my second flying lap, and eventually I’d matched the lap record.”

Even then the pain lingered. “After a while the discomfort was so bad in my right foot that I knew it would be difficult for me to press the brake pedal with enough power to be quick over a whole race distance, so my engineer made a wide brake pedal for me, so that I could brake with both feet. I used that wide brake pedal at Nürburgring and Suzuka, and I braked with two feet in both those races. I’ve never revealed that publicly before. It was weird, but it worked, and I finished sixth at Nürburgring, which was a good comeback.” I think we can regard that as something of an understatement. It had been an astonishingly plucky return.

Toyota Formula 1 driver in car with team preparing in garage, Panasonic and Bridgestone logos visible, black and white photo. — F1 testing at Jerez in Spain with Toyota in December 2006 – his final few hours as the team’s test driver

LAT Images

Prior to his Montreal shunt there had been conversations, he reveals quietly, “with both McLaren and Ferrari about a race drive in 1998”. The accident scuppered all that, so he remained at Prost. The 1998 Prost was “a very shit car, the most shit car I ever drove in F1. But I was happy to have [Jarno] Trulli as a team-mate, because he’s a lovely guy and one of the quickest qualifiers I’ve seen. In Barcelona that year, 1998, he whispered to me, ‘Olive [a nickname used by all Olivier’s mates to this day], I’m scared of this car.’ I replied, ‘Don’t worry, so am I.’ It was awful.”

Unsurprisingly, relations within the team grew strained. “Things became difficult with Alain, because he was a fantastic world champion, but being a team principal is a totally different thing. We didn’t always agree about what would be the best way to cope with this difficult situation, and in Montreal I walked out of a briefing because he and I had an argument and I was so angry. Anyway, enough already. It was a terrible year.”

Three drivers in black and green suits celebrating on LMP2 car number 29 in pit lane, black and white photo. — Panis Racing triumphed in April’s European Le Mans Series 2026 season opener at Barcelona

Paulo Maria/Xavi Bonilla/DPPI

Then, amid the usual whirl of Monaco week in 1999, life dealt him a very different blow. “I didn’t have a manager at the time, but I had a lawyer, Peter Poeliejoe-Vewald. He mostly worked in the movie business, not in racing, but I knew him and I liked him. He, my wife Anne, and I had dinner together in Monaco on the Tuesday evening, he was fine, and we had a good time. We said goodbye after the meal and he said, ‘See you tomorrow.’ I didn’t see him the next day, which was a bit odd, but the Cannes Film Festival was happening that week, so I thought maybe he’d changed his mind and gone to Cannes instead of to Monaco. But when I didn’t see him on Thursday, or even Friday, I began to get worried. So Anne called Peter’s wife and asked her where Peter was. ‘Peter’s dead,’ she replied. ‘He had a heart attack on Wednesday.’ It was a big, big shock.”

Management thereafter came from two formidable figures – Keke Rosberg and Didier Coton – although Rosberg had initially declined the job. “Basically, Keke said no to me in 1999 because I’d said no to him in 1993, when he’d asked me if I wanted to be managed by him before. But that’s Keke, and in the end I had a great time with him. He’s my kind of driver, and my kind of guy. Didier was great, too.”

In 2000 Panis made a move that was radical at the time: stepping back from racing to become test driver for McLaren. “It was my idea,” he remembers. “I’d had an offer for IndyCar from Pat Patrick Racing, but, on reflection, I wanted to stay in F1. So I said to Didier, ‘You and Keke are well in with Ron [Dennis, the McLaren team principal], and I want to have the experience of driving a top F1 car, which I’ve never done before, so why don’t you suggest me to him as third driver, reserve driver and test driver?’”

The plan worked. “When I got to McLaren, I absolutely loved it. It was brilliant. Ron was great, Adrian [Newey, technical director] was great, Mansour [Ojjeh, senior shareholder] was great, Martin [Whitmarsh, chief operating officer] was great, and Mika [Häkkinen], David [Coulthard], and it was like a little family. It was amazing, and driving the car – wow! – it was fantastic. I tested it over 28,000km [17,400 miles] that year –wonderful! Also that was the year that we developed McLaren’s simulator, which was state-of-the-art. I remember this young boy had a go in it. Lewis Hamilton was his name.”

The testing renaissance earned him a return to F1 racing with BAR in 2001. “Well, yes, in late 2000 I went to see Bernie [Ecclestone] in the FOM [Formula One Management] offices in London. I told him my situation – that I wanted to race in F1 again – and he said, ‘F1 needs a French driver, give me a week.’ And exactly a week later [Craig] Pollock [the BAR boss] called me.”

I suggest that those BAR seasons were unspectacular, not least because Panis’s team-mate Villeneuve always had preferential treatment. “Well, yes, but I still enjoyed my two years there,” he replies, unwilling to dish any dirt, “and I scored a few points even though our cars weren’t great. OK, the team was built around Jacques, you’re right, and he was obviously therefore the number one and I was obviously therefore the number two, but we pushed together in a difficult situation and he never did me any harm.”

Panis’s final F1 chapter unfolded with Toyota. “There was a lot of potential there, because we had good resources, good facilities and good people. Also, by that time I’d been with Japanese people so many times – with Mugen-Honda at Ligier, with Honda at BAR and now with Toyota – that I’d learned how to work well with them. I had a few good results with Toyota – points finishes in Montreal, Magny-Cours and Hockenheim in 2003, then more points finishes at Monaco and Indy in 2004. Then at the end of 2004 I asked the Toyota bosses, ‘Do you think we’re going to have a car good enough to win the world championship in 2005?’ They said, ‘No, probably not.’ So I thought to myself, ‘Well, I’ve probably done enough.’ So I decided to stop racing. I was the Toyota test driver in 2005 and 2006, though, which was good money, and I still enjoyed driving F1 cars, so I was happy to do it.”

Retirement did not suit him. “In 2007, my first year of pure relaxing, I became depressed. OK, I enjoyed being with my family at home in Grenoble, but I missed being busy. I missed excitement, too. Anne noticed – and, at the end of 2007, she said, ‘I think you need to get involved with racing again.’”

Soon he was competing in the Trophée Andros alongside his old sparring partner, Prost. “He asked me if I wanted to join him, and I said, ‘Yes, for sure.’ So I was his team-mate at first, then I did it for many years, and I really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t enough because it was a winter-only series.

“Then one day I bumped into [Hugues] de Chaunac [the ORECA chief executive], we got chatting, and that’s how I ended up doing four Le Mans 24 Hours [2008-2011] and some other endurance races. I really enjoyed them, but by the end, 2011, I was 45, and after that I stepped back a bit, and I did only the French GT championship from 2012 to 2015.”

After that, Olivier finally hung up his distinctive red, white and blue helmet, and instead he embraced team management. “I started Panis Racing. But I delegated the running of the team to others and it worked, and 10 years later it’s still working. OK, I still attend every race and every test and I’m fully engaged, but I don’t run the team from a hands-on point of view. It’s great.”

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What else floats his boat? “Anne and I recently celebrated 30 years of marriage –and we’d been together for 10 years before that, so that’s 40 years,” he says. “My kids [Aurélien, Caroline and Laurène] are grown up and successful, and I’m a grandfather, too. I’m fit and well. I run every day. I do a few speaking engagements. I’m busy. I’m a lucky man. I sometimes go to F1 races still – not often though – and when I do I always think to myself: ‘I was in F1 at the best time.’”

Perhaps that is the essence of Olivier Panis: lucky, yes, but also brave, stubborn, quick and generous of spirit. F1 has always been fondest of its heroes who win often. Yet sometimes it produces another kind: the man who wins rarely but memorably, perhaps even whose single triumph echoes for decades because it was seized with nerve, intelligence and heart.

When the Monaco harbour glitters in the spring sunshine and the ghosts of past races drift in off the Med, one can still picture a bleu de France Ligier barrelling its way through a chaotic grand prix, an excited Panis in the cockpit, a driver who learned that day, and would never forget, that opportunities in F1 make hens’ teeth seem common. When his moment arrived, he did what a true racer always does. He took it.

CV

BORN: 02/09/1966, LYON, FRANCE

● 1988-89 French Formula Renault – 4th in first season; champion in 1989.

● 1990-91 Moves to French Formula 3 – 4th in ’90, second in ’91.

● 1992-93 International Formula 3000; in second season wins title with DAMS.

● 1994-95 Big-time beckons with F1 seat at Ligier; one podium in ’94, one in ’95.

● 1996 In third season at Ligier, wins Monaco GP after starting from 14th.

● 1997-99 Two podiums while driving for Prost. Breaks both legs after shunt at Canadian GP in ’97; misses seven races.

● 2000 Test driver at McLaren.

● 2001-02 At BAR; best result 4th in Brazil.

● 2003-04 Toyota – final F1 team.

● 2005 Toyota test driver; retires in 2007.

● 2008-11 The comeback. Trophée Andros and Le Mans – 5th in ’09 and ’11. l 2012-15 French GT Championship.

● 2012-15 French GT Championship.

1967 PORSCHE 911 S

Sold by Rm Sotheby’s, £233,000

1950 Ford 8N ‘Funk Brothers’

Sold by Iconic Auctioneers, £6750

1954 Jaguar XK120 DHC

Sold by the Market, £41,250

1996 Land Rover Discovery Camel Trophy

Sold by Iconic Auctioneers, £12,375

2013 Ariel Atom 3.5

Sold by Collecting Cars, £30,252

1969 Egli Vincent Black Shadow

Sold by H&H, £58,075

1972 Renault 4 Sinpar 4×4

Sold by WB & Sons, £8284

1977 MGB Roadster

Sold by Hampson Auctions, £3250

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1952 Stirling Moss

1976 Niki Lauda

1963 Jackie Stewart

1979 Gilles Villeneuve

1974 Jody Scheckter

1930s Tazio Nuvolari

1985 Martin Brundle

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