Flat out to deceive: Why Jean-Pierre Jarier never won an F1 race

“He had the most fantastic feel for a car,” Knight says of Jarier, “but he would insist on indulging in it; he would come through the first corner – which at the time was a fast right-hander with trees and hedges to the side – in a heart-stopping manner. We hadn’t been going long at the time, but we’d already seen some horrific accidents because of the pressure people put themselves under because of the prize [a paid-for season of Formula France] that was on offer. I remember taking him to one side and saying, ‘It’s obvious you’re bloody fast, but it would be incredibly helpful if you would drive in a way that isn’t going to give us a whole load of grief from the other guys on the course’. We felt he had enough ability not to have to do this in front of everyone. But he just didn’t see where we were coming from at all and continued to do it. So in the end, yes, we kicked him out.

“Jean-Pierre just didn’t seem capable of doing anything other than in his own way, 100%. What we saw, I think everyone saw. The French have that wonderful saying c’etait plus fort que lui – he just couldn’t help himself. That was how he was, that was how he did it, and he really couldn’t understand what anyone else was tying to tell him. I think that got in his way all the way through his career.

“He didn’t achieve what he should have. But to get as far as he did was absolutely amazing, really, and testimony to nothing more than that amazing talent, because everything else about him mitigated against him making it. It was quite a flaw. The very good guys tend to play to their strengths, and either work on their weaknesses or move away from them. He didn’t seem to do that, and yet he achieved what he achieved. And that was quite phenomenal. I just thought he was massively gifted – but with this very frustrating blind spot.”

The racing course came in between Jean-Pierre’s activities as a law student at university, and a motor sport reporter for Echappment. His interests were always diverse, more so than his financial circumstances really allowed for. Raised by a doting mother and grandmother who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Paris suburbs, he was indulged by the former to the extent that he persuaded her to sell her existing road car and buy instead a Renault 8 Gordini. With this, he took part in a one-make race series in 1967, a couple of years after his Winfield disappointment. He’d previously tried his hand at bike racing at Montlhery, leading all three races and winning one.

“I then met a man, Marcel Arnold, who had a big Paris furniture business. He was already helping Jean-Pierre Jaussaud and then he began to help me,” explains Jarier of the vital early benefactor who got his career on track. It’s easy to imagine how Jarier’s outgoing personality smoothed this rocky road. Everyone who’s ever worked with him attests to his charm, and he relates his story today with great humour, pausing to laugh – sometimes at his own expense, sometimes at the startling nature of his talent, at feats he seems to feel were almost nothing to do with him, so easy did they come. Can a man be too gifted for his own good?

With Arnold’s help, Jarier established himself as a front runner in Formula France in 1968 and French F3 in ’69 and 70. In a race at Clermont-Ferrand, he caught the eye of Herd: “I was just watching the start and the guy’s personality came through the body language of the car-just the aggression and confidence he had. I thought, ‘Bloody hell, the guy’s got something’. I don’t know really how you choose drivers, but there was just something about the way he took that start. You could see the confidence and control. Wonderful.” Works F3 assistance followed, as did some F2 races with March in ’71, the year in which Jarier made his F1 debut, too (see sidebar).

“The big change, the thing that took me from amateur racing to professional, was Le Mans in ’72,” says Jarier.

With the Arnold team short of funds, Rene Bonnet spoke on JPJ’s behalf to Luigi Chinetti and got him a run in a NART Ferrari Daytona at the Sarthe. “I was quickest of the team, and from there I drove for Chinetti in America, and won races with Sam Posey.” Upon his return to France, there was a works F3 March waiting for him, this a prelude to that stunning 1973 F2 season.

“It was a great time for me. I tested all winter in the March-BMW, and also in the 2-litre sports car – and even the F1 car. I moved to London and gave up my law course. I was testing three times every week. I got all my experience there and Robin was my teacher.”

Herd agrees: “It was a terrific year. Yes, the car was good, the engine was good, the team was good. But Jarier was bloody good, too, never less than 100% effort.” March ran him in non-clashing F1 races, “but we were just maintaining a presence there. We did that on about £5000.”

Ironically, given the tug of love between March and Ferrari for Jarier’s 1974 services, he became a free agent anyway, on account of March’s (shortlived) withdrawal from F1. With Lauda already pounding around Fiorano, Jarier joined forces with the emerging Shadow team, and F1 began to see the potential of the man for the first time. He might have won Monaco that year had his car not suffered intermittent electrical problems – he was leading eventual winner Ronnie Peterson when the problem first occurred. But it was in the first two races of ’75 that Jarier’s F2 spark fully reignited in F1. Alas, it led to nothing in terms of hard results, the DN5 breaking on its way to the grid in Argentina and within 30 miles of a dominant win in Brazil, both times after having set pole.

The car’s designer, Tony Southgate, recalls Jarier as having “an extraordinary degree of talent, even by the standards of a top F1 driver. But I always thought he was a bit lazy. He liked having a good time and a good life. He had this massive driving ability, he could do anything with a car. But to use that to go forward you’ve got to put a lot of effort in. He liked to be eating, drinking and womanising. He would have been perfect for the 1930s.

“He was a serious wine drinker”

“I liked him a lot. He brought a nice French taste to the team. He’d talk about wines and things. He said the only real wine is red; white wine is like your afternoon tea. He was a serious wine drinker.

“When we launched the DN5, it was at some fancy cafe in Paris. Jarier was taking me and Alan Rees there in a 6.9-litre Mercedes. It was raining, it was a narrow but quick road with cars parked on either side of it. He saw the place just as we passed it and, without even stopping his conversation, he handbrake-turned the car through a perfect 180 degrees and drove the other way. The width of the available road couldn’t have been more than a few inches longer than the car. Seeing that sort of talent close up is quite awesome.”

Shadow ran out of money and Jarier left at the end of 1976 – the highlight of his year being closing down on Lauda’s Ferrari for the lead in Brazil before spinning on freshly spilt oil.

He reappeared for ATS and drove marvellously to score a point on the team’s debut at Long Beach in 1977. But this wasn’t the sort of gig his talent warranted. He quit part-way through ’78: “I thought for sure my F1 career was over at this time.” He returned to sports cars where the successes had always racked up.

“Then Colin Chapman called me.” Just as Herd’s rigorous testing regime had brought a temporary discipline to Jarier that produced devastating success, Chapman represented a man that Jarier would have willingly subjugated himself to.

“Colin filled you with energy, because he had so much of it himself. You believed totally in him. It was a fantastic experience, unlike anything I’d ever had in F1. To have done a season like that would have been a dream, but he had already signed his two drivers for 1979.”

So Jarier had just two grands prix in F1’s fastest car, the Lotus 79, filling in for the late Ronnie Peterson in America and Canada. This was sufficient, however, for him to show us what a driver he might have been had a top F1 team got him. Both times the car broke, but his fastest lap at the ‘Glen was 2sec quicker than anyone else’s, this without having sat in the car before practice. At Montreal, he was annihilating the field from pole, a field that included his world champion team-mate, Mario Andretti. “That,” remarked Jackie Stewart at the time, “was a drive of perfection – the sort of performance that I or Jim Clark would’ve been proud of.”

Jarier served five more years in F1 after that stunning showing, but never again in a decent car. Two years at Tyrrell proved only that he was at least as quick as Didier Pironi. During his stint at Osella he often had the previous non-qualifier halfway up the grid, but always it broke.

He stood in for the injured Jean-Pierre Jabouille at Ligier early in 1981, and without ever having driven the car before, and after six months of inactivity, was second-fastest in the opening practice at Long Beach. He finally drove for the French team full-time in ’83, but the JS21 was DFV-powered just as the turbos had turned up the heat. He got one last chance of glory at Long Beach that year and blew it, tangling with Keke Rosberg’s Williams in a car that was on the right tyres (Michelins) and way ahead of the McLarens that ultimately finished first and second.

“I had three opportunities of staying in F1,” Jarier explains, “but with small teams. I knew I was just as fast as I had been in 1974, but I no longer wanted to do F1 on those terms. I’d lost too many friends for that: Francois Cevert, Roger Williamson, Peter Revson, Tom Pryce, Carlos Pace.”

Which is why he continued in Porsches and GTs. This was a sideshow shadow of his great days, but it was relatively safe and he was enjoying himself immensely. You can still see him there now, and once in a while, when the moon is in the correct alignment, he turns on all the old skill and you can marvel again at the artistry, take yourself back to Interlagos ’75.