Philippe Alliot

Although he was first afflicted with the racing “bug” when his father took him to Reims as a child, Alliot did not enter competition himself until age 23 after attending a racing school. Working his way up the ladder of the sport he eventually found himself racing both in Formula One and at Le Mans. At Le Mans he posted a pair of podium finishes, the first teamed with Mario and Michael Andretti, the second as part of Peugeot’s successful early-’90s assault. His time in F1 was somewhat less successful, although he did drive for several different teams, just not when they were at the peak of their form. VR’s Mike Jiggle recently spoke with the Frenchman about the ins and outs of his career.

If I were to ask a modern Grand Prix driver, where did you start racing? Without exception, they would tell me, karting. Was that much the same for you?

Alliot: You know I have a very strange story. I never did karting, I never started racing until I was 23 years old. My first racing lesson was at the Circuit Automoblie Paul Armanac, Nogaro, which is situated between Toulouse and Bordeaux, in SW France. I took lessons at the Motul Racing School there.

My real first race was on the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans, in the French Formula Renault series. There were over 45 entrants in the race, so it meant having a series of races to qualify for the final. I won the first race, which got me into the final, putting me on the front row of the grid for the final. Joining me on the front row was Alain Prost. Alain was with the Winfield Racing School. So, in my first race I shared the front row with Alain Prost!

I had a very little money, and only had an old car. I tell you this story because today it would be impossible to start the way I did. If you’re not in Formula One by the time you’re 20 or 21 years old you may as well forget it. Sebastian Vettel is already two times World Champion at just 24 years old.

What made you start motor racing, how did you become interested in racing?

Alliot: It’s strange, I really don’t know the secret of where it came from other than going to the racing with my father. When I was young we lived near Reims, my father took me to the racing at the circuit there. I would be about 8 or 9 years old. Something must have happened in that time. Afterwards, every time there were races at the circuit, or if I got the chance to see something with an engine in it, I was there—it really excited me. Strangely, neither my mother nor father nor anyone else in my family had any curiosity, other than a passing interest, in racing.

I went through the French education system, and upon leaving school I joined the military for my national service. After that, I told my parents I had a desire to try and race cars. It was something I had to do—succeed or fail, I had to try. If I didn’t, it would be something I would regret for the rest of my life. I knew if I spent just a few years trying I would see if I had any potential or not. I knew I’d got the ambition, but would have to be patient and the chances of success were not great.[pullquote]

“On one lap I was very, very fast. … To race for nearly two hours, just concentrating on one thing, was something I was not really capable of doing.”

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As I’ve already said, my first races were in the French Formula Renault series, which I won in 1978. One day, I wake up in the morning and I’m driving in Formula One—so, that is my story!  Thank you. Seriously, I did 116 Grand Prix races over a period of ten years. I never won a Grand Prix, but I had a fantastic life and time trying.

You spent time racing in Formula Three, then in 1983 you had a season in Formula Two. However, the highlight of that year must have been sharing a Kremer Porsche at Le Mans with Mario and Michael Andretti?

Alliot: Yes, that is something I will always regard as important and very special in my career. I was in the ORECA F2 team, which was run by Mr. Hugues de Chaunac. Mr. de Chaunac had offered me a place in the team after watching me race in F3. The same year, I got the opportunity of racing with Mario and Michael Andretti at Le Mans—FANTASTIC! In my life, it would be impossible for me to imagine I could be racing, it would be impossible for me to think if I were to race it would be in the 24 hours at Le Mans, it would be impossible for me to think I would drive a Kremer Porsche, and impossible to drive there with a legendary driver such as Mario Andretti. I remember that race as if it was now; it remains very fresh in my mind.

Mario Andretti, I remember, was very cautious of me. He didn’t know who I was, or what I was capable of doing. I knew he was continually “checking me out” in the days leading up to the race itself. He saw I was very quick, and competent, and then he became friendlier toward me. By the end of the weekend I had an invitation to join him at the Indianapolis 500 the following year.

Our Le Mans race was very good, we finished on the podium in 3rd place. I was among champions that day. The winners were Vern Schuppan, Hurley Haywood, and Al Holbert, 2nd was Derek Bell and Jacky Ickx—we were all driving Porsche 956 cars. The whole experience was a great confidence boost to me, and my popularity grew from that day, too.

You joined John MacDonald’s Formula One RAM Racing team for the whole of the 1984 season. The cars were resplendent in their Skoal Bandit livery, if only they could have performed as well as they looked?

Alliot: The first year, 1984, I was teamed with Jonathan Palmer—a very nice guy—the problem, as you say, was the car. The chassis was something from the “Panzer Division” and the Hart engine was fragile as crystal, always misfiring and would blow up at any hint of pressure. I had to look on the bright side, I was in Formula One.

Is it that important to get to Formula One?  

Alliot: For a driver it is important not to come into Formula One with a bad team. If you do, you have a very big difficulty to grow up and get a drive with one of the better or best teams. The difficulty is to show the bigger and better teams what you’re capable of doing in a racing car. If the car continually breaks down it is impossible to show your skills.

However, you have to consider how much money you have to get the drive. Like me, having little money you have to take what you can get. I come from a family where I have nine brothers and sisters, so, you see we were not rich. I always considered my strength was in qualifying a car. My thought was to be able to get to a team where the car was capable of a good qualifying place, that’s what my budget allowed for. I consistently beat Jonathan Palmer in qualifying that first year, at the end he left.

In 1985, we had a better budget and Gustav Brunner joined as the designer, he built what I considered as one of the best Formula One chassis that year. The only downside was the Hart engine, which again was very, very fragile. The engine was the biggest factor in us not having the ability to have a good result.

Ligier was your next Formula One team, as you had returned to ORECA F3000 team in 1986. Your place at Ligier was due to an unfortunate accident during the 1986 British GP at Brands Hatch, where Jacques Laffite was injured. Was this your chance to shine in one of the then better teams in Formula One?

Alliot: At the end of 1985, John MacDonald had run out of money and the team closed. I looked at other possibilities in Grand Prix racing, but all the seats were taken.  So, I looked at the next best option. Mr. de Chaunac, my former employer at ORECA, gave me an opportunity to drive for his F3000 team—he knew me so well.

Just 15 days before the British GP at Brands Hatch, we raced at Spa in F3000 as a support race to the Belgian GP. I won that race, not with the best car, so I suppose my name and performance was still fresh in the minds of most Grand Prix team managers, especially that of Guy Ligier. So, when Jacques had his accident my phone rang, and I was asked to step into the Ligier team for the rest of the season. I guess something good came out of something bad.

The car and the team were simply the best I ever got to race with in Formula One. The combination of the Renault engine with the Ligier chassis, and the level of competence and professionalism in the team was really fantastic—a great opportunity for me.

When I interviewed Jacques some time ago, he said one of the problems with the Ligier was the wheel rims and tire deflation. Does that sound righyt?

Alliot: Yes, I remember that. I also remember that although we had Renault engines, mine was two steps, in performance terms, below the Renault engine of my teammate René Arnoux. He had the new engine and I had the old one.

What was life like having Arnoux as a teammate?

Alliot: I was always friendly with Réne. Between the races in Japan and Australia we had a chance to holiday together—it was a good time. I can honestly say we had no trouble with each other. Réne may have had his problems with other drivers such as Prost, Tambay and Pironi, but not with me.

What about on the track?

Alliot: In that first race at Hockenheim, Germany, I was the outsider. I didn’t know the car, I didn’t know the team and, as you can imagine, it takes some time to become accepted. In the first practice, I was 5th and Arnoux was 9th—Guy Ligier was delighted. However, the season didn’t go too well. Engine problems often led to retirement from races. I did, however, score my first ever World Championship point at the penultimate race of the season, the Mexican GP. From that, Gérard Larrousse and Didier Calmels offered me a three-year contract to race for their new Formula One team. Not a bad result for a poor French boy.

Wasn’t a three-year contract, in those days, a great offer?

Alliot: I thought it would give me a chance to establish myself in Grand Prix racing with everything new, the team, the car, everything was a clean sheet of paper. Larrousse had experience both as a driver and as a team manager; he had been in charge of the F1 Renault team. The Lola car was new, but Lola had a great deal of experience in all kinds of racing.

Time would show that your time with Larrousse wasn’t too good. Reliability was a problem, and you had the most horrific accident at the Autòdromo Hermanos Rodrìguez in qualifying for the 1988 Mexican GP. You can see the accident on the internet, YouTube shows it. What do you recall?

Alliot: Yes, it was a big crash. I had just come through the last corner, Peraltada, which leads onto the pit straight. I can now tell you exactly what happened.

The suspension on the front of my car had been loaded, it was very stiff, and the only movement was in the tire. Our chief engineer, Gérard Ducarouge, thought it the right way to go with front suspension settings. I had to agree the car was unbelievably quick. It was an “atmospheric” car rather that a turbo, but the altitude gave us something of an equality with the turbo cars. I had been into the pits for more adjustments. Believing it was the front suspension settings giving us extra speed, Ducarouge gave instruction for the suspension to be loaded as far as it was possible to go and sent me out again. The lap was feeling very quick, and as I’ve said, I was exiting the Peraltada. Just on the exit was a little hole. I hit the hole, lost control and the car steered directly toward the pit wall.

Can I stop you there; you’re very much a passenger in the car at that point driving at a tremendously high speed toward an obvious impact. What can you do? Do you brace yourself for the inevitable impact, or what?

Alliot: The story I have in my head is like a movie. It is still so very clear, and plays at such a slow speed. In reality the accident took no more than ten seconds from start to finish. In my mind, it is broken down frame by frame and when I think about it, it can take well over five minutes to experience. For onlookers, at the circuit and on TV, it must have appeared spectacular.

The first thing that plays is that there is a problem, and the car is no longer in my control. My thought is that the car will, for sure, hit the wall at an immense speed. The only thing I can do is brace myself for the impact and hope that it doesn’t hurt too much. I can see the wall getting closer and closer with every frame of the movie. I am thinking that the impact is going to be head-on, but at the last second the rear of the car strangely overtakes the front and the impact eventually is the left side of the car hitting the wall square on. At this time, I’m facing oncoming cars, just waiting for my car to come to a resting point. I saw the wall and thought myself lucky to have survived the impact, I’m thinking to myself this is good, I even started to relax a little, unprepared for the next events.

The suspension changes, which had made such a significant difference to our top qualifying speed, then played a completely new part. Due to impact damage, the dampers were “set free” and unloaded a tremendous amount of energy, spontaneously catapulting the car skywards and toward the opposite side of the track. Bracing myself again, I tried to second guess the next event, but the car leaned to the right and somersaulted sideways, time and time again. Thinking the car would land upside down, I tried to pull myself into the body of the car as much as I could to prevent my head being damaged. I think I began to shout, “Please, please, land on the tires!” The car landed upside down, but again I had survived the impact and was coming at last to a halt.

Thinking I had survived this second impact, I took a second or two to gain my thoughts. It was at this moment, as I was entering something near to a relaxed state, my sense of smell came to the fore. Fuel was leaking and beginning to pour into the cockpit, covering my overalls. I knew I had to escape from the wreckage, in case the whole car ignited in flames. Again, I was able to get out—the fuel fortunately didn’t ignite.

There are times, when the thoughts and scenes from this very lucky escapade come to the front of my mind and consume me. It was a very frightening incident, but at least I survived. Many others in motor racing have not been so fortunate, they paid the ultimate price.

Thank you for a very candid, description. Did this affect your driving from then on?

Alliot: Not consciously. I took little time to recover and even started the race, I’m not so sure I would be allowed to today. I eventually qualified 13th, but my race was short-lived with handling problems.

James Hunt described you as “… possibly, the worst Grand Prix driver ever.” How do you feel hearing those words? (There is an eerie silence as Philippe considers the question—his face suddenly lights up, and he grins before replying.)

Alliot: It wasn’t just James Hunt, Nigel Mansell said it too!

At first, it’s not something that gives a driver any satisfaction at all. However, all things considered, I think they are probably right, and what they said is probably true.

On one lap I was very, very fast. Qualifying became a bit of a speciality of mine. The race was a different thing. To race for nearly two hours, just concentrating on one thing, was something I was not really capable of doing. I could put ten or so laps together. My mind would wander to other things after that, before going into a second phase of race concentration. It would be in these “wandering” moments that I made mistakes, and had “incidents” with other drivers, or sometimes on my own.

On the other hand, drivers like Alain Prost or Michael Schumacher would be so focused on what they were doing, the race, the car and their competitors. Racing was a mind game for them as much as driving. I could never reach that level. I’m happy to tell you this now, although when racing I probably wouldn’t have been so open.

I think your 1990 season, when you returned to the Ligier F1 team, illustrates that. Didn’t you have a number of accidents that season, including coming together with a certain Nigel Mansell?

Alliot: After leaving Ferrari, Mauro Forghieri joined Lamborghini who were now producing a V12 F1 engine for our car. Forghieri was keen to get Alboreto into the team. He had had a good relationship with him while at Ferrari. Michele joined us at a few tests, but I can tell you I was always a second faster than him, please feel free to check the results for yourself. Guy Ligier took notice of my performances in testing and felt he could offer me a season with Ligier. Unfortunately, I had my problems and incidents, but the car was nowhere near to the Ligier I had driven three years earlier. It was very uncompetitive; it was simply a modification of the previous year, and not much modification at that. Having said that, I was onto a 3rd place finish, in Monaco, then ten laps from the end the engine and gearbox let me down—very frustrating.

Jean Todt came to me and asked if I wanted to join him at Peugeot in the sports car team; I agreed and was happy to race for them.

Sports car racing is a completely different discipline to single-seater racing and Grand Prix racing. You have to be part of a team and your racing is a number of “sprints” within a race. Given your problems concentrating, did you find this racing easier?

Alliot: At this time, Formula One was not my dream. With Peugeot I had a team with the resources both financial and technical to win races. There comes a time when the opportunity to win overrides the opportunity of being in the pinnacle formula of racing. I was very proud that Jean had chosen me to race for his team, it was an honor. In choosing me, it wasn’t just my driving ability he looked at. He invited me to have a holiday with him—to bring my family, too. I didn’t realize he was looking at my social abilities too, so, it wasn’t just a case of him saying, “Yes Philippe come to Peugeot.” I had to earn my place. I signed a contract for two years—it was the best two years of my life.

Driving for Peugeot was like being a king, Peugeot were “Kings of the track.” It really helps your mood to drive in one of the best teams.

I was talking to Norbert Singer a few weeks ago and he told me of the continued pressure within the Porsche team to win and be competitive. Was there any such pressure within Peugeot, a French team wanting to win the world’s biggest sports car challenge, and in France too?

Alliot: You know there was that pressure, but Jean Todt was a great man. He had this ability to soak up the pressure from above and keep the drivers focused on the job in hand without pressurizing them. This left us to do our job—drive—with no pressure. He took everything on his shoulders to keep the drivers fresh. We respected what he was doing and tried harder to win for him and the team. It’s an incredible quality seldom seen in people, but something Jean really excelled at. It kept us drivers in a good state of mind.

Did you start enjoying racing again, and did your performances in races start to improve?

Alliot: Yes, for sure. The mistakes, which became the Philippe Alliot trademark, disappeared and good results replaced the mediocre places I had been used to. The secret to our success, I believe, was the ability to test extensively and having the money to develop the car as we went along. We knew we had the best car, it gave a certain confidence as drivers. From the time we got to a circuit, we knew we could win each race—something that was only available to the likes of the McLaren or Williams teams when I was in Formula One. When you have a bad car, or one that is not quite the best, a driver has the tendency to over-drive, and that’s the time silly mistakes are made.

I think you ultimately drove for one of the best teams in Formula One, but not at the time they were at their best?

Alliot: My time with Peugeot led to them wanting to enter Grand Prix racing. They were with McLaren, and I was chosen at the test driver. I worked hard, but for Ron Dennis I was too old. I was 41 by then; the same age as Michael Schumacher was when he returned to drive for Mercedes, and has continued ever since. Ron Dennis preferred Martin Brundle, he was younger and he was English. It was as simple as that. Even at 41, I thought I had something to offer, my time with Peugeot had given me experience with the engine—I must say, I was very disappointed that Ron Dennis rejected me. Looking back, with more experience now, I appreciate his decision and I can see he was absolutely right.

Looking at Michael Schumacher for a minute, what do you think of his return to Grand Prix racing?

Alliot: I think he is a great driver, but from experience a 41-year-old cannot have the same reactions as a driver in his 20s. It’s not possible. There is a crossover when experience is just not enough, youth has to play a part, too. Your body is not the same, your mind is not the same, and for me it seems impossible that Michael will win again. Yes, he may just be a fraction off of the best times, but today it’s like being minutes away in my day—such is the competition. Taking a corner flat out, when you’re young, is nothing, you do it without thinking of the consequences. As you get older, I can say from experience, you begin to ask yourself why you need to take the corner flat. You think more of self preservation and keeping safe. Yes, you can be quick, but you can’t be a consistent winner in that frame of mind, no matter how good the car is.

You did get your one and only “dream drive” with McLaren at the 1994 Hungarian GP?

Alliot: Yes, Mika Häkkinen was banned for racing in this race. I can’t remember why, but I got my drive. This is when I saw Ron Dennis was right, testing was great—racing was something else. I think I qualified 12th and had to retire with engine problems. It wasn’t the greatest race of my life, just something I can look back on now to say I was a McLaren driver.

My Grand Prix career came to an end after one more outing, I drove for Larrousse one more time at Spa, again in 1994—the result was very familiar. I qualified 19th and failed to finish due to engine problems.

McLaren gave me the chance to drive their “active” suspension car at Silverstone during the winter testing. It was a great experience, but my Formula One days were over. My passion for Grand Prix racing today is as high as it ever was, I can’t wait to watch Formula One on TV. I enjoy racing, too, in the Speed Euroseries where I can experience time on the track.