Jean-Pierre Jarier: Is he actually F1's unluckiest driver?

Oh and if you will allow me one further whimsical detour down memory lane, I am here to tell you that the top three drivers in the French F3 championship standings in 1970 were all called Jean-Pierre, namely Jean-Pierre Jaussaud (first), Jean-Pierre Cassegrain (second), and Jean-Pierre Jarier (third). Is such top-three naming homogeneity unique in a racing context? Answers on a postcard please!

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes: we were briefly running through Jarier’s pre-F1 career, and we had got as far as 1972. The following year, 1973, he hit form in a big way, driving a March 732 to seven race victories in that year’s European F2 championship — at Mallory Park, Hockenheim, Nivelles, Rouen, Mantorp Park, Karlskoga, and Enna-Pergusa — taking the title easily. He also raced nine times in F1 that year, first in a March 721G then in a March 731, but it was now that he began to encounter Amon/Behra-style bad luck.

In Argentina a broken radiator ended his run; in Brazil his gearbox failed; in South Africa he encountered heaps of car trouble and, although he was still running at the end, he was 13 laps down; in Belgium he crashed; at Monaco his gearbox failed again; in Sweden his throttle cable snapped; in France he was stopped by a broken halfshaft; in Austria his engine blew; in Canada his car developed various mechanical problems, leaving him nine laps adrift at the finish; and at Watkins Glen he had another shunt.

It had been an extraordinary tale of woe, but all was not lost for, not only had he blitzed Euro F2 in 1973, but also, when his F1 Marches had been functional, he had demonstrated an impressive turn of speed in them. Indeed, he had caught the eye of none other than Enzo Ferrari, whose reaction had been to toy with the notion that he might sign Jarier as Clay Regazzoni’s team-mate for the 1974 F1 season. In the end it was Regazzoni who persuaded the commendatore to select another young gun who had cut his racing teeth in Marches, Niki Lauda. Had Jarier got the nod instead, who knows how successful he might have become?

Instead, Jean-Pierre joined Shadow for 1974, where and when — again — he encountered poor reliability, for he finished only seven of the 14 F1 grands prix he started that year. Nonetheless, he was beginning to show real flair, at Anderstorp finishing a fine fifth and, at Monaco, driving a strong race to third, beaten by only Ronnie Peterson (Lotus) and Jody Scheckter (Tyrrell). Moreover, after the early-season death in a testing accident at Kyalami of Shadow’s team leader, the fast and experienced Peter Revson, Jarier serially outpaced his new Shadow team-mates, Brian Redman and Bertil Roos, and, once Redman and Roos had been jettisoned in favour of the young and super-talented Tom Pryce, Jean-Pierre remained the pre-eminent Shadow man, albeit by a slenderer margin than theretofore.

It was almost exactly 50 years ago — in the two South American rounds of the 1975 F1 world championship, in January of that year — that Jarier could and should have won his first F1 grands prix. In Argentina, in Shadow’s brand-new DN5, an elegant Tony Southgate design, he took the pole by a country mile. However, again, luck was not on his side, for the car’s crown-wheel-and-pinion failed on the warm-up lap and consequently he never even made the grid.

Two weeks later, in Brazil, he took the pole again, this time by a margin larger still. Carlos Reutemann (Brabham) made a fantastic start from the second row to take the lead, but Jarier then shadowed (pun intended) Reutemann for four laps before neatly outbraking him into Turn 4 on lap five. After that he fairly sprinted away from the field. Again and again he posted and reposted the race’s fastest lap, his best effort a tour of 2min 34.16sec, which was more than a second quicker than anyone else managed all afternoon. Soon he was leading by half a minute. Yet again, though, he would be thwarted by misfortune, for, with just eight laps to go, his fuel metering unit seized, and he steered the Shadow slowly onto the grassy infield, he heaved himself out of its cockpit, he slumped against one of its rear tyres, and, sitting but far from basking in the São Paulo sunshine, he watched an overjoyed Carlos Pace (Brabham) win his home race.

In Spain Jarier finished fourth — but the rest of the 1975 F1 season was a disaster for him, for he retired from eight of its remaining 10 grands prix, and he scored no more points. In an updated Shadow DN5B he started 1976 promisingly. Again he qualified well (third) at Interlagos, which circuit staged the season-opening grand prix that year, and again he drove fastest lap, this time three-quarters of a second quicker than anyone else’s. Fifth on lap one, he climbed the leaderboard steadily, and by lap 27 he was up to second, beginning to close on Lauda’s leading Ferrari. By lap 29 he had trimmed Niki’s lead from six seconds to four, and, with 11 laps to run, perhaps at last he was going to enjoy his day of days. Sure enough, five tours later, on lap 34, the gap was down to under two seconds.

Behind them, however, James Hunt’s McLaren was handling badly, and in the end it got the better of him, causing its driver to lose control at the Curvo do Sol right-hander, and slamming itself into the guardrail. Hunt tried to continue, but the shunt had damaged the McLaren’s oil coolers, and he pulled it to a halt on the infield grass at the next corner, Curvo do Sargento. Before he had done so, a significant volume of oil had leaked out of it onto the Curvo do Sargento apex.

The marshals waved no oil flags — an unconscionable omission — but, even so, when Lauda and Jarier arrived on the scene a minute or so later, now barely a second apart, Niki spotted the puddle of spilled Texaco Havoline, and he duly steered his Ferrari around it. Right behind him, and consequently unsighted, poor Jean-Pierre careened into the greasy slick, as a result of which his Shadow slid straight off the slippery asphalt into the outside guardrail. The impact was heavy and the car was a mess — but its driver, thankfully unhurt, jumped out, strode away without a backward look, pushed aside a gaggle of marshals who were anxious to assist him now despite their having neglected to warn him of the hazard that had caused his misadventure, and sat down against the guardrail to contemplate his misery unmolested. Lauda then backed off and ran out an easy winner — and Jarier, his focus and application undermined by serial disappointment, never scored a single world championship point all year.

As a result in 1977 he found himself racing an ex-works Penske for lowly ATS, his only success an attrition-assisted sixth place at Long Beach; later that year he guest-drove a Shadow at Watkins Glen and a Ligier at Fuji, again without troubling the scorers; and in 1978 he raced three times for ATS, this time in its own car, the boxy and sluggish Robin Herd-designed HS1. He failed to qualify it at Monaco, always a humiliation for a proud Frenchman, and after that he found himself out of a drive, and out of F1.

That might well have been that as far as his F1 career was concerned — but the reason that it was not was that F1 was so dangerous in those days. So it was that when Ronnie Peterson was fatally injured at Monza in September 1978, Jarier picked up the phone, called Colin Chapman, and, having expressed his condolences, asked the Lotus boss whether he might be considered as a supersub for the two remaining F1 grands prix of the season, at Watkins Glen and Montreal. Chapman agreed to a deal.

Unused to the ground-effect Lotus 79, Jarier qualified it only eighth at the Glen, well adrift of his Lotus team-mate Mario Andretti’s pole time in the other 79. On race day, however, despite being squeezed uncomfortably into Peterson’s seat that was too narrow for his beefier bum, Jarier was beginning to get to grips with that most beautiful of all Lotus’s F1 cars, until, stymied again by bad luck, he was saddened to feel then see his blistered left-front Goodyear begin to deflate. On lap 11 he stopped at the pits to have it replaced, rejoining the race in 21st place.

What followed was one of the most astonishing drives of the year, too often disregarded even by some F1 historians who should know better. Granted, he was assisted by a few retirements ahead of him, but he soon became by some margin the fastest man on the track, charging his way past Arturo Merzario’s Merzario, Brett Lunger’s Ensign, Bobby Rahal’s Wolf, René Arnoux’s Surtees, Derek Daly’s Ensign, Didier Pironi’s Tyrrell, Emerson Fittipaldi’s Copersucar, Patrick Tambay’s McLaren, Jean-Pierre Jabouille’s Renault, and Jody Scheckter’s Wolf. By now he was in third place, closing fast on Alan Jones’ second-placed Williams, and now it was that, having repeatedly pulverised the lap record, he stopped the clocks with a prodigiously impressive tour of 1min 39.56sec — a staggering 1.49sec faster than anyone else had either driven or would drive that day. Indeed, had he posted that lap the day before, he would have qualified third. Would he enjoy his podium finish? Oh no: this is Jarier we are talking about. He ran out of fuel with a couple of laps to go, and he was classified 15th.

The following weekend, in Montreal, now as attuned to the all-conquering Lotus 79 as anyone ever had been, Jarier won the pole with a brilliant lap more than a second faster than Andretti could muster in the sister car. On race day Jean-Pierre took the lead at the start and cantered away from everyone else, building up a 40-second cushion by half-distance. Thereafter he continued to motor around, in complete control of the situation, and the Canadian organisers duly readied La Marseillaise to be played during the podium ceremony. But, again, this is Jarier we are talking about, and, yes, again, fate intervened cruelly. On lap 49, with 21 to go, fading brakes and finally an oil leak ended his run.

The following year, 1979, he raced for Tyrrell, scoring two podium finishes, at Kyalami and Silverstone. In 1980 he continued with Uncle Ken, in a less competitive car, nonetheless delivering three solid fifth places, at Zolder, Brands Hatch, and Zandvoort. After that his F1 career drifted, and he raced for Osella and a sadly diminished Ligier, going nowhere not very fast. By the end of the 1983 season, having become the perennial target of BBC commentator James Hunt’s acid tongue, he called it a day, F1-wise.

He raced on in sports cars and touring cars throughout the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s, and, by now well past 50 and undeniably chubby, he won the FFSA French GT Championship twice, in 1998 and 1999. He did a few Porsche Supercup races in those years, too, and, in both 1998 and 1999, at Monaco, together with my friend Darren Heath, the famous F1 photographer, I walked from the F1 paddock to the Swimming Pool entry, specifically to watch him. We stationed ourselves so as to be able to see (in my case) and photograph (in Darren’s case) one of the most gifted yet luckless F1 drivers of the 1970s hurling a Porsche through that dauntingly fast left-right switchback, delineated as it was then only by unforgiving armco. Time and again, 50-something lard-arse though he now was, he chucked his 911 through there visibly faster, and palpably more fluently, than anyone else, a few degrees of meticulously applied oppo dialled in first one way then the other. Knackered by the end of both races, and pouring with sweat when he clambered out into the Monégasque sunshine, he nonetheless finished second in 1998 and third in 1999. It had been a joy and a privilege to watch him do so.