F1 Retro: Rene Arnoux - Blinded by the Light

F1 Retro – May 2001

F1 seemingly used to have a select yet steady flow of drivers like René Arnoux on tap – charisma-bottled with talent to spare, but a potential never fully realised.

A dual personality defined the Frenchman, who took his final GP win 40 years ago this month: bravery and flair behind the wheel, but a shy, nervous country boy out of it.

Arnoux’s non-careerist, passionate approach always limited him to being a good rather than great racing driver. Mark Hughes recounts the Grenoble native’s rock’n’roll racing story in our May 2001 issue.

An otherworldly talent elevated him from humble beginnings to F1 with Renault in 1979 and then a Ferrari drive in ’83. That prodigious ability brought Arnoux a sizeable 18 poles, but ‘only’ seven GP wins to go with them.

F1 scribe Jabby Crombac remembered seeing a young Arnoux in action: “He arrived obviously too fast, and he caught it in an absolutely beautiful way; we said, ‘You can tell the others to go home.’”

Arnoux had a claim to being the fastest man in early ’80s F1. He seized pole by 1.2sec in Austria in 1980 and out-qualified team-mate Alain Prost by 1.8sec at Kyalami in ’82. After nearly taking the title with Ferrari in ’83, the Scuderia fired him 18 months later. Arnoux’s GP career would never recover.

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