Henri
Pescarolo

Henri Pescarolo was born in Montfermeil, near Paris, in 1942. He started racing in 1965 in a Lotus Seven. Matra offered him a third car in its Formula 3 team for 1966, although the car was not ready until mid-season. In 1967 he won the European Championship with Matra and moved up to Formula 2 for 1968. There he was team-mate to Jean-Pierre Beltoise, took several second places and won at Albi.

He made his Formula One debut with Matra at the end of 1968 and started two races. In April 1969 he crashed in a Matra sports car during testing for the Le Mans 24 Hours and did not return until mid-season. At the German Grand Prix in August he drove a Formula 2 Matra to fifth place and won the small-capacity class. In 1970 he was a full-time Matra driver, again alongside Beltoise, and finished third at the Monaco Grand Prix. It remained his only podium. He ended the season twelfth in the World Championship. That year he also won the Buenos Aires 1000 km with Beltoise.

Matra did not keep him on. From 1971 to 1973 he raced for Frank Williams's young team, in cars from March, Politoys and Iso-Marlboro. In 1974 he drove for BRM, where a ninth place in Argentina was his best result of the season, amid many retirements. He was absent from Formula One in 1975. In 1976 he came back in a Surtees entered privately by BS Fabrications. He failed to qualify twice from nine entries and finished ninth in the Austrian Grand Prix, his best result of the year. In all he made 57 starts.

Outside Formula One he won the Le Mans 24 Hours four times (1972, 1973, 1974 and 1984) and started the race 33 times between 1966 and 1999. He also won the 1991 Daytona 24 Hours, the 1982 Monza 1000 km and the 1986 Nürburgring 6 Hours. He raced at Bathurst from 1977 to 1979 and took part in the Dakar Rally in the 1990s. After retiring as a driver in 1999 he founded Pescarolo Sport, a team that competed at Le Mans and finished second in 2006 and third in 2007.

Source: Wikipedia, “Henri Pescarolo”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.