#topic: f1

It's February 22nd, which means this is, among other drivers according to the homepage of StatsF1, the birthday of Niki Lauda! Aka the most powerful and notable rat in history (very positive).

I scanned a batch of magazines today because I didn't have anything that seemed like it fit for the occasion, until I came across this in issue 295 of Auto-Hebdo, from November 1981, which featured not only the official announcement of Niki's comeback to F1 with McLaren for 1982, but also an interview of the man himself. It has highlights such as "death has never made me shiver even once" and "I'm ugly and I know it".

In April (I think?) 1979, weekly motorsports magazine Sport-Auto released a non-nummered issue called "Knowing Everything About Formula 1", whose existence I randomly discovered while looking for 1979 entries for a video. It has since made me a very happy man because... I mean look at it, it's glorious!

This is just their presentation of all 28 drivers who started the 1979 season, along with a dead wife montage of all previous driver champions (and Stirling Moss, who does deserve it - they tell you he's the Crownless Champion too) and the most notable French drivers back then (Maurice Trintignant, Jean Behra, François Cevert and Jean-Pierre Beltoise - yes there are three JPs in this article alone).

You also know this is from early into the season because Jacques Laffite was still the leading driver of the championship and they make a remark in Jody Scheckter's profile about how his teammate has attracted more attention than he has so far. You'll never guess who is the 1979 WDC at the end of the day.

This article, named "Rising Stars", is from Sport-Auto issue 201, from October... 1978. I'm not kidding, I'm not mistaken about dates - fellow nerds will recognize the racing suits and cars featured on the photos in the article.

The main article of Auto-Hebdo issue 139, from November 16th, 1978, named "The Seven Mercenaries". You'll never guess who was really happy about how many French drivers there were in F1 back then.

I don't know where to begin for a summary of its contents. Every single interview has a lot to teach you about the driver it's about. It goes over their seasons, the cars, how they perceived it, etc. Patrick Depailler gets the most screentime because he had won the Monaco GP that year, the only win from a French driver that year... or maybe it's Didier Pironi, who gets a surprisingly long section compared to his fellow countrymen (and they didn't even mention him winning Le Mans earlier than year! It's all F1-related).

The one thing that surprised me the most in there was Patrick Depailler speaking about how heavy the bias in Tyrrell was in 1978 between the two drivers, because while we know it existed, even Patrick himself was surprised by it - and you can guess it, it's how the part on Didier starts.

The least surprising thing was Jacques Laffite outright saying he didn't want his future teammate Patrick Depailler to be treated on equal footing with him. Yeah Jacques I could've guessed from the absolute shitshow that was being Ligier's second driver lmao, but thanks for the transparency! (He says Guy Ligier and Gérard Ducarouge made a "small mistake" there, because Jacques has been here for longer and thinks he deserves the slight advantage).

Bonus cursed cover of the issue itself:

It's February 24th, and you know what it means: it's time for me to post something about Alain Prost again, since it's his 71st birthday today!

I happened to stumble upon the perfect thing for the occasion by batch-scanning magazines again, and it's this article from Sport-Auto issue 239 (December 1981), named "Alain Prost: An Astonishing Prodigy", which was apparently written by Keith Botsford from the Sunday Times, but which was translated for a French audience. As you can tell by the length of the post, it's mucho texto, but I'm not posting here for that - well, it's interesting, I'm sure someone here will be glad to read it, but since an English version must exist out there already, it's less rare than what I usually post per say.

I'm of course posting it for the pictures, like have you seen these photos? Some of them are just for this community!

44 years ago was the second ever all-French podium in F1 history - the slightly infamous 1982 French Grand Prix, aka "French civil war and their taller, half-Italian cousin dissociating next door". Nobody calls it that but me now but whatever, you know the story. It's like Imola 82 if they were less freaks about each other and had actual team orders, except this time the world decided Alain was in the wrong for complaining about said team orders.

Sport-Auto's report on the 1982 Dutch GP, from issue 247 (August 1982).

Isn't it a little wonderful, how even decades later, somebody remembers your birthday enough to make sure to post something about one of your accomplishment on the day? How I knew from the moment I saw the cover of that magazine months ago that I'd probably post it on March 26th for this specific reason?

This is the amusingly entitled "Let's Talk About Everything, But Not the Race", from Auto-Hebdo issue 215 (May 15th, 1980). Little did I know, while in his first McLaren era (aka the ground effect flop era), Alain Prost had his own column in Auto-Hebdo - he wasn't the first, because you don't even know how many Patrick Tambay columns I have in my bedroom, but he was there before Didier or René, who'd get their own in 82 and 83 respectively.

As you can tell with this title, Alain isn't very happy about his recent race in Zolder. He talks about the then-new qualifying tyre reglementation changes, Ecclestone being Ecclestone, that fuckass McLaren... It's a really fun novelty.