Francois Cevert: a lost champion

It was almost as if Formula 1 itself - rather than just Ken Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart - had groomed Francois Cevert to be Stewart's successor as the sport's standard-bearer. Glamorously good-looking, articulate, intelligent, cultured, charismatic and open - and by 1973 pretty much as fast and composed in the car as Stewart - he would have made a fabulous poster boy for the sport in the years ahead.

The relationship between Stewart and Cevert certainly had an element of master and pupil, sorcerer and apprentice, but was actually much more than that. It was an incredibly rare and warm relationship for two men competing in the same arena. As Stewart said at the time: "He's more than a friend; he's part of the family."

Over their four seasons as team-mates Stewart was essentially downloading everything he knew to Cevert, a blank circuit board when he arrived in F1 in 1970, maximising Tyrrell's chances of sustaining its success when Jackie decided to call it a day - as he considered doing at the end of '71 and finally did two years later.

Arguably, Stewart was able to be so open with a team-mate partly because of the unique relationship he had with Ken Tyrrell. Much more than team owner and driver, they were like partners in a family business, and had together identified Cevert as a guy of potential who could become a big asset.

Stewart had locked horns with him at the Reims F2 race of 1969. "It was funny," recalled Cevert. "The whole race was always decided there by the last bend. You had to come out of there in second place. If you led you would just suck the other car along and get beaten to the line. So me and Jackie approached this final corner in the last 100 metres side-by-side, with the others just behind. We were looking across at each other, braking and accelerating, each trying not to be first into the corner."

With the others bearing down fast, a decision had to be made and it was Stewart who went in there first - and Cevert who won the race.

Cevert, leading Stewart, was a regular frontrunner by 1973 © LAT

Early in 1970 Stewart encountered him again, at the Crystal Palace F2 race, the world champion being struck by how difficult he'd proved to pass. On this occasion Stewart won with Cevert second, but it was after this race that Jackie mentioned to Ken that the French guy in the Tecno was definitely worth keeping an eye on.

"Everyone assumed we took him because he was French," said Tyrrell. "But it wasn't that which first interested me. It was what Jackie had said about him after Crystal Palace." The fact that he was French and already backed by Tyrrell's French sponsor Elf was just icing on the cake.

Cevert had only completed three seasons of racing of any sort at this point, having won the Volant Shell racing school award in 1966, the prize for which was the use of an old Alpine F3 car in the '67 French series. A more modern Tecno acquired for '68 took him to the French F3 Championship and led to his graduation with Tecno into F2, with the assistance of Elf.

It was a very raw CV for a move into F1, the opportunity to run alongside Stewart in the Tyrrell-run March 701 coming when Johnny Servoz-Gavin retired three races into the season, having not been able to recapture his sparkling rookie form of 1968 due to an eye injury.

Plucked to run in F1 alongside the world champion in just his fourth season of racing, without a winter of testing, it was potentially a horribly pressurised situation for Cevert. But it was in this situation that Tyrrell's approach was so appropriate.

"Ken was fantastic," recalled Cevert of his early races. "He said, 'I'm not asking you to be excellent right now. I just want you to get acquainted with the car. Just quietly take a ride, don't attack, I don't want you to crash. If you're not brilliant, that's OK.'"

He took Ken to his word and his first few grands prix were very low-key affairs. In fact, were a rookie in today's F1 an average of 1.8s off his team-mate's qualifying pace - as Cevert was in both 1970 and '71 - he'd likely be rejected within a few races.

It is perhaps Cevert's steady rather than stellar apprenticeship over the next couple of years that leads some to question whether, had not fate intervened at Watkins Glen with his fatal accident in qualifying for the last race of the '73 season, he really would have been able to take up where Stewart left off following the Scot's retirement.

Stewart considered Cevert family © LAT

But that's to misunderstand the whole nurturing programme that Cevert was lucky enough to benefit from. He was learning his craft step by step in a lethally dangerous era without the threat of replacement; he was already identified as the heir apparent internally.

He came to F1 with way less experience than some of the starring rookies of 1970: Emerson Fittipaldi was a 10-year veteran of racing bikes, hydroplanes, karts and cars before his rapid rise through the British junior racing ranks in 1969-70; Clay Regazzoni had been racing for seven years, five of them in F3 and F2, when he graduated to F1 with Ferrari; Ronnie Peterson began racing karts in the early '60s and was a multiple champion in the discipline before embarking on a single-seater career that brought him to his F1 debut two races before Cevert.

Compared to these guys, Francois was a babe in arms, still learning the basic craft of racing when he arrived in the top echelon.

"Becoming a racing driver happened very progressively with me," he recalled. "It had not been my intention. I was a student of the classical piano and thought I might become a concert pianist." This was indeed the vocation hoped for him by his jeweller father. "I practised that for 15 years but then I went to the racing school and it took all my time after that. There were 22 races in 1967 and I didn't have time for the piano."

Much to his parents' dismay, a new love had him in its thrall. Racing in turn loved him. With an engaging and open personality, he had friends everywhere in the paddock. Yes, with his deep blue eyes, mop of black hair, tall frame and penetrating baritone voice, the ladies loved him - and he could count Brigitte Bardot as one of his many dates - but so did almost everyone else.

Stewart was particularly taken, recalling in his autobiography: "He had an amazing presence, he was one of those rare people everyone just wanted to know. To his natural flair he added a cast-iron determination to work hard, to learn and become the best driver he could be.

"Some people tended to regard him as a playboy - he liked to dress stylishly, and at one stage appeared looking dynamite in a double-breasted, ankle-length fur coat with a shoal collar. Yet he was always much, much more than that. For me, he was always more than a team-mate. He was my younger brother."

Cevert died with just one win to his name, in the 1971 US GP © LAT

Totally open to Stewart's tuition, Cevert developed progressively - and given that on his F1 debut he raced past the grisly scene of Piers Courage's fatal accident for nine laps, it's easy to imagine how reassuring Tyrrell's words were about not needing to impress straight away.

He'd qualified around 1.5s adrift of Stewart at Zandvoort, though this was marginally faster than fellow March 701 pilots Ronnie Peterson and Jo Siffert. In the race he was passed by Peterson and Graham Hill before retiring.

At Clermont-Ferrand he qualified mid-grid, ran an early 12th but was passed by Dan Gurney, Rolf Stommelen and Siffert on consecutive laps and later by John Miles and Hill too, before he finished last of the untroubled runners. Although he was then seventh at Brands, he was again last of the healthy runners, as he was at Hockenheim.

The first sign of real promise came when he qualified the March inside the top 10 around the fast, flowing demands of the Osterreichring, though his engine blew on the first lap.

At Monza he spun the car spectacularly during Friday practice, and later recalled: "I was doing 200mph and it just spun and spun and spun. Finally I stopped without hitting anything and drove back to the pits with square tyres and later I laughed about it with my friends.

"The next day, 200 yards ahead of me Jochen Rindt was
killed at 80mph. I could not sleep the night before the race. I realised that the previous day I should have been killed."

Cevert had a thing about fate and destiny. Jean-Claude Halle's biography recalled that he'd visited a psychic on the eve of his Volant Shell competition and had been told that he would win it and would go on to achieve great fame and fortune but would not see his 30th birthday.

Watkins Glen '73 would be his last scheduled race before turning 30.

When he spoke of his career choice, it was as if the earlier prediction still weighed upon him. "It's impossible to be a racing driver and to fear an accident or death," he said.

"I've accepted once and for all that I'm taking important risks; I know perfectly I could kill myself. I've decided to be a racing driver because it's the only thing I love totally, and it includes the possibility that I could have an accident that could be lethal. I've made my choice."

The next race after that scare at Monza was Canada's St Jovite, where he qualified a brilliant fourth fastest and was running in that position in the race when he retired.

Cevert in action during the 1970 French GP © LAT

There would be more troughs over the next couple of years but the peaks would become progressively more outstanding.

In the new Tyrrell in 1971, he began slowly but came good at his home race where he was second only to Stewart. He repeated this feat at the Nurburgring Nordschleife and took a new lap record into the bargain. At Monza he outqualified Stewart for the first time.

At Watkins Glen, Stewart was struggling with a front tyre that was going off and Cevert passed him and won, fending off a determined attack from Jacky Ickx's Ferrari along the way. It was to be the only grand prix victory of his career, though there were at least two occasions in 1973 where he would probably have won, had he not been subservient to Stewart.

At Zandvoort he was right on his tail when Stewart missed a gear out of Tarzan. "Why didn't you pass me, you idiot?" smiled Jackie afterwards.

"I don't want to beat you like that," he replied.

After they took another one-two at the Nurburgring Stewart commented to Tyrrell that Cevert had been decisively quicker and could have passed him any time he chose. This was no longer a peak-and-trough driver; Cevert was now a contender everywhere on any day and his style had all of Stewart's dripping momentum.

"On more than one occasion in '73 he was faster than me," said Stewart in a 1993 interview. "I don't think he could have taken the title from me, because I knew too much by then. But I think he would have won the title for Ken in '74."

Jody Scheckter, in his first full season, went to the final round as a title contender for Tyrrell, so it's perfectly feasible - even likely - that Cevert would have been France's first world champion.

Before going out for his final run, he'd told mechanic Jo Ramirez that he was in Tyrrell 006, with Cosworth number 66 and it was October 6. "Watch my times," he said. "I'll fix 'em."

He seemed determined to take pole - not knowing, but suspecting, that Stewart might be retiring and therefore, with Jackie's title already secured, it was important that he beat him at the last opportunity.

He drove past Helen Stewart in the pitlane and saluted. He never returned. Third gear was quicker than fourth through the lethal Esses and there is even footage of Jackie and Francois discussing it earlier in the weekend. But fourth calmed the short-wheelbase car, made it more inert in its response to a particularly awkward bump.

Cevert was using third. It hit the bump, dived hard over to the barrier on the right, bounced off that and came down on top of the barrier on the left with instantly fatal consequences.

He'd already made his peace with that. But there was devastation for those he'd left behind. JYS reckons he's still around, that he can still feel the presence of Francois Cevert. It's a very good presence.