F1's laid-back drifter who was too nice for his own good

It is the mid-eighties, and we are chatting outside the Meridien Hotel in Montreal. A cab draws up, and out steps Jacques Laffite. He sees us, waves hello, then goes to the boot, from which he extracts his suitcase and - of course - the fishing gear that goes everywhere with him. Then he pays the driver, who starts to move off.

Suddenly Laffite's expression changes. "Merde!", he shouts, slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand, gesticulating for the cab to stop. Up goes the boot again, and Jacques gratefully retrieves the overlooked item. It is his helmet bag.

Whenever the name of Jacques Laffite is mentioned, it is invariably this vignette that comes first to my mind. If he adored motor racing, he was far too well-balanced to be consumed by it.

As John Hogan, architect of so many careers in his days of running Marlboro's racing operation, once said to me: "If ever you find yourself sitting next to a driver on a flight to Australia, make sure it's a number two."

I knew what he meant. Over and above their God-given talents, the superstars of this business invariably work harder than the others, thinking of little but making the car quicker. Wholly admirable in its way, perhaps, but wearisome after a time.

The less obsessed tend to be more aware of a world beyond the paddock. Like Clay Regazzoni, for Laffite racing was one of the good things of life, but never life itself. Although capable of greatness on a given day, neither could be called 'a great driver', and they knew it.

I remember standing in the pits with Laffite during practice at Watkins Glen in 1979. The monsoon conditions were such that Jacques was one of many who declined to go out, but Jody Scheckter's Ferrari was running, and set the fastest time. Then his team-mate Gilles Villeneuve took to the track, soon skittering by at a different sort of speed from anyone else. When Gilles's time was announced, it was 11 seconds - eleven seconds - faster than Scheckter's best. "Look at him," murmured Laffite. "He's different from the rest of us - on a separate level..."

Jacques came into racing late, and, by his own admission, was a drifter until going to the Winfield Racing School in 1969, when he was 25. "I did Formula Renault for two years, then decided I would try to race for a living. I had never worked before that! I lived with my parents, and they gave me something to eat and somewhere to sleep. When I worked a bit, I'd use the money to go on holidays."

In 1973 Laffite moved to F3, winning the French Championship, after which it was F2, and he took the European Championship in 1975. Midway through 1974, though, his talent had been noticed by Frank Williams, for whom he made his F1 debut at the Nürburgring.

"For sure it was hard - because we did not have a good chassis, a good engine or good tyres - but actually it was great for me, because it taught me to fight. I loved driving for Frank, and would have stayed with him for 1976 if the Ligier offer had not come up."

Laffite was astonished by that first Ligier. "The car was so fast! The Matra engine seemed fantastic - but of course I had never had a good Cosworth with Frank's team. The first season was good, but we all had a lot to learn, and I'm sure another driver, like Lauda, would have had better results."

Ligier established a reputation for fine chassis, but the Matra V12 lacked the torque of a DFV. In the first three seasons there was but one win, at Anderstorp in 1977, but in '79 Ligier suddenly emerged as a front-running team with the JS11, which - significantly - had a DFV in the back.

Laffite's season began sensationally, with pole position and comfortable victory at both Buenos Aires and Interlagos. "Some people said the championship was going to be easy, but I knew better than that...".He didn't win another race that season.

Ultimately Jacques finished fourth in the championship, and did the same in 1980, winning at Hockenheim, and in 1981, with victories at Montréal and the Österreichring. The following year, though, Ligier was nowhere, and when Williams offered the opportunity to return, it was accepted.

The second spell with Frank, though, was not a success. Invariably Laffite was outpaced by Keke Rosberg, and failed to make the podium all year long. "I loved having Jacques as a team-mate," said Keke. "A lovely guy, unbelievably laid-back. He'd signed a two-year contract, but after the first year Frank told him he wasn't satisfied with his results, and was halving his retainer for '84. And Jacques just said, 'OK'"

The 1984 season, in which even Rosberg finished only eighth in the championship, was a poor one for Williams. At the end of it Laffite was out, whereupon - what else? - he returned to Ligier, where he was sometimes competitive until an appalling career-ending first-corner accident at Brands Hatch in 1986.

After the race had been stopped, I walked down to the grid, where I found Derek Warwick, as yet unaware of the plight of Laffite, still trapped in his car. "Oh, no, not Jacques." said Derek. "Why him?" That was how everyone felt, and there was great relief when we learned that life was not in danger. He had, though, suffered the terrible leg injuries so common in that era, when the driver sat between the front wheels.

There followed a lengthy spell in a Paris hospital, and Jacques - typically - rented an expensive apartment nearby, so that friends coming to visit him would have somewhere to stay! Once he had recovered, it broke his heart that, at 44, a return to F1 was out of the question, but for years he continued to race in the French touring car championship, as well as Le Mans and the Spa 24 Hours.

For a while, too, he worked in F1 again - and in PR, which we found novel, given his blessed contempt for political correctness. At dinner one evening he got on to the subject of a team's cheating, and someone suggested maybe he should keep his voice down. "But why?" said Jacques. "Everybody knows..."

Even in his own era Laffite was a man out of his time. "You know," he said, "everyone in France assumes that Jacques Laffite must be rich - 13 years in F1, and all that - but in my last season I was being paid two million francs (then about $300,000). OK, it was a lot of money, but nothing compared with what they get now - and, anyway, I always spend what I have! Life is for today, no?

"Until my accident I never thought about retirement - I loved racing for itself, and I swear to you that if necessary I would have raced for nothing. I loved competition. C'est tout..."