The all-French F1 partnership that Ocon and Gasly hope to emulate

Some 40 years ago, two French F1 drivers combined their efforts as team-mates to win the constructors’ championship for a key team. Patrick Tambay and Rene Arnoux achieved eight pole positions and four victories with Ferrari in 1983 but lost out in the drivers’ title battle to Brazilian Nelson Piquet. Sadly, Tambay passed away last December at the age of 73 having suffered from Parkinson’s Disease.

While Tambay never reached the peak of his F1 ambition, he was hugely respected and an easy person to connect with, as his 1979 McLaren
 team-mate John Watson remembers.

“We had a very good relationship,” says Watson. “Patrick was a very affable, nice guy. He was from a perhaps more sophisticated background than me; he was brought up in southern France, well cultured. He was an easy and comfortable person to have as a team-mate. He certainly wasn’t a political animal the
 way other team-mates of mine have been....”

Tambay had already spent a full season at McLaren in 1978 alongside James Hunt, who had won the world championship with the team two years previously. But times had changed; the fantastic development of the Lotus ground-effect car led to Mario Andretti’s title plus the seventh and final constructors’ title for Colin Chapman’s outfit. Hunt’s frustration prompted him to switch to the Wolf team while Watson replaced him at McLaren with high hopes for the new M28 car. Sadly it let him and Tambay down.

“For the first two races that year, Patrick didn’t have an M28 whereas I did,” Watson explains, “he had to continue with the previous M26. I would have thought at the time that he had a disadvantage but arguably he didn’t because when McLaren built the M28 they soon realised it needed a significant amount of restructuring to make it work.”

The car was a big disappointment and Tambay was also getting embroiled in a series of mid-grid accidents before failing to qualify at Zolder and Monaco. It was a tough time and by the end of the season he was dropped in favour of another Frenchman, a youngster who had been given a test at Paul Ricard. “He [Alain Prost] was so smooth, absolutely like he was born to it,” Watson recalls.

McLaren drivers Tambay and Watson had a tough time in 1979, but the Frenchman puts a brave face on at Kyalami

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Tambay was out of F1 for all of 1980 but boosted his confidence by winning the Can-Am sportscar series for the second time and reconnecting
 with Hong Kong entrepreneur Teddy Yip. Tambay
 had been given his GP debut by Yip in 1977 at Silverstone (after failing to qualify an uncompetitive Surtees at Dijon) and was brought back into the Theodore F1 team in 1981.

Within months he was teaming up
 with another Frenchman, Jacques Laffite, at Ligier and for 1982 signed with Arrows. That arrangement didn’t last long; he was so upset by his team’s reaction to the F1 driver’s strike at the first
 round in Kyalami, over restricted contracts with the sport’s authorities, that he just walked away.

“I think that’s an aspect of Patrick’s character,” Watson says, “on
 a point of principle he had opinions that he stood by rigidly.”

Arnoux and Tambay became team-mates in 1983 and, despite having very different characters, they delivered Ferrari a constructors’ title that took another 16 years to repeat

His F1 career appeared to be over, then tragedy re-opened the door. The death of his good friend Gilles Villeneuve in a qualifying accident in Belgium led to an invitation from Ferrari to take the place alongside yet another Frenchman, Didier Pironi, who was challenging for the title. When Tambay joined Ferrari at Zandvoort, his former team-mate Watson was leading the drivers’ points battle in his John Barnard-designed McLaren MP4, having won in Belgium and Detroit.

Patrick responded well to the new opportunity: he took a podium finish at Silverstone on his second outing for Ferrari and finished one place behind Pironi in France on a weekend dominated by Renault rivals Arnoux and Prost; their own argument afterwards about team orders ultimately led to Arnoux’s move to Ferrari the following year.

As the 1982 season continued, the event at Hockenheim in Germany was devastated by a huge accident in the wet for Pironi during practice; it ended Pironi’s F1 career, but Tambay ended an emotional weekend on an uplifting note by claiming victory. Keke Rosberg finished third that day and began a sequence that would lead to winning an unexpected title at the final round where Watson was still a key contender.

Tambay made a success of his time at Ferrari and was joined by Arnoux for 1983 as they secured the constructors' title - and a 1-2 in Austria

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Arnoux and Tambay became team-mates the following January and, despite having very different characters, they delivered Ferrari a constructors’ title that took another 16 years to repeat. Tambay’s career petered out a few years later but 1983 remains the last time race victories were taken by French team-mates in F1, creating a statistic that opens a question for 2023: can Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly deliver an equivalent platform at Alpine?

PLUS: The intent revealed in Gasly's Alpine switch that his F1 rivals should heed

“I think Ocon is a capable guy, as is Gasly,” says Watson, “But I suspect it will be more about competing against each other than it will be about looking at the bigger picture. The chemistry between them is going to need to be handled before the season starts and it could be to the team’s detriment.”

The pairing of Tambay and Arnoux may have enjoyed some success, but it did only last a single season. Let’s see how long Gasly and Ocon can stick together.

Can Gasly and Ocon hit the ground running in 2023?

Photo by: Alpine