When France’s ‘other’ team brought colour to F1

“We weren’t challenging to win races,” says Tino Belli of his three years as Larrousse’s chief designer in Formula 1, “but a small, low budget team is a challenge in its own right. The camaraderie is probably higher, everybody has to pull together.”

As one of several teams fighting to escape from the F1 midfield in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Larrousse went under the radar during its eight seasons, often standing out more for its garish liveries than its results. In its vying for sponsorship with Ligier, France’s national team, it regularly struggled for money and never started from the front two rows of the grid, before bowing out at the end of 1994.

But its total of 126 starts across three different guises – it ran both Lola and ‘Venturi’ cars during the first six years of its F1 tenure – comfortably outweighs many of the squads that flocked to join the world championship circus once the requirement to use turbo engines was dropped from the regulations for 1987.

And it did reach an F1 podium at Suzuka in 1990, a year in which Larrousse bloodied the noses of several bigger squads to put out what was, on supertimes calculations, the sixth fastest car. Humbled, scoreless Ligier responded by poaching its engines…

Gerard Larrousse’s eponymous operation faced numerous obstacles to survive as long as it did, not least being twice dragged through the mire by affiliation with scandal-ridden partners. Co-founder and marketing man Didier Calmels was arrested for killing his wife in 1989, while in 1992 shareholder Klaus Walz went on the run after being accused of four murders and died in a shootout after taking a hostage.

But canny decisions, such as sub-contracting its cars to Lola and Robin Herd’s Bicester design house, helped Larrousse to make the best of modest funds. Chris Murphy, the Lola-Larrousse project leader and chief designer of its Lamborghini-powered 1989-90 cars, likens its approach to that of Haas today.

“It should be considered as a team that punched well above its weight, compared with others that had significantly better resources,” Murphy argues. “Gerard was massively practical, and that’s why he came to us at Lola. He didn’t have any infrastructure to design a car. He had an office in Paris and subsequently a small factory in Le Castellet, but no manufacturing facility at all.”

Expanding to two cars for Mexico 1987 gave Dalmas his F1 debut, but fifth in Adelaide was not recognised with points

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“We believed that we did a great job with the resources that we had,” agrees Belli of the 1992-94 period.

As a former driver renowned for his versatility, Gerard Larrousse had been three times a Monte Carlo Rally runner-up before taking two Le Mans 24 Hours victories with Matra. He also ticked the F1 box by starting the 1974 Belgian Grand Prix in a customer Brabham. After retiring from driving he headed up Renault’s competition department and remained there until 1984, before spending two years at Ligier, where the idea for a team initially called Larrousse Calmels germinated.

With an adapted Lola Formula 3000 chassis entered from the second round at Imola, Philippe Alliot (who had worked with Larrousse at Ligier) scored a trio of sixth places in 1987 and was three times a class winner in the Jim Clark Trophy for normally aspirated machinery. A second LC87 was entered in the final three rounds for F3000 graduate Yannick Dalmas, with support from the Var region from which the Frenchman hails. Dalmas took fifth in Adelaide, but was ineligible for points because the team had only filed one full-season entry. Remarkably, it would prove the future four-time Le Mans winner’s best F1 finish.

Erik Comas, who joined the team in 1993, believes its future “would have been totally different” had Gerard Larrousse not had to split his attention between heading up operations and securing its financial stability

After being introduced to Lola’s Ralph Bellamy by Christian Danner, who he’d engineered at Zakspeed, Murphy joined for 1988 and found Larrousse Calmels a pragmatic entity that avoided the “excessive” ambitions that weighed down his former team. He was also impressed by its boss. “Gerard was a quiet and refined gentleman, but he was fiercely competitive,” reflects Murphy.

The 1988 chassis, “a pretty chunky thing” based on the previous year’s model, and which again incorporated a Cosworth DFZ engine, made its biggest impression on the pitwall in Mexico when Alliot was fortunate to escape unscathed from an enormous roll after losing the car on the exit kerb of Peraltada.

“It was a big, strong car, very high-sided and probably saved Philippe’s bacon,” Murphy recalls. “The car was dismantling itself as it rolled down the pitstraight. He was lucky to get away with that.”

There were no points for Alliot or Dalmas, who came closest with a pair of sevenths and missed the final two rounds after a Legionnaires’ disease diagnosis. Dalmas attests that “the monocoque, the aerodynamics, everything was more adapted for F1” in 1988, but concedes it was “not fantastic, the car was heavy”.

Hefty accident for Alliot in 1988 Mexican GP was most notable moment for Larrousse in its scoreless sophomore season

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Change was afoot for 1989, with an all-new design that only retained the pedal brackets from its predecessor. Bellamy’s departure following a row with Lola boss Eric Broadley meant Murphy, who admits that “nobody knew who I was at that time”, assumed control of the F1 project. The arrival of “super-helpful” Gerard Ducarouge from Lotus was welcomed by Murphy, who also believes that Lamborghini’s V12 engine and transverse gearbox designed by Mauro Forghieri gave the team credibility – even if cost had been a more important consideration.

But arguably the most significant change resulted from Calmels’s incarceration, resulting in the team becoming known simply as Larrousse. Murphy calls this “a major setback for Gerard” since it put more of a premium on partnerships such as those with the Japanese ESPO conglomerate, which by 1991 had hit strife, and the Comstock Group headed up by Walz. Erik Comas, who joined the team in 1993, believes its future “would have been totally different” had Gerard Larrousse not had to split his attention between heading up operations and securing its financial stability.

“Larrousse had to dedicate too much time to finding money and couldn’t manage the team as he had before,” reckons the 1990 F3000 champion. “It became unbalanced.”

The more immediate problem for 1989, however, was the Lamborghini drivetrain’s unreliability. Dalmas believes “we needed three months more for the whole preparation”. Managing few laps in testing due to persistent teething problems robbed him of confidence to such an extent that Dalmas believes his recovery from illness was irrelevant.

Repeated glitches contributed to failing to qualify for five of the opening six races. The only occasion he made the cut, before being dropped in favour of F3000 standout Eric Bernard and heading to AGS, Dalmas was stranded on the grid at Imola by electronic woes.

“It was really bad for me,” laments Dalmas of 1989. “We had one car that was OK. But my car, it was not good. I was very frustrated, very disappointed.”

Matters did improve by the year’s end. With the LC89, Alliot delivered three of the best grid positions ever achieved by a Larrousse, including coming through pre-qualifying to fifth at Jerez and securing the team’s only point of the season. That Alliot also started from the fourth row at Paul Ricard, Monza and Suzuka was, for Murphy, proof that his car “wasn’t a one trick pony”.

“If we had a better drivetrain, we could have been in even better shape, but we were conditioned by the deals Gerard could do,” reckons Murphy. “One could be critical of Lamborghini, but it wasn’t that bad. Considering the cost, it was good enough.”

A Larrousse never started higher than the fifth place Alliot mustered at Jerez in 1989, amid a tricky first year with the Lamborghini V12 engine

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An evolved, lightweight design for 1990 was driven by Bernard and Aguri Suzuki, the Japanese driver’s arrival from Zakspeed coming at the behest of new shareholder ESPO. It helped too that the LC90 was stable in long, high-speed corners, which partly explains why both cars qualified inside the top 10 at Silverstone, before finishing fourth (Bernard) and sixth (Suzuki) in the team’s only double points finish.

Third for Suzuki at his home event was the team’s zenith and helped to secure sixth in the constructors’ standings. Never was a Larrousse closer to the outright pace than in 1990, but more trouble was around the corner.

“He was trying to brand it as a Larrousse car and it was very clearly a Lola,” explains Murphy, who moved to Leyton House to design its 1991 car. “The manufacturer has to be in the name of the project, because F1 is a manufacturer’s competition.”

“Typically, we would start the year well – we would do a new car every year, but there was no in-season development”
Tino Belli

The penance for the administrative error was to have its 1990 constructors’ points docked. Adding salt into the wound, its Lamborghini engines went to Ligier for 1991 and Ducarouge followed mid-season, although Comas has little positive to say about his first F1 car.

“We called it ‘The Camper’,” he says of the JS35 that never troubled the scorers. “Everybody had a very low profile sidepod and we had the sidepod high. It was awful.”

The Broadley-designed LC91 was arguably flattered by the two points it scored – one each for Bernard and Suzuki – in the final year of Larrousse’s Lola affiliation. With funds lacking for development and using the long-in-the-tooth Cosworth DFR, it struggled to scrape onto the grid by the season’s business end.

After Bernard broke his ankle in a Suzuka practice crash, both Suzuki and substitute Bertrand Gachot missed the cut for Adelaide. It was the first and only time neither of the team’s cars qualified.

Gachot continued for 1992, the team’s sole season under the banner of French car maker Venturi, alongside rookie Ukyo Katayama as the familiar Lambo V12s returned. Sixth for Gachot in Monaco, where Katayama fell in pre-qualifying, was the LC92’s only score.

The only Larrousse podium at Suzuka in 1990 needed a stroke of luck - but even so, Suzuki still beat both Williams drivers

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Herd became a shareholder as his Fomet 1 studio – renamed Larrousse UK – took over from Lola, but the operation was no less unpretentious, with machining and fabrication subcontracted to the likes of Dave Price and G-Force. Belli notes that its staff, which counted a young James Allison working with Seamus Mullarkey on aerodynamics, wouldn’t suffice today for a Formula 2 team and likens its approach to “the old production car model” the bulk of its employees had used at March.

“Typically, we would start the year well – we would do a new car every year, but there was no in-season development,” remarks Belli, now IndyCar’s director of aerodynamic development. “We used to live year to year back then; just making it through a year was a step in the right direction. Three years continuously with Larrousse was a long time in those days!”

Alliot returned for 1993 to partner Comas, who was by now well-versed in the Larrousse-Ligier dynamic: “I could feel from the beginning that it was a rivalry between the two French teams, because Ligier wanted to get all the money possible, while Larrousse was trying to have his part too. The resources in France were going mostly to Ligier, and Larrousse was obliged to find sponsorship from Japan and Germany.”

Comas knew he was joining a team that had “barely the money to run one car”, but he had few options following Ligier’s sale to Cyril de Rouvre at the end of 1992. While Larrousse was now finally a manufacturer per the entry list, financial constraints meant it never could never make an active suspension car. The UK arm did build a test rig for active ride height that never got beyond the bench.

“Our focus was suspension geometries, aerodynamics,” says Belli. “Did we ever get into any trick stuff? No, not really.”

Fifth at Imola for Alliot, who stood down for Toshio Suzuki (no relation to Aguri) at the final two races, and sixth for Comas at Monza were the only points finishes. Comas is only half-joking when he says “I was already running a historic F1 car. It was difficult to get noticed with a manual shift.”

Comas was joined by F3000 race winner Oliver Beretta for 1994, and regrets that Larrousse couldn’t continue with the “fantastic” Lamborghini engine. Mated to Cosworth’s fickle HB V8, which caused eight non-finishes, were gearboxes purchased from Benetton. A prototype ’box with hydraulically controlled diff-locking was designed, but Larrousse lacked the money for manufacturing parts.

This was a theme of the year. The team was in a “critical financial situation” from the beginning of the season, according to Comas, although he managed sixth at Aida.

Gerard Larrousse faced a mounting struggle to keep his team financially afloat and competitive heading into 1994

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Therefore, the FIA’s requirement to make chassis alterations, including trimming the diffuser, on safety grounds following the tragedies at Imola posed more problems. There was no opportunity to test the revised aerodynamics in the wind tunnel.

“We just did what the FIA said we had to do and did the best with it,” says Belli. Nor was there any scope to test at a circuit either.

Comas points to a deficit of spares being an issue too. He was fourth fastest in opening practice in Monaco but, following a crash at the Rascasse, his floor was replaced by an old spec that was thicker “so we had to raise the car five millimetres and it didn’t work anymore”. He qualified 13th and with no clutch finished a thrice-lapped 10th. “We knew that something had to happen,” Comas adds, as transpired after a first-lap pile-up at Hockenheim, “otherwise no way you could score points”.

It didn’t endure as long as Minardi, but F1’s ultimate underdog team never flew quite so close to the sun

Beretta lost his seat first to Alliot, then Dalmas in a Larrousse old boys’ farewell tour, before Hideki Noda saw out the year. Comas volunteered his seat to Jean-Denis Deletraz for its Adelaide swansong, recognising “there was no point” in continuing because “we could not do anything”.

Arguably the team’s most significant contribution to 1994 before losing its battle to stay on the grid for 1995 was a split of liveries, owing to a deal with the Kronenbourg brewery. Its non-alcoholic Tourtel brand adorned a green paint scheme, while Kronenbourg occupied a classic red-and-white livery in locations where advertising of alcohol was not banned.

But the team’s contribution to F1 should not be dismissed. It didn’t endure as long as Minardi, but F1’s ultimate underdog team never flew quite so close to the sun. Given the cards Gerard Larrousse had at his disposal, Murphy is right to salute a “really good effort”.

“You have Ligier, you have Larrousse, it’s not easy,” reasons Dalmas. “He tried to do the best but, if you don’t have the correct budget, it’s difficult.”

Comas adds: “I cannot say it’s a good memory for me. But I recognise that not everybody is able to start a team from zero like he did.”

Lotus generated significantly more column inches than Larrousse when both fell off the grid after 1994, but the French team punched above its weight

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