Ranking the 10 best drivers of an F1 junior series stalwart

A stalwart of junior single-seaters since its foundation in 1989, DAMS has won titles across pretty much every category you could care to mention over the past 30-odd years.

The Formula 3000 International Championship and its Bruno Michel-run successor series GP2 and Formula 2 has been its bread and butter, but it also achieved success in the rivalling Formula Renault 3.5 championship and its short-lived feeder category Formula Renault V6, plus the equally moribund A1GP World Cup of Motorsport for teams representing nations.

The team spearheaded by Jean-Paul Driot and ex-Formula 1 driver Rene Arnoux (DAMS stands for Driot-Arnoux-Motor-Sport), which broke away from the GDBA team they had co-owned with Gilles Gaignault and Pierre Blanchet after two seasons of F3000, has also had spells in sportscar racing and since 2014 been a stalwart of Formula E – initially partnered with Renault and subsequently with Nissan under the e.dams name.

Among the few series it hasn’t entered is Formula 1, although not for lack of trying. Driot launched a bid for 1996 and even built a car – the GD-01 – but couldn’t raise the necessary finances.

Following Driot’s death in 2019 after a long illness, the team has been controlled by his sons Gregory and Olivier Driot. But earlier this month, the Le Mans-based outfit announced that its F2 arm has been sold to ex-F1 racer Charles Pic, bringing the Driot family’s involvement to an end.

To mark the closing of an era, Autosport has devised a list of the top 10 drivers to represent DAMS in its illustrious history, with the impact they had on the team, their level of success and the circumstances of their time there the key determining factors.

Their achievements outside of DAMS are not considered, which explains why some of its esteemed graduates including four-time IndyCar champion Sebastien Bourdais – the final DAMS F3000 race-winner – and AlphaTauri F1 man Pierre Gasly miss out.

For the purposes of this list, drivers that competed for GBDA in 1987-88 have not been considered.

10. Eric Bernard

Bernard only won once for DAMS in F3000, but was a regular in its sportscar programmes aboard Panoz, Lola and Cadillac machinery

Photo by: Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 0
DAMS wins: 4

Eric Bernard was overshadowed by his rookie team-mate Erik Comas in the 1989 Formula 3000 championship, when he was expected to take the challenge to eventual champion and fierce junior rival Jean Alesi. But Bernard just beats GP2 champions Jolyon Palmer and Davide Valsecchi, plus the likes of Allan McNish, Nicholas Latifi and Alex Albon onto this list courtesy of his efforts for DAMS in sportscars.

Bernard had found form in F3000 at the end of 1988, having switched from Ralt to join the Bromley Motorsport team that ran champion-elect Roberto Moreno. Joining DAMS for 1989, Bernard led Comas home from pole at Jerez, but several further opportunities went begging. Trying to pass Alesi, he crashed on the second lap at Silverstone, then lost a golden chance of a win at Pau when he happened across a track blockage and stalled, before clashing with Mark Blundell. He spun out of second at Spa, citing a brake problem, and twice (Le Mans and Dijon) made poor starts from pole that handed wins to Comas.

Had his DAMS story ended there, it’s unlikely that Bernard would have made this list. But following an unfulfilling F1 career that petered out in 1994, he linked up with Driot again in 1997 for a second chapter that spanned the next five years of his career before retiring at the end of 2002.

He only scored two podiums in two years of FIA GT competition - in back-to-back races at Hockenheim and Dijon in 1998, sharing with David Brabham - but that’s easily explained by the fact he was driving the curious front-engined Panoz GTR-1 which had fared little better in the hands of the sister David Price Racing team in 1997. He did win Petit Le Mans for Panoz in 1999, driving the LMP Roadster S with Brabham and Andy Wallace, but that was after DAMS had concluded its relationship with Don Panoz’s eponymous company.

However, there were three wins for DAMS in 1999, driving a Judd-powered Lola B98/10 in the Sports Racing World Cup alongside Jean-Marc Gounon - another driver who has a claim to make the list having won an F3000 race aboard an uncompetitive Lola at Magny-Cours in 1992. Only a broken exhaust and wheel hub failure at Spa denied a clean sweep of every race he started. Despite dropping a cylinder, the car won by over half a minute at Donington, while Bernard was also present for victories at the Nurburgring and a soaking Kyalami.

Unfortunately, DAMS’ decision to ditch the Lola and run Cadillacs built by Riley & Scott proved a fateful mistake as the Northstar project was blunted by sloth-like decision-making.

Archive: Why Cadillac's previous Le Mans bid was doomed from the start

Still, Bernard and team-mates Emmanuel Collard and Frank Montagny were on course for fourth at Le Mans in 2000 before a suspension failure dropped their car to 19th. Somehow, that about summed up the career of a driver who gave his all for DAMS but was rarely rewarded for it.

9. Nicolas Lapierre

Lapierre formed a potent double-act with Premat as A1 Team France claimed the inaugural A1GP title in 2005/06

Photo by: Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 1 (2005/06 A1GP)
DAMS wins: 8

His superb form in the inaugural A1GP season in 2005/06 that yielded the title for Team France earns Nicolas Lapierre a place on this list, despite only winning once for the squad in GP2.

Alternating with compatriot Alexandre Premat – Autosport in 2005 compared the latter with Rene Arnoux and Lapierre with Alain Prost – Lapierre won each of his first four races, sweeping the Lausitzring and Eastern Creek weekends. He won twice more in Dubai and at the Indonesian Sentul track, his six wins from 11 starts one fewer than Premat mustered from the same number of races. It would have been seven apiece, but for the car sticking in third gear in the dying minutes at Laguna Seca.

Perhaps his best win came in Dubai, where he started only seventh, but capitalised on a safety car that scuppered early leader and DAMS stablemate Neel Jani and then hunted down Robbie Kerr to snatch victory. The only track where he contested both races – sharing with Premat for the Shanghai finale – and didn’t win was at the aforementioned Laguna Seca, where a sensible drive to second in the sprint race secured the title with three races to spare, ahead of Switzerland.

DAMS wasn’t the same dominant force in 2006/07, as Super Nova’s Germany and New Zealand teams took the initiative with Nico Hulkenberg and Jonny Reid. Third was Lapierre’s best finish from the first five rounds before stepping out of the car after Indonesia.

After two years of GP2 with Arden, his second interrupted by a back injury at Monaco, Lapierre was expected to be a title contender in 2007 but was never a factor in the championship race. He won the Bahrain sprint, but only managed one point across the next 15 races as bad luck frequently befell him – losing a certain win at Magny-Cours to a brake problem the pick of the bunch – before winning the feature from pole at Spa, surviving heavy pressure from championship runner-up Lucas di Grassi.

8. Jean-Christophe Boullion

Boullion won the 1994 F3000 title on his way to F1, but his grand prix career never truly took off

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 1 (1994 Formula 3000 International)
DAMS wins: 3

Jean-Christophe Boullion joined DAMS from Apomatox for 1994 as Frank Lagorce went the other way, and it appeared initially as though Jean-Paul Driot had backed the wrong horse. Lagorce, the winner of the final two rounds of 1993, had continued his form into the new campaign and led the standings after five of the eight rounds having scored two wins and 28 points. Boullion meanwhile had just nine.

He’d suffered a slow start to the season, finishing outside the points after a bad start at Silverstone, throwing it off in Barcelona after another poor getaway and being the innocent party in a bizarre Enna qualifying crash - caused by the circuit’s usual haphazard marshalling - that thwarted another promising weekend.

But Boullion turned things around to finish second to Lagorce at Hockenheim and used it as a springboard to win each of the three remaining races on his way to snatching an improbable title from under the noses of Lagorce and Gil de Ferran. A barnstorming pass on his compatriot around the outside of Blanchimont, in the wet, secured a maiden win at Spa, where Lagorce’s gamble on switching to dry tyres backfired as he had to come into the pits again for wets and didn’t score. Lagorce spun out of third in Estoril, as Boullion capitalised on Emmanuel Clerico turfing early leader de Ferran off to win again. Then it was the DAMS man who prevailed in a tense head-to-head in the Magny-Cours finale to secure the crown with 36 points to Lagorce’s 34, passing his rival at the Imola chicane.

Success in F1 never came for Boullion, who made just 11 starts for Sauber in 1995 and spent several years testing for Williams without a sniff of a race drive. But ‘JCB’ did go on to achieve success in sportscars, winning back-to-back Le Mans Series LMP1 titles for Pescarolo in 2005 and 2006.

7. Oliver Rowland

Rowland shone for Nissan e.dams in Formula E after battling Leclerc hard in 2017 FIA F2 season

Photo by: Andreas Beil

DAMS titles: 0
DAMS wins: 3

The highest non-champion on our list, Oliver Rowland was the closest thing Charles Leclerc had to a title rival in the 2017 Formula 2 championship, and went on to showcase his blistering pace in DAMS machinery for a further three seasons in Formula E.

Rowland had been a thorn in the side of DAMS driver Carlos Sainz Jr in the Spaniard’s ultimately successful 2014 Formula Renault 3.5 championship season, and went on to dominate the 2015 season for Fortec Motorsport as DAMS pair Nyck de Vries and Dean Stoneman only won once between them.

After a season of GP2 with MP Motorsport that yielded ninth in the standings, the 2011 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner’s F1 hopes looked to have plateaued – but Jean-Paul Driot took a gamble on Rowland for 2017 that was repaid by a series of strong performances, including two feature wins in Monaco and Hungary. On both occasions, these owed in part to misfortune striking Leclerc, but Rowland also had plenty of misfortune himself; including losing the Abu Dhabi feature win for a worn skid block, having already lost third at Spa for the same reason, and retiring from the Baku sprint while leading due to a gearbox failure. Under the circumstances, he was unfortunate not to finish runner-up.

Then followed a 2018 season in which he was frustratingly underutilised in sportscars, before getting another lifeline from Driot when Alex Albon received a surprise F1 call-up with Toro Rosso for 2019, creating a vacancy at the newly-renamed Nissan e.dams Formula E squad.

Impressing the team with his quick adaption to the series, Rowland took two poles in that first year and came close to a maiden win in Sanya, then broke through in Berlin the following year to finish fifth in the standings. The Briton comprehensively outperformed established team leader Sebastien Buemi in their final season together last year, and several team insiders believe it was a mistake to allow him to leave for Mahindra this season.

6. Carlos Sainz Jr

Sainz won DAMS' second Formula Renault 3.5 title in 2014 on his way to F1 with Toro Rosso

Photo by: Dutch Photo Agency

DAMS titles: 1 (2014 Formula Renault 3.5)
DAMS wins: 7

A tough 2013 GP3 season looked to have curtailed Carlos Sainz Jr’s Formula 1 hopes, but his excellent run to the 2014 Formula Renault 3.5 title with DAMS proved the launchpad for the current Ferrari man’s subsequent career.

Sainz could perhaps count himself fortunate that he’d shown flashes of form in select 3.5 outings with Zeta Corse in 2013, as his main programme in GP3 was a total disaster - finishing over 100 points behind fellow Red Bull junior and eventual champion Daniil Kvyat in10th. But Sainz had qualified fifth on his 3.5 debut at Monaco, and set fastest lap at the Hungaroring, so crucially kept his energy drinks backing for 2014.

Stepping into a DAMS team that had won the previous year’s title with Kevin Magnussen, Sainz had considerable expectation on his shoulders but fully justified it with a haul of seven wins from 17 races – although, remarkably, he scored no more podiums.

He faced the disappointment mid-season of being passed over in favour of Max Verstappen for a 2015 Toro Rosso F1 seat, but when it became clear Sebastien Vettel was joining Ferrari and Kvyat would be fast-tracked to Red Bull as his replacement, Sainz earned his place alongside Verstappen.

A dominant weekend at Paul Ricard put the title virtually beyond doubt and Roberto Merhi was unable to prevent Sainz becoming the first Red Bull junior to win the 3.5 title – a mission in which predecessors Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne and Antonio Felix da Costa had been unsuccessful.

The manner of his crowning was somewhat disappointing, as Sainz failed to score in the final two races at Jerez owing to a lack of rear grip. But he’d already done the hard work and is now reaping the rewards.

5. Olivier Panis

Panis's mid-season hat-trick in 1993 helped him to the F3000 title, returning DAMS to glory after two hard years

Photo by: Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 1 (1993 Formula 3000 International)
DAMS wins: 3

After two years of being stymied by uncompetitive Lolas that restricted Allan McNish, Laurent Aiello and Jean-Marc Gounon to just a single win between them, Olivier Panis restored DAMS to the top of the Formula 3000 tree by securing the 1993 title.

Panis too had been saddled with a Lola in his 1992 rookie year with Apomatox, managing two podiums. And although the switch to DAMS for 1993 would give him a Reynard, everybody else was using the Bicester company’s products that year as Lola dropped off the grid altogether.

A sparkling performance at Pau, albeit one which ended in retirement, announced Panis as a contender to watch and he overhauled the likes of David Coulthard, Pedro Lamy and Rubens Barrichello with a mid-season streak of wins across Hockenheim, the Nurburgring and Spa. He only edged Lamy to the title after retiring from the final two races - spinning off in the wet at Magny-Cours after a disastrous tyre change had dropped him back from second, then being cannoned into by Vincenzo Sospiri early doors at Nogaro.

But he’d done enough to re-establish DAMS as an F3000 force and went on to enjoy a lengthy F1 career that peaked with victory in the eventful 1996 Monaco Grand Prix.

4. Kevin Magnussen

Magnussen saw off stiff competition from Da Costa and Vandoorne for 2013 Formula Renault 3.5 title

Photo by: Diederik van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency

DAMS titles: 1 (2013 Formula Renault 3.5)
DAMS wins: 5

A phenomenal record of 13 podiums from 17 races - it would have been 14 had he not been disqualified from winning the opener at Paul Ricard - was the foundation of Kevin Magnussen’s 2013 Formula Renault 3.5 title-winning season, which gave him the leg-up to Formula 1.

The Dane had let himself down with errors in a disappointing 2012 rookie season with Carlin, but ironed these out upon joining DAMS in a season that married ruthless consistency with superb qualifying pace. Magnussen’s supergrid average (3.0) was better than anyone, and his eight poles were more than pre-season favourite Antonio Felix da Costa and runner-up Stoffel Vandoorne managed between them. Perhaps unsurprisingly therefore, he converted a season-high five wins to give DAMS its first title in the GP2-rivalling series. And on the few occasions when he started well down the field, he always made progress - coming through from 16th to a remarkable second at a wet Hungaroring.

He had a full year under his belt prior to his title year where Sainz didn’t, but there are two key differences that elevate Magnussen in our list. Firstly, the competition - where da Costa had won four of the last five races in 2012, Magnussen also faced strong second year drivers in Nico Muller, Marco Sorensen and Will Stevens, while Sainz’s nearest rivals Roberto Mehri (DTM), Pierre Gasly and Oliver Rowland (Formula Renault Eurocup) were all new to the series. Secondly, while Sainz won more races - seven to Magnussen’s five, he never finished on the podium when he didn’t win, a point reflected in the 47 points difference between them (which would have been 72 but for some fluorescent paint on the DRS flap causing it to fail scrutineering at Ricard).

Magnussen duly landed in F1 with McLaren for 2014 and took a debut podium with second in Australia, but it would prove the best result of an F1 career that lost its way with Renault and Haas.

3. Romain Grosjean

Grosjean won three titles in the space of two glittering years with DAMS that got his F1 career back on track

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 3 (2010 Auto GP, 2011 GP2 Asia, 2011 GP2 Series)
DAMS wins: 10

His career appeared down and out after a disappointing run of races for the Renault Formula 1 team at the end of 2009, but two years later Romain Grosjean had won three titles with DAMS and thrust himself back into the top-flight.

The Auto GP series previously known as Italian F3000 was hardly an obvious starting point for Grosjean’s revival. But having begun 2010 racing a Matech Ford GT in the FIA GT1 world championship, it was at least a step back in the right direction. Joining DAMS for the third of six rounds at Spa, he immediately won on his debut. Three more wins, never finishing below third, gave him the crown and a leg-up into DAMS’ GP2 operation, taking two podiums before the end of the year.

Given the 2008 GP2 Asia champion’s previous experience in the category, having won races in 2008 and 2009, what happened next perhaps should have come as no surprise. But Grosjean still had to do the job and his prowess underlined that DAMS was once again capable of challenging for titles against ART and iSport.

Prior to the 2011 season, the first with the new Dallara GP2/11, Grosjean won a second Asia Series title (so named despite only holding two meetings, one of which was at Imola) to firmly establish his credentials as the main series favourite. He duly took pole for the Istanbul opener and won it - though his march to the title wasn’t entirely straightforward.

Mistakes included tangling with Jules Bianchi in the Istanbul sprint race (the furious ART driver rejecting Grosjean’s view that it was a racing incident), a bizarre Monaco qualifying accident where he was launched over team-mate Pal Varhaug, and a messy Valencia sprint crash that eliminated two other cars before he later spun out.

But even though Grosjean didn’t take another pole, his speed was never in doubt and he twice recovered from lowly grid positions to score big points. He nailed a long first stint at Monaco to climb from 26th to an improbable fourth, which became third in race two, and came back from 13th on the grid at Silverstone (after a 10-place grid penalty for his Valencia faux pas) to fourth, then won the sprint. Although it yielded no points, his sprint race charge from the back to ninth in Barcelona - after a failed ride height test had cost him fourth in race one - included a remarkable triple overtake in the space of two corners (in the dry) that is well worth a watch on YouTube.

Three more victories, including the feature races in Valencia and Hungary (both inherited due to penalties for the erstwhile leader, the former when Giedo van der Garde ignored yellow flags, the latter when Marcus Ericsson stuttered into Luis Razia’s path away from his pitstop) and a gratifying Nurburgring sprint win where he pressured erstwhile leader Bianchi into a mistake on the penultimate lap, meant he comfortably saw off veteran Luca Filippi for the title.

By season’s end he was back testing for Team Enstone, now known as Lotus, and returned to F1 in 2012.

2. Erik Comas

Comas won DAMS' first title in 1990 after running Alesi close in 1989

Photo by: Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 1 (1990 Formula 3000 International)
DAMS wins: 6

Erik Comas endured a frustrating Formula 1 career that never hit the heights that were hinted at by two excellent campaigns in Formula 3000 with DAMS. The team’s first champion, he turned it from a race-winning outfit into a revered title-winner in 1990.

Arriving as the reigning French F3 champion, Comas stepped up to F3000 to partner second-year driver Eric Bernard at the team in 1989. In the points in his first two races, taking an excellent fourth at Vallelunga despite stalling on the grid, he rebounded brilliantly from missing Pau due to a monocoque-damaging qualifying shunt by finishing second at Jerez.

Thereafter when he made the finish, he was never off the podium and two wins to end the season at Le Mans and Dijon – each time at the expense of pole-sitter Bernard – meant he ended the year tied on points with champion Jean Alesi, who had skipped the final round to race in F1 with Tyrrell with a mathematically unassailable lead.

With little to gain and everything to lose if he couldn’t match those levels in 1990, Comas immediately stamped his authority on the championship with victory at Donington. Although he had to follow team-mate Allan McNish home at Silverstone, and crashed at Pau, consecutive wins at Jerez and Monza took the sting out of the championship fight. Nobody was able to mount a consistent challenge and another win at Le Mans sealed Lola’s first F3000 crown with a race to spare.

His conversation rate of six wins from 20 races entered is bettered only by five other drivers in the championship’s 20-year history and underlines that the future Nissan stalwart (a Super GT champion with the marque in 1998 and 1999) was much better than his F1 record of seven points scored with Ligier and Larrousse appears.

1. Sebastien Buemi

Buemi claimed 2015/16 Formula E title and could have had two more titles had the cards fallen differently

Photo by: Adam Warner / Motorsport Images

DAMS titles: 1 (2015/16 Formula E)
DAMS wins: 13

The bedrock of e.dams’ Formula E effort since the beginning in 2014, Sebastien Buemi was always going to top this list. The Swiss could easily have had three titles, but narrowly missed out to Nelson Piquet Jr and Lucas di Grassi either side of his 2015-16 success, clinched in dramatic style in London with a fastest lap shootout against the latter’s Audi following a first corner tangle.

Were it not for a clashing World Endurance Championship commitment for Toyota at the Nurburgring in 2017 which forced him to miss the New York double-header, he would likely have defended his crown comfortably. A practice crash in the Montreal finale, that meant his hurriedly repaired car was underweight and thus stripped of the fourth place he’d brilliantly recovered in the opening race, means he must take some of the blame.

But the point remains that he had won six of the eight races prior to New York and had a comfortable 32-point buffer that was slashed down to 10 through no fault of his own.

One more overtake in a charging comeback drive in Battersea Park would also have given him the inaugural title - and to his credit, he didn't fire Bruno Senna off when he had plenty of chances to do so. 

The team’s position as a Formula E benchmark has slipped in the Gen-2 era, and Buemi hasn’t won since the 2019 New York finale. But he still came through to finish second in 2018-19 and was fourth in the pandemic-affected 2019-20 campaign.

Despite a tough 2021 season, comfortably his worst without a single podium scored, Buemi still tops the metrics for the most Formula E wins and pole positions (with 13 and 14 respectively) and remains the team’s respected spearhead.

Buemi also comfortably tops the list of DAMS’ single-seater winners, with Grosjean (10) second and Lapierre (eight) third.

Although his last win came in 2019, Buemi remains central to the team's Formula E programme

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images