The Peugeot rookies who conquered Le Mans but missed out on F1

A piece of Le Mans history was made when the #3 Peugeot claimed victory at the 24 Hours in 1993. Two thirds of its driver line-up were event debutants, each with only a single race in the car under their belts. That rookie pairs had won just twice in the event’s 70-year history suggested that they weren’t the favourites to conquer the world’s biggest endurance race, a point underlined by the fact that their car’s third driver, while a veteran of two Le Mans starts, had never before raced the 905 Evo 1 Bis.

But on the final hurrah for Group C cars at the Circuit de la Sarthe, Christophe Bouchut and Eric Helary were joined atop the podium come Sunday afternoon by Geoff Brabham, and a pair of first-timers netted Le Mans glory for the first time in more than 40 years. The era-concluding 24 Hours had spawned two new French stars, who between them would rack up a further 19 (Bouchut) and 10 (Helary) appearances at the great race and come within touching distance of the grand prix grid.

“It’s even a bit unbelievable, you need time to realise what happened,” reflects Bouchut, who like Helary was 26 years old at the time. “Especially when you come for the first time to Le Mans and you’re still a young driver in terms of endurance racing, because at that time the drivers were older than they are now. It was also something special.”

Yet Bouchut, a podium finisher on his Macau Grand Prix debut in 1989, is clear that Le Mans wasn’t the end goal.

“My target was a little bit different because I was looking for Formula 1, not especially endurance,” he recalls. “But Le Mans was on my list, clearly. It was one of my dreams, so it’s why I say it’s a dream come true, but it’s not something I had been looking for.”

It’s a view echoed by Helary, the French Formula 3 champion in 1990, one year before Bouchut: “That was our only target, going to Formula 1. For sure we were still dreaming.”

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Both for Helary, pictured during his ill-fated 1991 F3000 season, and Bouchut F1 was the ultimate goal

The common 3.5-litre engine rules used in F1 and in sportscar racing’s top tier meant it was a fair assumption that Peugeot would have an eye on grand prix racing. Indeed, Enrique Scalabroni was tasked with designing an F1 chassis that never got beyond the drawing board, although Peugeot did supply engines to McLaren in 1994 and subsequently Jordan.

“We knew then their plan was to do their [own] team in the next few years following, so it was not a secret,” states Bouchut. A reduced budget from Marlboro for Formula 3000 in 1992, following France’s ban on tobacco advertising, meant he’d have to find some more money himself, and so Bouchut elected to throw his lot in with sportscars rather than pursue F3000 as Helary had – in fairly disastrous fashion – in 1991. After paying his money up front to First Racing, he’d finished third at Pau but, when the courts seized the team’s assets prior to the Enna round, he was left high and dry.

The pair had arrived at Peugeot via a stint in the one-make 905 Spider Cup in 1992, when they were rivals at the French Danielson team. Helary won the European title, Bouchut the French. They didn’t have much of a relationship, with Helary even suggesting they “didn’t like each other”.

"We spent 24 hours in the same car and we had a good feeling. But then it stopped just after the race!" Eric Helary

“When you are fighting with somebody, how can you be friends?” asks Bouchut, who relates that this wasn’t helped by the French media. “The press made us out as ‘enemy brothers’, you know? And then maybe hearing those words, we started to think it’s the reality.”

In character too, they were different sides of the coin. “He’s just my opposite,” offers Helary. Bouchut agrees: “We are totally different.” But they agreed to put these feelings aside after being summoned to a meeting by Peugeot Sport director Jean Todt, who asked the pair to shake hands before posing them a question.

“Todt said, ‘Could you work together for 24 hours?’ because he knew that we were not very good friends,” remembers Helary. “We said ‘yes’ and that’s what we did. We spent 24 hours in the same car and we had a good feeling. But then it stopped just after the race!”

The car was well developed by the time Bouchut and Helary drove it for the first time in the final round of the 1992 Sportscar World Championship at Magny-Cours, an unsatisfactory curtain-closer for the moribund series contested by just eight cars. They finished second after electrical issues delayed title-winning team-mates Yannick Dalmas and Derek Warwick.

Friday favourite: Why Dalmas picks Warwick as his favourite team-mate 

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Bouchut and Helary had only raced the 905 Evo Bis once prior to Le Mans in 1993, while both were newcomers to the race

“[Peugeot] had done all of the work before,” reckons Helary. “They all had done a fantastic job so the car I drove was the final touch. I can tell you, this car was unbelievable.”

Bouchut uses the same word to describe the car in its most high-downforce trim. His comment that it was “close to a Formula 1 car” is borne out by Philippe Alliot’s 1m16.415s pole position time, which would have put him eighth on the French GP grid, a shade quicker than Ivan Capelli’s Ferrari. Even so, Bouchut points out that the 905 wasn’t an easy car to handle, and “was very easy to make a mistake” in.

PLUS: How a troubled racer became the last great Group C car

“Even the windscreen was very difficult to see through well,” he adds. “No, I don’t say the car was bad. But for me personally, it’s not the best car I drove at Le Mans.”

Their prospects for Le Mans, in low-downforce spec, were helped by the fact that Peugeot’s only manufacturer opposition came from the Tony Southgate-penned Toyota TS010 that had toppled Peugeot just once in their six bouts the year before. And after winning the event in 1992 with Dalmas, Warwick and Mark Blundell, Peugeot arrived well-prepared.

Helary reckons the team completed seven 24-hour simulations at Paul Ricard, and the enormous test programme gave the drivers an insight regarding what to expect in the race. The need to take things steady to guard against problems was soon apparent.

“You had to be nice with your gearbox, you had to be nice with your engine, you had to save everything so you needed a lot of experience,” Helary explains. “Because we did so many tests, we had a lot of experience.”

A tactic of keeping away from the kerbs was devised, which Bouchut reckons was the initiative of the #3 crew rather than dictated by Todt and designer Andre de Cortanze.

“We had a conversation, between me and the two other drivers Geoff and Eric, about kerbs, to drive more easily for the car and to let the race come because we had the experience of several 24 hours simulations where we always had problems,” Bouchut recalls. “So we said, ‘OK, we have to be quiet.’”

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The #3 crew elected to steer clear of the kerbs, a strategy that paid dividends in the race as they enjoyed a near-faultless run without major delays

Helary adds: “The other drivers, they were used to Le Mans, they were stars, and they just wanted to show they were quick.”

The third member of the line-up engineered by Paolo Catone was by comparison a sportscar veteran. But Brabham – the 41-year-old eldest son of Jack and a four-time IMSA GTP champion – hadn’t raced at Le Mans since 1990 and, according to Helary, produced mixed displays in testing that made him apprehensive. But come the race, Helary says the Aussie “was incredible, he did his job perfectly”.

“Geoff was a little bit slower,” says Bouchut, “but he was doing a good job, he never had a problem with the car. He was the third driver of the crew, he clearly did less than me and Eric during all the tests and during the race.”

"You know you won the biggest race in the world and then we didn’t continue with that car, with that team. It was the end of the story. It’s difficult because you would love to continue for years and years like this" Christophe Bouchut

Bouchut adds that Brabham’s quiet demeanour meant they had more in common than he did with Helary. “I was passing more time with him,” he remembers. “Geoff was not talking a lot.”

“He didn’t say anything, he was just there,” confirms Helary. “Sometimes nobody knew if he was here or not. Incredible.”

The crew enjoyed a largely trouble-free run in the race, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of Peugeot’s entourage. Early leader Alliot, who crashed his pole-sitting #2 car in qualifying, trailed in with an oil leak attributed to his liberal use of kerbs, and the car’s comeback was delayed further by exhaust woes which had a knock-on effect for the victory hopes of car #1.

Dalmas, Teo Fabi and Thierry Boutsen's machine had already been hampered by smoke-producing electrical dramas on the dash, which elevated car #3 to the lead for the first time, and then was brought in for checks on the exhaust. As Helary points out: “We didn’t have this problem because we didn’t use the kerbs.”

Damage inflicted by backmarker contact and a combination of alternator and gearbox problems had respectively hit two of Toyota’s three challengers and left it with a single bullet in the gun. But repeated battery changes for a car that set fastest lap in Eddie Irvine’s hands meant its prospects had dwindled, even before clutch problems that required a rear-end change condemned it to fourth.

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Helary and Bouchut flank obscured Brabham on the middle step of the rostrum after leading a Peugeot 1-2-3

Toyota’s latest drama prompted Todt to call for team orders, which were duly upheld, and Brabham crossed the line a lap ahead of the #1 crew, while Alliot, Mauro Baldi and Jean-Pierre Jabouille finished eight laps back to complete the top-three lockout in #2. It was the last hurrah for Todt with Peugeot before he joined Ferrari, tasked with turning around its fortunes in F1. Likewise, the winners couldn’t bask in their glory for long.

“Then suddenly reality came,” Bouchut laments. “You know you won the biggest race in the world and then we didn’t continue with that car, with that team. It was the end of the story. It’s difficult because you would love to continue for years and years like this.”

But Bouchut’s Peugeot story didn’t end there. “I was the only one who had a contract to race cars other than the 905,” he explains. “I was doing Super Touring also with Peugeot.”

He ended 1993 as its best-ranked driver in the French championship, placing fourth overall. Having outperformed veteran Jabouille, Bouchut believes that he should have been in the fray for an involvement in Peugeot’s partnership with McLaren. But Todt’s replacement – Jabouille himself – thought otherwise.

When Mika Hakkinen was banned for the Hungarian GP, Alliot drove in his place, while Laurent Aiello, who had been poached from BMW, was given a test. Bouchut believes that his omission “was a personal and emotional decision” by the late Jabouille.

“Peugeot had no reason to be looking for somebody else than me,” he maintains. “That was a wrong decision and that broke completely why I joined Peugeot. Because OK, it was Le Mans, but in my head I already had a plan about F1.”

Meanwhile, Helary had claimed a second 905 Spider championship in 1993 and raced a Bugatti EB110S at Le Mans in 1994, while Bouchut campaigned a Honda NSX for Kremer – the team for which he won the Daytona 24 Hours the following year – alongside his first of three French Carrera Cup title-winning campaigns. But neither was willing to give up the F1 dream.

Bouchut says he was invited to race for Larrousse at Spa in 1994, but turned it down because he lacked the requisite preparation: “I believed I had a future in Formula 1 and I wanted to do it with everything well, at the right moment, with the right experience.”

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Bouchut and Bernard were listed as drivers for Larrousse in 1995, but the team never made it back onto the grid after its Adelaide 1994 swansong

Then followed talks with several teams, including Arrows, before Bouchut elected to sign with Larrousse for 1995, where he was due to join the team’s 1991 driver Eric Bernard. Both had their names on an official entry list, but it ultimately came to nothing amid a buyout of Gerard Larrousse’s equipe by Junior Team’s Jean Messaoudi and Laurent Barlesi.

“That was a big mess for me,” rues Bouchut, who points out that he didn’t have a manager to represent him or any personal backing. “I knew the team had some problems about money, but at that time many teams were in that situation, we heard many stories about several teams. So I said, ‘I have an opportunity to go there, so I go there.’ And then at the last minute, they called me to say, ‘We will not race in Formula 1, you have a contract but this is the end of the story.’ It was really a shame.”

Helary too hoped to have an involvement in Larrousse for 1995. He says he also signed a contract to race before the team collapsed. But rather than disappointment, his overriding emotion is relief – he hadn’t paid the full amount. Instead, he drove a works Courage at Le Mans and finished second as McLaren’s F1 GTR – which Helary raced to third in long-tail form in 1997 – took a famous win.

"I tried many ways to get into Formula 1, but it didn’t happen. The only thing I can say, it wasn’t a question of speed. I was just missing some money" Christophe Bouchut

“When I didn’t do [F1], I was not completely lost,” he admits. “I was quite happy not to have lost 10 years of my life trying to give the money back to the bank. Already I had lost so much money in Formula 3000. I was a bit afraid of losing more in F1.”

With his options now limited, Bouchut landed in F3000 with Danielson, but he took no money to the team and was often blighted by unreliability, which limited him to a single podium. He was linked with a plum ride at Super Nova for 1996 and impressed in testing, but a lack of budget proved a limiting factor.

“I tried many ways to get into Formula 1, but it didn’t happen,” he sums up. “The only thing I can say, it wasn’t a question of speed. I was just missing some money.”

Bouchut is the only driver to claim outright wins in the 24-hour races at Le Mans, Daytona and Spa (2001 and 2002), his successes in the Ardennes coinciding with a hat-trick of FIA GT titles in Larbre-run Vipers, following a stint at Mercedes. But Bouchut is conflicted on not reaching F1.

“It is more easy to say, ‘No, I don’t care’, but this is not true,” he says, before acknowledging that “my life will be not like it is right now if I’d made it to F1” – because he met his wife through endurance racing.

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Bouchut refused to give up on his F1 dreams and landed an F3000 drive in 1995 but it didn't open the door to grand prix racing

“OK it didn’t happen, but it could be worse,” he reflects. “It can be better, yes, but you never know what you are missing. It’s impossible for me to say I am disappointed or my life is bad, because I have a lot in my life. And that didn’t come from F1.”

For his part, Helary is convinced that racing in F1 “would have been worse than at Peugeot” because few teams could match its level of preparation.

“We had more trucks, we had more mechanics, we had more engines, gearboxes, and maybe [only] McLaren and one or two other F1 teams were better than Peugeot in ’93,” states Helary, who finished runner-up at Le Mans for a second time in 2006 with Pescarolo. “It was the whole package which was perfect.

“We had Michelin tyres which were made for the car. Special tyres for us, and we had special fuel from Esso too. Everything was on the top level. It was a bit difficult afterwards because everything else I had to drive was, in a sense, not so good. I started with the very best.”

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Helary finished second in 1995 and again in 2006, but says he never again had as good a package at Le Mans as he enjoyed in 1993

Peugeot’s forgotten proving ground for heroes

The Martini MK64 doesn’t immediately leap out as a significant car in sportscar history, but in the 1992 Peugeot 905 Spider Cup it was the machine in which Eric Helary and Christophe Bouchut made their case for inclusion in the Group C programme. Teamed up at Danielson, they were unstoppable.

Engineer Remi Decorzent says: “We won everything: the French championship, the European championship, and seeing that we won so much Jean Todt said, ‘Maybe these guys Bouchut and Helary are not bad.’ So he decided to put them in the 905 and they won Le Mans the year after.”

Bouchut won each of the first four races in the French championship ahead of Helary, including the 1992 Le Mans support race. On a damp track, Bouchut recovered from a sluggish start that dropped him to fifth to tiger back to the lead after passing Alain Ferte, with Helary second. Decorzent, who again saw Bouchut at close quarters in the Danielson Formula 3000 team in 1995, recalls that Bouchut had an extra hindrance that day.

“Fourth was in the place of the third [gear],” recalls Decorzent. “It was a Hewland H-pattern gearbox. He had instructions on the steering wheel that when he selected third, it was actually fourth.”

It’s a race that Bouchut remembers too: “This year was special because that was the first year of this project of a new championship for Peugeot. The car was brand-new, we had several small technical problems and we had to swim between them. I was able to adapt myself really quickly, even if the car was not sometimes perfect.”

Decorzent went on to work in Formula 1 with Sauber and Toyota and has no doubt that Danielson’s “very strong” 1992 line-up had the necessary skills to make it. “Bouchut for me is one of the guys that should have been in Formula 1, also Helary,” he asserts.

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Bouchut (pictured) and Helary earned their spurs in 1992 Peugeot 905 Spider Cup