What could have been: Collard in F1

Losing an F1 shootout with Trulli

The shootout to replace injured Prost driver Olivier Panis after his leg-breaking 1997 Canadian Grand Prix crash would prove a pivotal moment in the careers of Jarno Trulli and Emmanuel Collard. Unfortunately for Collard, the circumstances were hardly ideal and, while Trulli got his big break, the Frenchman’s Formula 1 dreams were snuffed out for good.

Reigning Porsche Supercup champion Collard hadn’t driven an F1 car in anger for over a year when he was invited to Magny-cours. And just days removed from the heartbreak of losing victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours when his Porsche went up in flames two hours from home, Collard arrived already feeling “completely destroyed”.

Minardi regular Trulli lapped 0.16 seconds quicker and impressed the team with both his fitness and feedback, while Collard struggled with his neck. But the headline times don’t tell the full picture – Collard recalls that the original plan was for both drivers to have one set of new tyres each, and understood that the fastest driver afterwards would be chosen.

“I beat Trulli for the first set and they gave him a second set of new tyres so finally he was a few tenths faster than me,” he says.

Collard believes it was predetermined that the seat would go to Trulli as he was managed by Prost’s former owner Flavio Briatore, who Autosport acknowledged in its test report still had “close links” to the team. That Briatore and Collard didn’t have the best of relationships, dating back to 1995 when Collard was Benetton’s under-used tester, merely added to his impression that “everything was against me at this time”.

“I think the deal was done before,” he says. “I don’t know why they called me, I think they had to call a French driver.”

Collard says “it’s normal” that he struggled physically and questions why he was invited at all when this ought to have been obvious to boss Alain Prost.

But he maintains that he could have done the job if asked.

Now an accomplished sportscar veteran, an outright winner of the Daytona, Sebring and Petit Le Mans classics, he concedes that his introverted personality meant he wasn’t an obvious fit for F1. “I was too quiet,” he says, “but I think I had the capacity to make it. The level was there.”