THE OCTANE INTERVIEW
French rally supremo Jean-Pierre Nicolas
THE FOURTH INTERRUPTION in as many minutes is met with a smile and rapid-fire apologies in heavily accented English. Our staccato interview has become a free-for-all.
In retrospect, attempting to quiz motorsport colossus Jean-Pierre Nicolas in a restaurant at the summit of the Col du Turini was a daft idea, especially a restaurant rammed with rally memorabilia and fans. Books are proffered for his signature. Napkins, too. He takes time to chat with well-wishers, all of whom insist they saw him blast by this very spot in 1978 en route to winning the Monte Carlo Rally. Only after we are cordoned off is he able to complete a sentence without intermissions.
The Sporting Manager of the European Rally Championship has crammed a lot into his 74 years, that’s for sure. The man from Marseille remains one of the most popular drivers ever to storm a special stage, having won from 22 of his 108 starts. His tally includes ten rounds of the European Rally Championship and five in the global series, and that’s before you factor in his many achievements outside the cockpit. Nevertheless, ‘Jumbo’, as Autosport once insisted on calling him, wears his status lightly.
‘My father Georges was a factory driver with Renault, so it was natural for me to follow his example,’ he insists. ‘I did my first event, the 1963 Mistral Rally, co-driving for him in a little Dauphine, and in 1964 I began competing behind the wheel. I was 19 years old.
‘A year later, I became a works driver competing for Renault. My first event was the Coupe des Alpes, exactly the same rally as the Monte Carlo but run in the summer: the same roads, but no snow. I had an 8 Gordini that was a prototype car with a five-speed gearbox and other special parts. We had problems, though, so ended up ninth.’ One of his co-drivers on the nursery slopes was future four-time Le Mans winner Henri Pescarolo.
‘We were all very young and keen to do well. In 1967, I finished fourth on the Coupe des Alpes and that got me recognised. Jean Rédélé of Alpine was of course allied with Renault but his team was separate from ours. Alfa Romeo driver Bernard Consten was fighting Alpine’s Gérard Larrousse to be the French rally champion. I was still in the 8 Gordini and my job was to help Gérard, but he had a problem so Bernard took the title.
‘Mr Rédélé then said, “From now on, you will drive for me.” I was 22 years old. These days it is normal for young drivers to be with top teams, but not then.’
Not that Nicolas drove an Alpine A110 on the 1968 season opener, the Monte Carlo Rally. ‘There were going to be four works cars: one for me, one for Gérard, and the other two for JeanFrançois Piot and Jean-Claude Andruet, but I ended up driving an 8 Gordini instead. At one point, I was leading my class by ten minutes, but I had a crisis of confidence once it started to snow heavily.
‘One evening, I met Vic Elford, who was then an official Porsche driver. We got to chatting about how things were going. I told him that I was used to asphalt and didn’t feel comfortable on snow. “Come with me,” he said.
‘We got in our cars, he with his wife reading pace notes, and I followed him. I watched what he was doing, how he placed his car. After one kilometre I thought, I am going to be dead
inside the next two minutes. I could not comprehend how he drove that 911 so quickly.
‘I still don’t know why or how, but I got into some kind of rhythm. I thought, OK, this is good. I am still alive. The next day, there was no fear. The car felt different, but it wasn’t the car. I was not worried, that was the difference. It just clicked, you know? I have loved driving on snow ever since. For me that was a profound moment. Recently, I reminded Vic of how much he helped me all those years ago but he couldn’t remember anything about it!
‘We didn’t do well on the rally, though. I ran out of brakes and had a small accident, but we did at least finish. And once I got into the A110, I did well. In 1968, I won the Morocco Rally for the first time. That was very satisfying.’
Nicolas became French rally champion in 1971 after winning four rounds. His graduation to the elite was confirmed two years later during the inaugural season of the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers.
‘It was a wonderful year. In addition to the WRC, I also did a lot of national rallies. I started 18 and finished all of them. My team-mates were Andruet, Jean-Luc Thérier and Bernard Darniche; the British media called us The Musketeers. I was third on the Monte Carlo that year, second on the TAP Rally in Portugal, third on the Acropolis, third in San Remo and took my first WRC win on the Tour de Corse.’
For 1974 there was a new threat from Italy: the Lancia Stratos. But Nicolas still claimed honours on the Moroccan Rally and the Rallye Antibes, and a year later he won two rounds of the European Rally Championship. Then it all began to unravel. In 1976, he started the Monte Carlo Rally in a Group 4 Alpine A310, only to be dropped abruptly by the factory squad. ‘Renault was committed to circuit racing so it cut its rallying programme back. I then joined Opel as team-mate to Walter Röhrl, and I also did some events with Peugeot.’
Cue a third victory on the Moroccan Rally, aboard a 504 saloon. ‘In 1976 it was also a round of the WRC, so that was pretty special. It was an incredibly tough rally and the 504 was the perfect tool for the job.’ Following 1032 miles of off-piste motor sport, he and wingman Michel Gamet beat the sister car of Simo Lampinen/Atso Aho by 22 minutes. The thirdplaced finisher, works Lancia star Sandro Munari, was more than an hour in arrears.
The 1977 season saw our hero at his lowest ebb, however, as outings aboard an Opel Kadett GT/E amounted to little. A year later he was a gun for hire, experiencing a remarkable reversal of fortune that began with an upset win on the Monte Carlo Rally.
‘At the end of ’77, I drove a Renault 5 Alpine on the RAC Rally. It was new to rallying. I would then drive one on the ’78 Monte Carlo. There were to be three works cars: one for me, one for Jean Ragnotti, the other for Guy Fréquelin. Then I got a phone call to say there was no budget for a third car, and I was clearly the third driver. OK, I decided, I would find some money and see if I could rent something. I raised the equivalent of €15,000 and hired a Porsche from the Alméras Brothers team.
‘We put our entry in only three weeks before the start, and it was only two days before the event that I knew all the money was in place. Our team comprised Jacques Alméras, who followed me on road sections, one of his mechanics, a friend of mine who by day was a lawyer, and my brother-in-law who was an airtraffic controller.
‘We shouldn’t have been in contention, but the Porsche was magnificent in the snow. W hat really helped was support from Michelin. We
had access to every kind of tyre imaginable, although we had only ten wheels, four of which were on the car!’
Nicolas and co-driver Vincent Laverne claimed a fairy-tale win aboard the Gitanesliveried 911SC, ahead of Ragnotti and Fréquelin who completed the podium placings. This was but an opening salvo; two months later he won the Safari Rally in a Peugeot 504 V6 Coupé. His third WRC win of the season followed in October on the Ivory Coast Rally, again with a factory Peugeot. Nicolas placed second to Markku Alén in that year’s FIA Cup, the precursor to the official Drivers’ World Championship. He did so despite driving five different makes of a car as a freelancer.
There would be no further WRC wins as a driver. Two years spent sorting and then campaigning the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus led to retirement – for the first time. ‘Tony Pond did development in the UK on gravel while I did all the testing on Tarmac in France. In 1980, I did more than a dozen rallies and didn’t finish one. I decided to quit and become a Renault dealer.
‘Then, in 1982, I received a phone call from my friend and former co-driver, Jean Todt, who was the boss at Peugeot Talbot Sport. He told me about a new car he wanted me to develop: the Peugeot 205 T16. I told him I couldn’t take the job because I was a Renault dealer, but he said an aeroplane was ready to fly me from Marseille to Paris and it didn’t hurt to listen. I went, we chatted and I sold my dealership.
‘Developing the T16 was a wonderful period in my life. I was test driver throughout 1983, and the following year I did some events as team-mate to Ari Vatanen. I was fourth on the Tour de Corse [and fastest on three stages], and fifth in San Remo. Jean then offered me a full-time WRC drive for ’85: Vatanen, Timo Salonen and me. I declined as I was pushing 40. I took a different role in the competition department instead, staying there until 2006.’
He’s too humble to mention it, but as team chief Nicolas oversaw Peugeot Esso’s double triumph in the World Rally Championship in 2000, with Marcus Grönholm claiming his first drivers’ gong. The team went on to take three consecutive titles, with Nicolas also petitioning the board for a Le Mans programme before being appointed by the FIA to oversee the new Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
But the question has to be asked. Did JeanPierre Nicolas ever consider moving over to circuit racing like his hero, Vic Elford? ‘No, I am a rally man. Aside from fishing, it is my only passion and has been for more than 50 years. I preferred gravel events, because asphalt rallies were too much like races.
‘I found competing on circuits boring. I did Le Mans in 1967-68 with the works Alpine team, and I won the 1974 Tour de France Automobile, which mostly comprised circuit races, in a Ligier, but for me rallying on the loose was always more of a challenge.’
And his greatest achievement? ‘I don’t know,’ he muses. ‘Success on the Monte Carlo was important from a career point of view, but winning the Safari was more satisfying. There were no special stages, no real roads, no telephones and each leg was thousands of kilometres long. You had to be self-reliant and make every decision. I am the only Frenchman to win the Safari when it was a WRC round.’
Pause. Smile. Chuckle. ‘As it hasn’t been part of the WRC for more than 15 years, and is unlikely to be so again, I expect that will remain the case…’
‘I THOUGHT, OK, THIS IS GOOD. I AM STILL ALIVE. THE NEXT DAY THERE WAS NO FEAR. I HAVE LOVED DRIVING ON SNOW EVER SINCE’