Although Jean-Pierre Jabouille was far from being the best-known member of an outstanding generation of French racing drivers, he could claim a unique distinction. At Dijon in 1979 he became the first driver to win a Formula One race in a turbocharged car, heralding a new era.
Even then Jabouille, who has died aged 80, found his victory overshadowed by the battle for second place. A handful of seconds behind his Renault, his teammate René Arnoux and the French-Canadian daredevil Gilles Villeneuve in a Ferrari were monopolising the attention of the television cameras – and, for British viewers, an equally turbocharged Murray Walker at the BBC microphone – as they raced side by side, banging wheels and sliding across the verges with an apparent disdain for personal safety before Arnoux gave best to his rival.
In the eye of history, however, nothing could diminish Jabouille’s achievement. As well as marking the change from one era to another, here was a Frenchman in a French car, running on French petrol (Elf) and French tyres (Michelin), winning the French Grand Prix before an ecstatic home crowd, further embellishing a history that had begun when one of Louis Renault’s cars won the very first grand prix of all, at Le Mans in 1906.
Born in Paris, the son of Robert Jabouille, an architect, and his wife, Renée (nee Rol), Jean-Pierre studied engineering. His competitive career began in 1966, his promise in the popular Renault Gordini R8 series prefacing graduation to Formula Three. Entering and maintaining his own car, he finished second to François Cevert in the 1968 French championship, winning five races. A keen helper was Jacques Laffite, another Parisian, later to compete alongside him in Formula One; in the early 1970s they married a pair of sisters, Geneviève and Bernadette Cottin.
After accepting a job as the Alpine team’s development driver, Jabouille was also given the occasional race in Formula Two and sports cars. In 1973 he joined the Matra team, finishing third in the 24 Hours of Le Mans that summer and again the following year. In 1974 he also raced an Alpine-BMW in the European Formula Two series, winning one race and finishing fourth in the final standings.
That season he was also seen in Formula One for the first time, failing to qualify at Dijon and the Österreichring in cars entered by the Williams and Surtees teams. In 1975 he managed to qualify a works Tyrrell for the French Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit, finishing 12th, while coming second to Laffite in the European F2 championship in an Elf-sponsored car of his own design.
In 1976 he took his talents to the Renault Sport team, newly created by merging with the Alpine and Gordini competition departments. In the summer of 1977 they caused a stir on arrival at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix with their first Formula One car, the RS01, its 1.5-litre engine half the size of those of its rivals, in accordance with rules governing supercharged and turbocharged power units. On its debut the car retired with smoke pouring from a broken turbo, a habit that earned the car the nickname the Yellow Teapot.
Jabouille and Renault were not deterred. Turbos had already appeared in sports car racing, employed by Porsche to win at Le Mans in 1976 and 1977, and Renault’s own sports car would win the endurance classic in 1978. It would take another year before the victory at Dijon forced sceptics in the Formula One paddock to recognise which way the wind was blowing.
There was one further grand prix victory for Jabouille, in Austria in 1980, but the car’s unreliability also forced his retirement from 11 of 13 races that year, the last of them in Montreal, where he broke both legs in a crash caused by suspension failure. For 1981 he was replaced by the young Alain Prost. After recovering from his injuries, he joined Ligier, where he was entered for six races but finished none.
His Formula One career over, he competed in France’s Supertourisme series before joining Peugeot’s sports car team, again twice finishing third at Le Mans, in 1992 and 1993. When Jean Todt, the team manager, left to join Ferrari, Jabouille took charge of a team whose priority was now the supply of engines to Formula One teams, first McLaren and then Jordan, but both relationships ended unhappily. In later years he ran his own sports car team, entering Porsches and Ferraris for others to drive.
In 2004 he happily put on his familiar red helmet at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed to take the wheel of the first Renault Formula One turbocar once again. “I was,” he said, “chez moi.”
He and Geneviève were divorced in 1997; he is survived by a son, Victor, from another relationship.