Elf Scan 14: Formule France

Close your eyes and try to list as many French F1 drivers as you can from the early 60s.  Pretty hard, huh?  After Jean Behra died in 1959, it was basically the aging Maurice Trintignant who represented France on the Grand Prix circuit until the mid 60s.  As a result of this dearth of young talent, the French motor racing industry created a driver development program, starting with the Renault Gordini cup.  As a next rung, they created Formule France in 1968, which was a single seater formula using the same engine and gearbox as the Renault 8 Gordini.  It was essentially the equivalent of the Skip Barber Formula series in today's terms. If you close your eyes again, and try to list French drivers from after 1968, and into the 70s, it becomes a heck of a lot easier!  Thanks to increased investment from Elf, Matra, Renault, and other motorsport players of the era, French driving talent finally began to blossom again in Grand Prix racing for the first time since before the Second World War when drivers like Dreyfus and Chiron were in their prime.

Elf Scan 13: Jean-Pierre Jabouille

Jean-Pierre Jabouille started his racing career in the Renault 8 Gordini single-make series.  After a promising start, he scraped enough cash together to purchase a Brabham Formula 3 car, and was the only independent entry to qualify for that year's Monaco F3 race. After varied success he joined the Alpine team, racing for then in F3, F2 as well as sports cars.  When this photo was taken, his glory days in F1 and Le Mans racing were still ahead of him.  He is still with us today, and was more recently head of Peugeot Sport before starting his own racing team.

Elf Scan 12: Matra MS 630

The V-12 powered MS 630 was Matra's first serious Le Mans contender. Campaigned in the tumultuous year of 1968, which saw the 24 hour race moved from June to September due to labor and student unrest, the MS 630 ran as high as second place before retiring due to a puncture in the 22nd hour!

Elf Scan 11: Jack Brabham

Compared to the young, budding, and mostly French talent on the Matra-Elf team, Jack Brabham was a very seasoned old hand in 1970.  The former F1 champ partnered with Francois Cevert as well as Pescarolo, Beltoise, and Servoz-Gavin, in long distance sports car racing for Matra. The results were less than spectacular.

Elf Scan 10: François Cevert

Cevert was famous for his natural driving ability and dashing movie star looks.  Here, his famous blue eyes bear a look of simultaneous intensity and eerie blankness as he mentally steels himself for his next track outing in the Matra sports prototype which he shared with none other than Jack Brabham at the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours. Born to a prominent Parisian Jewish family (his full name was Albert François Cevert Goldenberg), Cevert initially pursued motor racing secretly against his family's wishes. In 1969 as he achieved success in Formula 2, he reconciled with his family, and from there joined the Matra team. It wasn't long before he rose to F1, driving for Tyrrell as Jackie Stewart's number 2 driver and protégé.  A tremendously talented driver, he was never able to fully mature, as he was tragically killed at age 29 during the practice for the 1973 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. Ironically, Cevert had achieved his first and only F1 victory at that very same track in the 1971 US Grand Prix.