Christian Vanderpleyn

Christian Vanderpleyn (born June 20, 1943 , † March 11, 1992 ) was a Belgian racing car designer who mainly worked in France and Italy. For almost three decades he was closely associated with the Provençal motorsport team Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives (AGS), which he accompanied with its designs from Formula France to Formula 1 . At AGS, he earned the reputation of developing simple but efficient racing cars with limited resources. Vanderpleyn was self-taught; Vanderpleyn never completed an engineering education.

Life

The Garage de l'Avenir in Gonfaron: workshop of the AGS team from 1970 to 1988

There are different statements about the nationality of Vanderpleyn. According to some sources, he is a native Belgian, according to others, French.

In 1960 he began an apprenticeship as a car mechanic in the Garage de l`Avenir , an automobile workshop in the southern French village of Gonfaron , which belonged to the occasional racing driver Henri Julien . Julien had designed some of his own racing cars for Formula Junior in the 1950s and drove them himself. Vanderpleyn first repaired cars in Gonfaron, later he designed racing cars up to the highest motorsport class. He stayed with the small business until 1988. He then worked in quick succession for two other small Formula 1 teams, but was unable to gain a foothold there. In 1991, Vanderpleyn returned briefly to AGS. In May 1992 he died in a car accident on a country road near Gonfaron.

Smaller classes

Starting in 1969, Henri Julien's Garage de l'Avenir regularly took part in races of the newly founded Formule France and the successor series Formule Renault with their own cars . The racing company operated under the name Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives, or AGS for short. From the beginning, Christian Vanderpleyn was responsible for designing the respective racing cars. Until 1977 the team was involved in the Formula Renault Europe and achieved several podium positions with drivers like Richard Dallest and Xavier Mathiot . At the Formula 3 not - AGS involved - with one exception in the 1972nd Instead, Henri Julien registered his team regularly for Formula 2 races from 1978 to 1984 . José Dolhem and Philippe Streiff achieved a total of three wins in Formula 2 with cars designed by Vanderpleyn.

formula 1

Between 1986 and 1991 Vanderpleyn worked for three Formula 1 teams.

AGS

After a year in the newly founded Formula 3000 , AGS rose to Formula 1 in 1986 . Here, too, Vanderpleyn initially designed the emergency vehicles. In the first two years he processed numerous technical components of the Formula 1 team of Régie Renault , which had been disbanded at the end of 1985 and whose material AGS had taken over on a larger scale. At the end of 1987 Roberto Moreno scored the first world championship point with Vanderpleyn's AGS JH22 . With the JH23 designed for the 1988 Formula 1 season , Vanderpleyn largely broke away from the Renault specifications; the flat car was the first Formula 1 car that he had developed down to the last detail himself. Philippe Streiff drove a few fast laps with him in 1988, but could not score any championship points.

Coloni

Designed by Christian Vanderpleyn: the Coloni C3

Coloni C4 (in private test drives 2001)

In the summer of 1988, Vanderpleyn left the racing team in the south of France after 28 years with the company and switched to the Italian team Coloni ), which had entered Formula 1 the year before. The reason for the change was the limited budget of AGS, which increasingly limited the realization of Vanderpleyn's ideas. With Vanderpleyn, half a dozen other AGS employees left the team.

At Coloni, Vanderpleyn was given the task of developing the racing car for the 1989 season . The small Umbrian team also suffered from financial difficulties, so that Vanderpleyn again could not realize all ideas. In addition, the tight budget delayed the completion of the new car at the beginning of the season. Vanderpleyn's Coloni C3 did not appear until the sixth race of the 1989 season. The car had potential, as Roberto Moreno proved, who was able to qualify safely with the completely untested car on its first outing. However, financial difficulties prevented Coloni from adequately testing the car and eliminating the usual teething problems. As a result, Moreno was only able to qualify three times in eleven attempts; never once did he finish. Moreno's teammates Pierre-Henri Raphanel and Enrico Bertaggia , who also drove the C3, never qualified.

After less than a year, Vanderpleyn left the Coloni team in July 1989. He justified his departure again with the team's low financial resources, while Enzo Coloni cited Vanderpleyn's alleged lack of success as a reason for separation. Vanderpleyn's design remained with the team in various forms until 1991; both the Coloni C3C from 1990 and the Coloni C4 from 1991 were direct offshoots of the C3; they differed only marginally from the basic construction.

Rial

From the Hungarian Grand Prix in 1989 , Vanderpleyn worked together with the former Coloni driver Raphanel for the German Rial Racing team , which in 1989 used a revised version of the ARC1 designed by Gustav Brunner. Vanderpleyn worked here primarily as a race engineer. However, he did not do construction work for a new racing car. After only three races, he stopped working for Hans Günter Schmid's racing team.

Coloni again

After working for the Italian racing car manufacturer Dallara for a few months , Vanderpleyn returned to Coloni for two months in the summer of 1990. There he prepared the use of the Coloni C3C and carried out marginal revisions to the design between races. This included a new underbody for the 1989 car and modified aerodynamics of the engine cover. According to Enzo Coloni, Vanderpleyn was also thinking about a new car for the 1991 season. In September 1990 Vanderpleyn was fired again.

Back to AGS

In the spring of 1991, Vanderpleyn returned to his roots via Formula 3000 .

In autumn 1990 he became technical director of the Italian Formula 3000 team Crypton Engineering , whose team boss Patrizio Cantù was planning a medium-term promotion to Formula 1. When Cantù and businessman Gabriele Raffanelli took over the AGS team, which had previously failed financially, in April 1991 , Vanderpleyn was commissioned with the construction of a completely new AGS racing car. Vanderpleyn designed the AGS JH27, which was completed in two copies for the Italian Grand Prix in early September 1991. The team only contested individual races with the car; then it stopped racing for financial reasons. A few weeks earlier, Vanderpleyn had withdrawn from the Formula 1 team and was replaced by the former Euroracing or EuroBrun designer Mario Tollentino. He then looked after the Crypton team in Formula 3000 again. Vanderpleyn's JH27 remained with the company; for a few years they served the Formula 1 driving school that emerged from the AGS team.

Formula 3000

In 1992, Vanderpleyn stayed in Patrizio Cantù's Formula 3000 Team Crypton. Here he was a race engineer for Luca Badoer , who won the championship at the end of the year.

Overview: Christian Vanderpleyn's Formula 1 cars

team	vehicle	Period of use	driver	World Cup points
Team El Charro AGS	AGS JH21C	1986	Ivan Capelli	0
Team El Charro AGS	AGS JH22	1987	Pascal Fabre Roberto Moreno	1
Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives	AGS JH23	1988	Philippe Streiff	0
Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives	AGS JH23B	1989	Gabriele Tarquini Joachim Winkelhock Yannick Dalmas	1
Coloni SpA	Coloni C3	1989	Roberto Moreno Pierre-Henri Raphanel Enrico Bertaggia	0
Subaru Coloni Racing Coloni Racing Srl	Coloni C3B Coloni C3C	1990	Bertrand Gachot	0
Coloni Racing Srl	Coloni C4	1991	Pedro Chaves Naoki Hattori	0
Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives	AGS JH27	1991	Gabriele Tarquini Olivier Grouillard Fabrizio Barbazza	0

Web links

• Christian Vanderpleyn. www.motorsportmemorial.org, accessed on May 15, 2020 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Data from www.oldracingcars.com (accessed on August 8, 2011).
2. ↑ “Christian Vanderpleyn” (oldracingcars.com; accessed October 9, 2011)
3. ↑ www.oldracingcars.com (accessed August 8, 2011).
4. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell, issue 40/1988, p. 9.
5. ↑ Motorsport aktuell, Issue 35/1989, p. 4
6. ↑ Motorsport aktuell, issue 44/1989, p. 8. Schmid: “He just didn't come back. He's crazy. "
7. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell, issue 51/1989, p. 5.
8. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell Issue 24/1989, p. 6.
9. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell, issue 40/1990, p. 7.
10. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell, issue 45/1990, p. 15.
11. ↑ At the turn of the year 1990/91, Vanderpleyn's predecessor Michel Costa had developed plans for a JH26; however, they became obsolete with the change of ownership in April 1991.
12. ↑ Pierre Ménard: La Grande Encyclopédie de la Formule 1. St. Sulpice 2001. p. 106.
13. ↑ Entry on the website cfm.globalf1.net ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 8, 2011).