Ferdinand de Lesseps (racing driver)

Ferdinand-Noël Jacques Marie de Lesseps (born June 25, 1957 in Boulogne-Billancourt ) is a French photographer and former racing driver for sports cars and sports prototypes .

family

His great-grandfather was the diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps , builder of the Suez Canal . Since 1996 he has been married to the daughter of the Wehrmacht officer and resistance fighter against National Socialism, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist .

photographer

Lesseps was born in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris in 1957 . He studied at Parsons The New School for Design in New York in 1977/78 and from 1978 to 1982 at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Today he has a degree in business administration and works as an art and advertising photographer in Brussels (Belgium). He had exhibitions in Paris, Brussels and Geneva.

Sports car driver

In 1982 he started his career in Formula 3 . Later he started u. a. at: 24 hours of Spa-Francorchamps , 24 hours of Daytona , 12 hours of Sebring and 24 hours of Le Mans . He took part in the FIA GT Championship and the World Sports Car Championship . At the sports car world championship in 1992 he took 7th position in the overall ranking of the driver’s world championship and first position at the FIA ​​Cup for drivers. In 1996 he won the SuperSport Trophy .

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1990	Pierre-Alain Lombardi	Spice SE86C	Pierre-Alain Lombardi	Denis Morin	failure	accident
1991	Euro Racing Chamberlain	Spice SE89C	John Sheldon	Charles Rickett	failure	electronics
1992	Chamberlain Engineering	Spice SE89C	Olindo Iacobelli	Richard Piper	Rank 14
1993	Lotus sport	Lotus Esprit S300	Olindo Iacobelli	Richard Piper	failure	Cylinder overheated
1995	Eric Graham	Venturi 600LM	François Birbeau	Eric Graham	failure	electronics

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1989	Lion Rampant Racing	Chevrolet Camaro	Luis Sereix	Chaunce Wallace	Hervé Regout	Rank 32
1990	Essex Racing	Spice SE88P	Jay Cochran	Howard Katz		failure	electronics
1994	Konrad Motorsport	Porsche 911 Turbo	Örnulf Willheim	Franz Konrad	Charles Mendez	Rank 7

Web links

• Ferdinand de Lessep at Racing Sports Cars
• Ferdinand de Lesseps (Arthouse Gallery)
• Photography by Ferdinand de Lesseps

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Stiftung Deutsches Adelsarchiv (ed.): Genealogical manual of noble houses . Part A, Volume 25 (= Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility . Volume 117). CA Starke, Limburg (Lahn) 1998, ISBN 3-7980-0817-5 , p. 219.