Franck Lagorce

Franck Lagorce

Nation:	France
Formula 1 world championship
First start:	1994 Japanese Grand Prix
Last start:	1994 Australian Grand Prix
Constructors
1994 Ligier
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
Starts Victories Poles SR 2 - - -
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Franck Lagorce (born September 1, 1968 in L'Haÿ-les-Roses ) is a French racing driver .

Monoposto

Franck Lagorce was one of the talented young pilots of the 1980s. Lagorce went through a number of junior formulas and entered Formula 3000 in 1993 . After six years as a kart driver , Lagorce became the overall winner of the French Formula Renault championship in 1990 . There followed two years in the French Formula 3 championship , which he crowned with the title in 1992. He also made the leap into Formula 1 , but could not assert himself there.

In his first year in Formula 3000, he was team-mate of Olivier Panis at DAMS . He won the last two races of the season at Magny-Cours and Nogaro and was fourth in the championship. In 1994 he switched to Team Apomatox and again celebrated two victories this season. In addition to his involvement in Formula 3000, Lagorce was a test driver at Ligier and made his Formula 1 debut at the Japanese Grand Prix at the end of the season . Lagorce also competed for Ligier at the race in Australia . After a failure in Suzuka, he finished eleventh in Adelaide .

In 1995 Lagorce had to be content with the role of test driver at Ligier again and could only contest a few races in the Renault Spyder series. After negotiations with some Formula 1 teams, the hope for a permanent cockpit in this racing series was not fulfilled, Lagorce turned away from monoposto racing in 1996 and switched to racing cars .

Racing car

Lagorce made his Le Mans debut as a partner of Alain Ferté and Henri Pescarolo for Courage in 1994, but was unable to finish the race after an engine failure. He reached his first finish in 1996 when he finished seventh with Pescarolo and Emmanuel Collard . In 1997 Lagorce switched to the French DAMS team and now competed in a Panoz in addition to Le Mans in the FIA GT championship . Lagorce and Éric Bernard finished several championship races in the top 10, but scored no championship points. Her best result was a seventh place in the 4-hour race at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello . The following year Lagorce received a cockpit for Le Mans in the Nissan factory team . Together with Michael Krumm and John Nielsen , he finished fifth overall, his best result so far in the 24-hour race. In addition, he also contested a few selected races in the FIA ​​GT Championship for DAMS in 1998.

In 1996, Lagorce drove a Courage C36 of a similar design at the Le Mans 24-hour race

Panoz from Lagorce and Bernard the FIA-GT 1997

His good results in the sports car enabled him to switch to the Mercedes works team in 1999, where he was to drive a Mercedes-Benz CLR at Le Mans together with Bernd Schneider and Pedro Lamy . The driver trio placed fourth in the qualification. After the two rollovers of the sister vehicles, both in training and during the race, Mercedes withdrew from the race prematurely. So Lagorce was looking for a new team until the end of the season. He received an offer from Riley & Scott to participate in the remaining races of the FIA Sports Car Championship . However, he could not finish any of the races alongside Philippe Gache . Through his commitment to Bill Riley, he was given the opportunity in 2000 to get a driver's seat in Cadillac 's Le Mans prototype program , which was implemented together with Riley & Scott. However, the Cadillac Northstar LMP lacked performance and reliability, so that all emergency vehicles at Le Mans only crossed the finish line in the lower midfield. Therefore, Lagorce switched to the Panoz works team, where he competed alongside Klaus Graf in several races in the American Le Mans Series and European Le Mans Series . But the newly developed Panoz LMP-1 Roadster S was not yet fully developed. While he and Graf always qualified in the top seven, the driver duo could only finish the race in Mid-Ohio in sixth place. The following year, Lagorce drove another Courage sports car for Henri Pescarolo. He, Jean-Christophe Boullion and Sébastien Bourdais drove in different driver combinations both in the FIA ​​sports car championship and in Le Mans. His best result in 2002 was a third place on the Circuit de Dijon-Prenois . In 2003, Lagorce stayed with Pescarolo Sport and drove his last year in the sports car environment. As in the previous year, the driver combination rotated in the various races. While he initially shared his vehicle again with Boullion and Bourdais, he later drove with Stéphane Sarrazin , with whom he achieved two podium finishes.

Lagorce then tried his hand at rally raids , in the French GT championship and as a presenter for motorsport broadcasts on France Télévisions , Canal + and Motors TV .

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1994	Courage Compétition	Courage C32	Alain Ferté	Henri Pescarolo	failure	Engine failure
1995	Courage Compétition	Courage C41	Eric Bernard	Henri Pescarolo	failure	Defect in the electrical system
1996	La Filière Elf	Courage C36	Emmanuel Collard	Henri Pescarolo	Rank 7
1997	DAMS	Panoz Esperante GTR-1	Emmanuel Collard	Jean-Christophe Boullion	failure	Defect in the oil pump
1998	Nissan Motorsports	Nissan R390 GT1	John Nielsen	Michael Krumm	Rank 5
1999	HWA AG	Mercedes-Benz CLR	Bernd Schneider	Pedro Lamy	withdrawn
2000	Cadillac	Cadillac Northstar LMP	Butch Leitzinger	Andy Wallace	Rank 21
2001	Panoz	Panoz LMP-1	Jan Magnussen	David Brabham	failure	Gearbox damage
2002	Pescarolo sport	Courage C60	Sébastien Bourdais	Jean-Christophe Boullion	Rank 10
2003	Pescarolo sport	Courage C60	Stéphane Sarrazin	Jean-Christophe Boullion	Rank 8

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
2000	Team Cadillac	Cadillac Northstar LMP	Andy Wallace	failure	accident

literature

• Steve Small: Grand Prix Who's Who . Travel Publishing, London 1999, ISBN 1-902-00746-8 .

Web links

Commons : Franck Lagorce  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Image: Franck Lagorce