Gérard Laureau
Gérard Laureau (born March 28, 1920 in Saint-Cyr-l'École , † November 19, 2002 ibid) was a French racing driver and entrepreneur.
Family and origin
Gérard Laureau grew up on a country estate, the Ferme de Gally , near his birthplace Saint-Cyr-l'École. His grandfather, Georges Laureau, started raising sheep on the spacious 18th century estate in the 1940s. Arable and ornamental plant cultivation were added later. Gérard Laureau founded one of the first garden centers in France there in 1968. In 2011, Gerard's son Xavier ran a business with 500 employees, 150 hectares of arable land, 60 hectares of special crops and 7,000 square meters of retail space at seven locations in France.
A second line of business for the family was digging wells. Over the years this has grown into a company that supplied oil drilling technology. Gérard Laureau always worked in the family business well into his old age, was very wealthy and ran motorsport as a man's driver .
Career in motorsport
He first came into contact with motorsport in the early 1950s when he was drilling a well on the property of racing driver Raymond Sommer, who died a little later in an accident . In 1953 he bought a Jaguar XK 120 and entered the Hyères 12-hour race with his friend Henri Simonot without any racing experience . In adverse circumstances - it rained almost incessantly for the entire driving time - he achieved the unexpected eighth place overall. In the same race, Pierre Boncompagni lost his life while in the lead in a serious accident.
The story of how Laureau became a works driver at Deutsch & Bonnet in 1954 and won a championship race in the sports car world championship when he first appeared for the team is unusual . His second race with the Jaguar was the Tour de France for automobiles in 1953 , where he again gave a test of talent and drove in the top field for a long time. He had to give up the race because he broke his hand on the shift lever that kept popping out. The car dealer Georges Trouis was present at the race, who competed in German Bonnet cars and was looking for a new teammate. A joint start at the RAC Tourist Trophy 1954 was agreed . Trouis, who wanted to travel to Northern Ireland with his own boat , was forced to call at a port in England by a violent storm and missed the race. Claude Storez , the intended partner of Paul Armagnac , had also not come to René Bonnet's annoyance . So Bonnet had no choice but to Laureau, who had been there for days, to have the DB HBR run with Armagnac. The race had a special form of evaluation. For the awarding of points in the sports car world championship in 1954 , it was not the overall ranking that counted, but the index ranking, which established a ratio between high-performance and low-performance vehicles. And Laureau and Armagnac remained successful in precisely this index ranking. This result had two consequences: on the one hand, a multi-year contract with Deutsch & Bonnet, which René Bonnet had him sign immediately after the race, and, on the other hand, his friendship with Paul Armagnac, which lasted until his death in training for the 1000 km race in Paris Stopped at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry in 1962 .
The contract between Laureau and Bonnet had a peculiarity. Laureau drove the races without payment, but in return was given the opportunity to decide on the races only himself. In this way he kept his independence and was able to race when he had free time from work. His regular partner was his friend Armagnac.
With the small racing cars from Deutsch & Bonnet, he celebrated 15 class wins, including 1956 , 1960 and 1961 at the Le Mans 24-hour race . After separating from Bonnet and Charles Deutsch in 1962, he stayed with Bonnet and now drove its cars like the Djet . Several attempts in Formula 2 remained unsuccessful and after the serious accident of his young teammate Jean-Pierre Beltoise at the 12-hour race in Reims in 1964 , his wife asked him to stop racing, a request that he complied.
statistics
Le Mans results
| year | team | vehicle | Teammate | placement | Failure reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1955 |
 Ecurie Jeudy-Bonnet
|
DB HBR |
Paul Armagnac
|
failure | Wheel bearings |
| 1956 |
Automobiles German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR5 |
Paul Armagnac
|
Rank 10 and class win | |
| 1957 |
Automobiles German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR |
Paul Armagnac
|
failure | accident |
| 1958 |
Automobiles German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR4 Spyder |
Louis Cornet
|
Rank 12 | |
| 1959 |
Automobiles German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR4 |
Pierre Chancel
|
failure | Engine failure |
| 1960 |
Automobiles German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR4 |
Paul Armagnac
|
15th place and class win | |
| 1961 |
Automobiles Deutsch et Bonnet
|
DB HBR4 |
Robert Bouharde
|
18th place and class win | |
| 1962 |
Société des Automobiles René Bonnet
|
René Bonnet Djet 2 Spider |
Paul Armagnac
|
Rank 18 | |
| 1963 |
Automobiles René Bonnet
|
René Bonnet RB5 |
Jean Vinatier
|
failure | Defect in the fuel pump |
| 1964 |
Automobiles René Bonnet
|
René Bonnet Aerodjet |
Jean-Pierre Beltoise
|
failure | fuel pump |
Sebring results
| year | team | vehicle | Teammate | placement | Failure reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1956 |
 Brooks Stevens
|
DB HBR |
Hal Ullrich
|
failure | Clutch damage |
| 1959 |
German & Bonnet
|
DB HBR4 |
Paul Armagnac
|
17th place and class win |
Individual results in the sports car world championship
literature
- Christian Moity, Jean-Marc Teissèdre, Alain Bienvenu: 24 heures du Mans, 1923–1992. 2 volumes. Éditions d'Art, Besançon 1992, ISBN 2-909-413-06-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The story of the Ferme de Gally
- ^ Information on the person of Gérard Laureau
- ↑ 1953 Hyères 12-hour race
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Laureau, Gérard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French racing car driver and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 28, 1920 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Saint-Cyr-l'École |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 19, 2002 |
| Place of death | Saint-Cyr-l'École |