128 replies to this topic

[Zawed]

A bit of a strange one this guy. He should have achieved much more than he did when you think he took 18 pole positions but only 7 wins. He was a TV commentator for Italian or French TV recently, does he still do that? Oh and why was he fired from Ferarri at the start of the 1985 season?

[Barry Lake]

At the time the story was that it was to do with his being on drugs but I never have seen a detailed explanation.
Does anyone know any more?
Surely it is far enough in the past for the truth to come out.
Then again, it's perhaps far enough in the past that few (outside of our litle circle) care any longer.

[Mickey]

No, he doesn't commentate for Italian TV anymore.

[Megatron]

Arnoux suffered greatly after he went to Ligier after getting out with Ferrari. Does anyone know why he ran ONE race for Ferrari in 1985, then got replaced by Johanson who as driving for Tyrrell?

[tyrrellp34]

Rene Arnoux was fired because Enzo Ferrari lately discovered that Rene had a relationship with his granddaughter !!!
The girl was only 15 years old.....

[Zawed]

Come on tyrrellp34, that one surely can't be true?!?

[Felix Muelas]

From memory alone, I think there was a story of Arnoux actually suffering a knee intervention without the knowledge of Ferrari.

Felix

PS : Personally, I do not agree or find specially funny to read the kind of surely weird allegations about Rene Arnoux that have been posted here. I have never heard such things, and maybe what Barry heard was related to what I recall (in that case, drugs might be re-phrased) and surely, I have never heard about Rene having anything to do with a teenager.

[Barry Lake]

It was a prominent F1 journalist (normally reliable and very honest) who told me of the drugs story at the time, when I asked what had happened to Arnoux.
But the story was very vague. It seemed that whatever the reason was, no one really wanted to talk about it - which automatically makes people assume the worst.
If you all have the patience to wait until March 2001, I will ask the various senior F1 writers at the Australian GP and see what I can come up with.
I would have thought there would have been profiles on or interviews with Arnoux in magazines since that time that might have thrown some light on the subject.

[Ray Bell]

Of course, the 15-year old would be 30 now, so she might be able to speak for herself... why not look her up, Barry?
If only Mike hadn't died, he would have known, with all his connections inside Ferrari...

[Barry Lake]

Ray
Have you been up all night working too?
I am tossing up whether to go to bed or to have breakfast.
Then again, maybe I will send out some invoices for September and THEN go to bed. It's only 6.30 am.

[Ray Bell]

Well, actually, I drove down from Sydney, slept a little along the road, then just got on the board when I got home... now it's 7:45 and I think I should have breakfast...
Work comes later.

[theMot]

If you wait until 2001 in March ill ask him myself

I guy i work with is very good friends with Rene and has even been on French TV with him a few times back in the 80's. He's going to obviously see Rene when he goes there in March (im going with him, so i should be mmeeting Rene), Apparently Rene still has a bit of a wild lifestyle so it should be interesting going round with him abit.

If only you lot knew half the stories ive been told about this guy and what hes gotten up to ;)

[Ray Bell]

Now Mot, if you come into this forum, you accept the responsibility of telling us what you know... We've only just got that message through to Keir!

[Don Capps]

Okay,

So sometime in March we can wrap this one up? Why doesn't someone just email Rene and ask him to check in here and lay it out for us?

Boy, history gets messy sometimes.

However, Veritas...

[Don Capps]

Barry & theMot,

Your Mission: by the end of March 2001, have an Answer to this queston. Carry on....

The Colonel

[Ray Bell]

You tell 'em, Don...

[theMot]

Then again even if i do get to meet him how am i gonna bring this up? I cant just go up to someone i dont know and ask if he was screwing "the old mans" grand daughter...

Cant just go and call him a drug addict either. Hmmmmm i dunno. Ill ask the guy i work with who knows him and see what he has to say.

[Ray Bell]

Maybe tell him that, as he will well know, there were many rumours about his departure... so what's the real story?
And don't count on it being true... bus sus it out so it can be checked later.

[Falcadore]

Don,
Sorry but that last post of yours had me in fits for a little bit. There used to be a comedy duo on TV here called Graham and the Colonel who used to be the last segment of "The Late Show". The cast of the Late Show make movies now - "The Castle", "The Dish" and their TV chat show "The Panel". They seem to have an affinity for 'The'.

Anyway Graham and the Colonel (respetivaly Rob Sitch & Santo Cilauro) were a piss-take on sports commentators, or more perhaps a piss-take on HG Nelson and Rampaging Roy Slaven who themselves are a piss take on soprts commentators...

I am REALLY digressing here. The point being I couldn't picture 'the Colonel' ordering a pizza, much less.....

You know this is starting to sound like a joke nobody else is going to get. Oh well I've done all this typing I'll push send anyway - ignore please rambling thought at work....

yours
Mark Jones

[Barry Lake]

Mark
I didn't realise that The Castle was made by the people from The Panel. I learned something here, and it wasn't about motor racing!
I often see The Panel (past the side of my computer monitor and over the top of some boxes full of books) but I am not sure that I ever saw The Late Show.
The Castle was a big hit in America, but I wonder how non-English-speaking people would take it? Perhaps a bit like us trying to understand French humour - or Swedish.
Then again, maybe I don't understand The Castle. There was a time when I thought Strictly Ballroom was a comedy. Now that I am involved (and attend the studio that inspired the movie) I suspect it actually was intended to be a documentary!

[Ray Bell]

I liked The Castle, too, and I wonder about The Dish... wonder if I'll be home when it's on TV that is... Barry, speaking of Michael Caton, who starred in The Castle, did you identify the car he drove into the parking lot in the first Hahn Premium Light ad?
This has a much to do with Motor Racing Nostalgia as anything else lately...

[Falcadore]

Ray,
The FORCE 7! Oh joy of joys! What a sight to behold it was! That's last surviving Leyland P76 Force 7 isn't it? The shagon wagon it was parked next to, was that a Sandman, a Drifter or... what was the other one called?

Barry,
Working Dog prouctions as they are now known started off in Melbourne on radio as the "De-Generation" and took their radio show to television. They were a fairly large cast originially - the Australian Monty Python I guess. They included Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Magda Szubanski, Marg Downey, Tom Gleisner, Mick Molloy, Jane Turner, Tony Martin, Gina Riley, Michael Veitch, Santo Cilauro and a few others. They did several shows for the ABC and Channel 7.

One or two provided the impetus that became 'The Comedy Company', although none of them were in it, and around half the crew left to join Steve Vizard in creating 'Fast Forward'. Martin, Molloy, Gleisner, Kennedy, Sitch, Cilauro and Steven.... someone, started 'The Late Show' which lasted three years and was bloody hilarious. Tony Martin and Mick Molloy left to go to radio in Sydney and created the Martin-Molloy show. Mick Molloy then later tried launch his own show on Channel 9.

Those of the DeGeneration left, Gliesner, Kennedy, Sitch & Cilauro created 'Frontline' for the ABC. The nearest thing to an Australian 'Larry Sanders Show'. Although 'Frontline' is centred around a Current Affairs Show rather than a Late night chat show. Pure satire, too close to the truth for those in the industry, but brilliant television. It single handedly ended those Angry Anderson specials A Current Affair used to do, amongst others.

The international success of 'Frontline' got them into movies, and this time they were all behind the camera instead of in front of it and created 'The Castle'. They also created 'The Panel' for channel ten, and the excellent fishing travel series 'A River Somewhere'. And now about to be released is 'The Dish', starring Sam Neil, the story of the role an Australian radio telescope array at Forbes played in the Apollo 11 moon landing.

[Ray Bell]

A Sandman... and it was hardly the last Force 7... I would think all of them are still in existence, but who knows about the one that went to England.
Shane Cowham also picked it...

[Paul Hartshorne]

To pull this thread forcefully back on topic; Did you know that Rene Arnoux used to have a bloodhound called Lotus? Rene was apparently Colin Chapman's first choice to partner Mario Andretti at Lotus in 1978, (but was dropped when Ronnie became available) and bought himself a dog to celebrate (!). When he didn't get the drive he still called the dog Lotus anyway.

This talk of firings and sex reminds me; Is there any truth to the rumour that Alain Prost was sacked from Renault because he was having an affair with Gerard Larrousse's wife?

[Ray Bell]

All this talk about sex?
Yesterday I visited the widow of a man who built a couple of Specials back in the forties. She let me go through a shoebox, therein was a newspaper clipping about a scandal from the Redex Round Australia Trial days...
'Wild Bill' McLachlan had produced a gun when his wife had a couple of private dicks break in on him *ahem* spending energy with his navigator and secretary, Marie Higgs...
The paper is from August 5, 1954, and it's front page stuff... a Sydney paper.
Seems McLachlan built a flat on the back of his house for his mother in 1950, but when she died and he tired of wife Marjory Jean he moved into it himself. Marie Higgs was frequently seen coming and going...
Asked if she approved of the relationship, Marjory said: "Certainly not, but I couldn't do anything about it. I protested, but my husband is a man who will do what he likes, regardless."
The pair had been married since September 27, 1941. The confrontation, however, was more like a criminal scene, McLachlan saying "You dirty ...." as he got the gun out. Marie Higgs then hit Marjory across the face. McLachlan threatened: "I'll get your for this, you ....!"
The judge was prepared to shorten the waiting period for the decree nisi..
"Wild Bill's" real name, by the way, was Dugal Andrew, and he was 36 at the time.
The things that happened in the days you had to prove wrongdoing to get a divorce... today she could have just applied for it because he had moved out on her for 12 months.

[Barry Lake]

Marie Higgs (McLachlan) is still around. She lives down the south coast of NSW, towards where John Crouch lived, at Dalmeny. John has kept in touch with her and says she is a very nice lady.
I believe she was going to be at Hal Moloney's Round Australia Trials Re-Union at East Maitland a couple of weekends ago.
Unfortunately I missed that as it was the weekend we were taking part in the Closing Ceremony for the Olympic Games (which took up more time than it should have done) that weekend.
I haven't yet had a chance to catch up with Hal to learn who was there, but he had something like 300 attending, most of them from the REDeX Trials of 1953-54-55.
They came from as far away as Perth.

I don't think Rene Arnoux was planning to be there.

[Ray Bell]

Trust Crouch to have kept in touch....
Always the ladies man, and he just married John Snow's widow, didn't he?

[Barry Lake]

No. The lady John Crouch married was a neighbour in Dalmeny (a couple of blocks away). When they met, she had no idea he had been a racing driver - nor that he had any money (which is why John was impressed).
They discovered later that she had stood next to him when one of the REDeX Trials had passed through the town in Queensland where she was at the time - mid-1950s.
She is a very switched-on lady, full of energy, who has had a couple of books published on local histories.

Speaking of Rene Arnoux, he once came into a restaurant in Adelaide where I was having dinner with a married couple I knew. The lady wanted to get his autograph, but was afraid to go and ask for it in case he became upset at being disturbed while out for dinner.
I could see she desperately wanted it so I said I would go and get it for her - half-expecting the result she feared.
Rene could not have been more polite or helpful. Perhaps it had something to do with the people he was with, but it was a long way from the "wild man" image he exuded elsewhere.

[Huw Jenjin]

Rene Arnoux was a Lotus test driver. I dont think he had sex with Chapmans son though.

[Felix Muelas]

Originally posted by Huw Jenjin
Rene Arnoux was a Lotus test driver.

Huw,

When do you think that was?

Felix

[Maldwyn]

1978?

[RedFever]

"he took 18 pole positions but only 7 wins. "

Well, to Rene's defense......the Renault Turbos he was driving for a while were extremely powerful engines but had this nasty habit of blowing up in smoke during the race. That explains why so few poles were turned into victories. In fact, with Ferrari he had 4 poles and 3 victories, pretty much normal.....

[RedFever]

also, there is another reason why Rene deserves to be remembered, the two most beautiful two laps in F1 history....

"The duel with Gilles is something I'll never forget, my greatest souvenir of racing. You can only race like that, you know, with someone you trust completely, and you don't meet many people like him. He beat me, yes, and in France, but it didn't worry me - I knew I'd been beaten by the best driver in the world."

[Ray Bell]

Stretching things to say the 'most beautiful' don't you think, Red?
There were some done by Fangio at the Nurburgring that might edge them out... and Senna's opener at Donington was pretty stunning.

[RedFever]

Senna's lap was pretty insane, but Gilles/Rene was way more intense, they actually passed each other so many times.

[Felix Muelas]

Originally posted by Maldwyn
1978?

Sounds weird to me...He was racing the Martini and later the Surtees, and logic tells me that, if he was the test driver at Lotus, he would have got Jarier´s car at the (unfortunate) end of the season.

But I am talking from memory alone so, can anyone confirm / deny that Rene was a Lotus test driver at any time during the seventies?

Felix

[Huw Jenjin]

I am fairly sure it was when Lotus 72 s were running in "D" or "E" specification, at a simlar time to when Henton, Crawford and others got a go.

[jmcgavin]

I'm not sure about beautiful either, I'd certainly say intense though
Jim Clark Monza 67??

[RedFever]

OK, not the 2 most beautiful, the 2 best laps in F1's history.

[Ray Bell]

There's a picture of that around here somewhere...

[theMot]

Which lap was better? The first or the second?

lets really narrow this down

[jmcgavin]

You mean Villeneuve vs Arnoux, theres a Russian f1 movie site with it, absolutely hair-raising, especially the point where GV turns back in on a left hander overtaking round the outside and clips the Renault front right

When GV makes the first move outbraking into the first corner I'm still convinced it won't happen

[RedFever]

you mean, the second to last or the last????

two "at the limit' breaking from Gilles' Ferrari covered by clouds of smoke (I mean clouds, not just a little smoke from one tire...), 4-5 takeovers, wheels off the course (both drivers) lateral contact, not dirty moves to punt the other one........there more in those two laps than in a whole GP these days.....

[Ray Bell]

So where's the Russian movie site?

[RedFever]

http://www.f-1.ru/video/index_e.html


try also

http://f1movies.cjb.net/

[Ray Bell]

Thanks, Red, I'll certainly take a look...

[Ray Bell]

Sorry, Red, can't find it on either site.... any clues?

[Piquet_1]

I would still really like some good (accurate) info as to why Arnoux was let go from Ferrari. It was so sudden, and he'd got a second at Dallas the year before, the best result for the team after Alboreto's Belgium win.

I really liked him - the way he always seemed hunched over the steering wheel. Did he drive with loose belts or something? If Piquet hadn't won in the title 83, I was hoping very much for RA. He would have been a strange one to call World Champion...

[jmcgavin]

the russian site is at http://www.f-1.ru/video/index_e.html
tried it yesterday and had no probs, got a lot more clips than most film sites i've seen.

The bits I was referring to was the into the first corner of the 2nd lap of the sequence and then pretty much all of the 3rd lap

[Ray Bell]

I guess I'm going to need some guidance to find it... not listed in archive, nor in favourites, where is it exactly?