Silvio Bachot

Silvio Bachot (born 25th December 1952 in Metz, Grand Est, France) is a French former racing driver who competed under a Belgian licence best known for his appearances in Formula One.

Early Life

He was born to Frenchman Guillon Bachot, a Formula One team owner, and Maria, a Yugoslavian defector. Bachot spent his early life in France until he was 13, where he decided to try his hand at karting when he was 5, and thus began his motorsport career. He moved to England when he was 13, in order to try and further his opportunities in racing, and in conjunction with his father's commitments. He left school at 14 in order to concentrate on his racing career.

Lower formulae (1968-1971)

Bachot would progress to British Formula Ford in 1968 at the age of 15, and would initially not achieve anything spectacular in his debut season, a single podium finish at Crystal Palace being his highlight. Bachot would improve by some way in 1969 to finish 2nd in the championship, and arguably should've won the title had he not been disqualified from his win at the last race of the season. In 1970 he would move up to British Formula Three, managing to win at Crystal Palace, and finishing an impressive 4th in the championship. He would go on to win the title in 1971 in dominant fashion, winning 3 races and 5 pole positions on the way.

Formula Two (1972-73)

Bachot progressed to European Formula Two in 1972, landing a drive at the March team. He would struggle in his 1st season, only managing 11 points, with a best finish of 4th at Pau and Imola. In his 2nd season he would improve, with the help of works BMW engines, to 2nd in the championship to Jean-Pierre Jarier, with unreliability and numerous accidents putting an end to his title bid.

Formula One (1978-)

Bachot would find a drive in Formula One for 1978, driving for the Shadow team. The team however was on his last legs, using a 3 year old chassis that didn't work at all, and with an extremely slow teammate in Freddy Kottulinsky, which lead to Bachot failing to pre-qualify for his first race at Spain.

CART (1987-2002)

After the end of his F1 career, Bachot would head to America to compete in the 1987 season of the PPG Indy Car World Series, driving for Patrick Racing alongside fellow ex-F1 driver Emerson Fittipaldi. Bachot would proceed to completely dominate the road courses on the schedule, winning at 5 of the 9 on the schedule, finishing 3rd in the championship with 130 points, and would finish 4th at the Indianapolis 500, but not without controversy. Trying to keep the 5th-placed Galles of Isabella Noriko behind him, he consistently blocked her repeated attempts to overtake him, and after the heated post-race altercations between the two, Bachot would be disqualified from his finish and handed a probation, and was heavily criticised by the media for it.

Bachot would remain at Patrick in 1988, alongside Fittipaldi. The season was a lot more difficult; despite him scoring 6 pole positions, winning at Portland and looking like the man who had the only answer to the dominant Penskes, any hope of him fighting for the championship was scuppered by the atrocious reliability of his car, only finishing 4 of the 15 races, and there was huge frustration over this. He came 9th in the championship, with just 56 points; less than half of his 1987 points total.

Spending his third season with Pat Patrick in 1989, Bachot would have a lot more success. He took 12 pole positions, won 5 races, including an emphatic victory at the Indy 500, and scored 155 points to win his first CART championship.

Complete Formula 1 Results

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	Points	WDC
1978	Shadow Racing Team	Shadow DN5B	Ford Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	ARG	RSA	USW	ESP DNPQ		MON	FRA	TUS	GBR	SUI	NED	GER	AUT	ITA	CAN	USA	0*	—*
	North Star Racing	Lola T980	Renzo DFV-2 3.0 V8					BEL

American Open-Wheel racing results

CART

Year	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Rank	Points
1987	Patrick Racing	LBH 1	PHX 22	INDY DSQ	MIL 26	POR 1	MEA 25	CLE 15*	TOR 22	MIC 6	POC 3	ROA 1*	MDO 1*	NAZ 10	LAG 25	MIA 1*	3rd	130
1988	Patrick Racing	PHX 2	LBH 19	INDY 16*	MIL 19	POR 1	CLE 22	TOR 25	MEA 11	MIC 22	POC 26	MDO 10	ROA 22*	NAZ 15*	LAG 6	MIA 4	9th	56
1989	Patrick Racing	PHX 10	LBH 23	INDY 1*	MIL 12*	DET 1*	POR 14*	CLE 1*	MEA 1*	TOR 3	MIC 25	POC 20	MDO 1*	ROA 2	NAZ 10	LAG 13*	1st	155

*Season still in progress