Difference between revisions of "Guillaume Gauthier"

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Guillaume Gauthier

Nationality	French
Born	6 January 1956 Toulon, Var, France
Current Team	Marlboro Team McLaren
Car Number	24
Former Teams	None
Races	22 (21 starts)
Championships	0
Victories	0
Podiums	0
Points	20
Pole Positions	0
Fastest Laps	0
First Race	1979 Argentine Grand Prix
First Victory	N/A
Last Victory	N/A
Last Race	1980 French Grand Prix (ongoing)
Best Finish	14th (1979)

Guillaume Gauthier (Born 6th January 1956 in Toulon, Var, France) is a former French racing driver and owner of Équipe Gauthier, as well as the team principal of Gauthier-Mongooses Racing. He is the father of Arnaud Gauthier, and grandfather of F1RDS driver Aimée Gauthier.

Early Life

Guillaume was born in 1956 in Toulon to Pierre and Gabrielle Gauthier. Pierre was briefly an amateur racing driver in the years before World War II, and fought in the French Resistance during it. After the war, he settled down and opened a successful chain of garages which eventually covered most of southern France, and which is still in operation today by Guillaume's older brother Robert.

In this position, much of Guillaume's pre-school days were surrounded by cars, and naturally he had a fascination with them that would shape his life. At first however, he wished to work on cars, like his father, not race them. That changed on his father's 50th birthday, when the family travelled to Monaco to watch the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix. After watching the race, Guillaume was certain: He wanted to be a Formula 1 driver. His brother, Robert was equally convinced and the two began working hard to ensure their dreams would come true. Eventually the pair earned enough to buy a kart; they would participate infrequently until the end of Guillaume's school days, with mixed success for both brothers.

Racing Career

Early Career

After leaving school at the age of 18 in 1974 with mostly average grades, Guillaume's father proposed a deal to Guillaume and Robert. He was looking to advertise his garage business, and so offered to buy them a competitive kart, and free use of his tools, on the condition that they service it themselves and purchase all necessary parts themselves. The only question left was who would drive. Guillaume and Robert took turns setting times around the local go-kart track, until Robert spun off on his third lap. Pierre decided at that point that Robert's driving style was too wild and declared that Guillaume would be the driver and Robert the mechanic - which was fortunate because Robert happened to be better than Guillaume at servicing cars anyway.

Very quickly upon joining the French karting scene proper, Guillaume found himself one of the chief protagonists there. Indeed, by the end of 1975, he was second only to Alain Prost. Pierre was more than happy to finance Guillaume's rise to Formula Renault for 1976, after his results had been matched with a marked increase in the business that Pierre's garages were doing. The 1976 French Formula Renault title was bitterly fought, with Prost only just beating Gauthier by 7 wins to 6. Prost then moved on to Formula Renault Europe for 1977, whereas Guillaume remained, allowing himself to win every race in French Formula Renault that year.

Guillaume then moved up to French Formula 3 for 1978, where he would again clash with his rival, Alain Prost. This time, Guillaume was determined to prevail, and did so, winning 5 races. This gained the attention of Teddy Mayer, boss of the McLaren team, who was looking for a rising young star to partner defending World Champion Mario Andretti for the upcoming 1979 F1 season. The offer was an excellent one - an established, experienced team, if a little down on its luck, and perhaps looking for some money from Guillaume's father, with a World Champion to learn from. It was the ideal situation for a rising star such as Guillaume.

Formula 1 career

McLaren (1979-)

1979

At first, there was some concern that Guillaume was not experienced enough to make the jump to F1 after only a single F3 season. Such concerns were rapidly dashed at the first pre-season test in Jarama, as Guillaume not only set the 7th fastest time that day, within 6 tenths of the fastest time, but he beat Mario Andretti's best effort by 3 tenths in doing so, with the American only 14th. Come the first round of the season in Argentina, however, and fortunes for McLaren seemed much more dire. The team was saddled with the rather uncompetitive M28D as the M29 was not ready in time for the start of the 1979 season. Gauthier and Andretti could only manage 20th and 22nd on the grid, yet Guillaume proved his pre-season pace was no fluke by outqualifying Andretti by 4 tenths of a second in his first attempt. However, Gauthier's debut ended abruptly after 7 laps with a suspension failure; a great shame when Andretti went on to finish 4th, only 8 seconds behind 3rd-placed James Hunt.

Fortunes at Interlagos were little better, as both McLarens qualified over 5 seconds off of pole-sitter Callum McAllister's blistering pace, though once again, Gauthier showed up his World Champion teammate, beating him by 2 tenths this time. The race was much less chaotic than the one in Buenos Aires, however, though this time Guillaume's car held together and the Frenchman picked up his first ever F1 race finish - 14th place, 1 minute and 48 seconds behind winner Jody Scheckter. Still, he was on the lead lap, which was more than could be said for Mario Andretti.

The South African Grand Prix saw Andretti outqualify Guillaume for the first time that year - even then, the McLarens were only 21st and 22nd, with barely a tenth between them. This carried through to the race, with Andretti finishing 15th and Gauthier 18th, a lap down. The team was in for a shock at the 4th race of the season, in Long Beach. Guillaume barely squeaked on to the grid in 29th, a little over a tenth from failing to qualify, but that paled in comparison to Andretti's performance - 3 seconds off the pace and 7 tenths slower than Guillaume meant that Andretti was only 35th, and thus failed to qualify! In the race, it was another quiet day for Guillaume, only finishing 13th thanks to the mass attrition during the race.

The Spanish Grand Prix could not have come soon enough for the team, as the M29 was finally ready in time for it. Gauthier quickly put the car to good use and qualified 11th, within a second of pole, with Andretti 5 places behind in 16th. In the race, things finally began looking up for the team, as Guillaume put in a steady, measured drive to place 5th and score his first career points, with Andretti backing him up in 7th place. Gauthier came crashing back to earth in the next race at Spa, however, as he suffered numerous difficulties in setting up his car, and eventually wound up failing to qualify, as the second slowest car. Andretti struggled in qualifying as well, only 25th, but in the race, he took advantage of the chaos to finish 7th again.

At Monaco, it was Andretti's turn to have setup difficulties - although he did qualify, it was in 29th, 2 seconds slower than Guillaume, 20 places ahead of him in 9th. It seemed like things were set for Guillaume to impress in front of what was virtually a home crowd - many of his friends and relatives lived within driving distance of Monaco, and many of them turned up for his first race there. Alas, while running strongly, his gearbox broke, denying him more points, whilst Andretti scraped home in 12th. After Monaco, however, Teddy Mayer had had enough of Andretti's underperformance and replaced the American with Derek Daly for the French Grand Prix.

Post-racing career

Team owner

F1RGP2C (1997-)

F1RWRS (2016-)

Complete Formula 1 Results