Grand Prix Insider

Since I’ve published the post about the first and the last Formula 1car carrying an orange livery, the late sixties/early seventies McLaren-look, Brambilla’s Beta-March (mind you, Vittorio drove a Surtees, too…) and the Orange-sponsored Arrows have been pointed out as also-rans. However, nobody seems to remember this one above. Or do you? Which car is it? Who’s the driver? Where’s this shot been taken?

16/4/1988, Louis José Lucien Dolhem dies.

José Dolhem was Didier Pironi’s half-brother and entered Formula 1 with the Surtees team after half-decent results in Formula 2 for three Grand Prix in 1974 failing to qualify in France and Italy and withdrawing from the US Grand Prix on team orders after the fatal accident of team-mate Helmut Koinigg. Dolhem’s career was characterized by a series of ups and downs, busy one year, not the next. Then in 1988, just eight month after Pironi’s fatal accident, Dolhem was killed when the private plane in which he was flying, crashed near Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert in the Loire region of France.

Born: 26th of April 1944 in Paris, France;
Died: 16th of April 1988 in Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert, France, aged 43 years.

16/4/1918, Richard Gibson is born in Bourne, Lincolnshire, UK.

Dick Gibson was one of those starters to participate in a Grand Prix with a Formula 2 car. In his case it was a rear-engined Cooper T43 he entered at the German GP in 1957 and 1958. On both occasions he was sidelined with mechanical problems after only a couple of laps. Early in 1959 he went back to South Africa, taking wins at Natal, Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg to win the RAC South African International Championship. His career came to an end after finishing seventh in the 1960 South African Grand Prix, when he suffered a severe accident which left him hospitalized.

16/4/1979, Christijan Albers is born in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

From German Formula 3 champion in 1999 Albers progressed through Formula 3000 in 2000 and the German DTM series from 2001 to 2004. Throughout his DTM career Albers had been a regular test driver for the Minardi and finally joined the F1 team as a race driver in 2005 after tests with Jordan Grand Prix and the Walker Racing Champ Car team. His first season was a solid one but with Minardi being bought by Red Bull, Albers ended up switching to MF1 Racing in 2006 and did a decent job. He was initially retained in 2007 by which time the team had been taken over by the Dutch car company Spyker but was dropped after an embarrassing pit-lane plunder at the French GP. For 2008 he returned to the DTM frame.