Profile of Bertrand Gachot on Famous Like Me

Bertrand Gachot (born December 23, 1962 in Luxembourg) is a French former Formula One driver.

Gachot was the son of a French European Commission official. He began karting at the relatively old age of 15. In 1983, he attended the famous French university Winfield School. He dropped out after a year to begin his racing career, competing first in the Formula Ford 1600 series. By 1986, he had won the British Formula Ford championship.

In 1987, Gachot joined the British Formula 3 series, finishing second in the championship for the West Surrey Racing team. In 1988, he switched to the Formula 3000 series, but met with limited success. In 1989, he entered the storied world of Formula One, driving for the newly-formed (and short-lived) Onyx team. After making controversial statements detrimental to the team, though, Gachot lost his race seat, switching in 1990 to the Subaru-powered Coloni team.

In 1991, he joined the Jordan Grand Prix racing team, helping them to fifth in the constructor championship. However, his season was cut short by a two-month prison stint, received for spraying CS gas into a London taxicab driver's face after a traffic altercation. (His race seat was filled, momentarily at least, by then-unknown Michael Schumacher, who was just making his F1 debut).

Gachot spent the next several years racing in various formulae, not lasting long with any team. He was involved in the Pacific Racing team behind the scenes, as well as driving for them for most of their 2-year existance. The high point of Gachot's career is winning the renowned 24 hours of Le Mans sports car race in 1991 (with co-drivers Johnny Herbert and Volker Weidler). In later years, Gachot's career included marketing "Hype", a high-energy beverage, as well as running an F1 website.

Gachot competed in a total of 47 grand prix for eight different teams. He never won a race, but he did score five championship points during his F1 career, and even recorded the fastest lap of the 1991 Hungarian Grand Prix for Jordan.

Complete Formula One results

(Note: grands prix in bold denote points scoring races.)

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