The former F1 driver and team owner Guy Ligier has died aged 85. He was a rugby player and competed in the sport before running the Ligier team between 1976-1996.<\/p>\n
The Frenchman started his motoracing career on motorbikes before moving to cars and started in Elva-DKW known as Formula One Junior. He worked his way up to complete in 12 grand prix\u2019s. But he retired following the death h of close friend Jo Schlesser in 1968 having a major impact and resulting in early retirement from driving.<\/p>\n
He then moved into sports car manufacturing before buying Matra in 1974 before a return to F1 with the team two years later.<\/p>\n
The team reached their peak in the late 1970s and 1980s, with a competitive peak in 1980, when they were regular front-runners. During their time in the sport they claimed nine poles and nine wins, along with 11 fastest laps.<\/p>\n
Best constructors’ championship finish of second in 1980. The last win was with Olivier Panis in the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The team was sold to Cyril de Rouvre, but used Ligier name until he sold it on to Alain Prost four years later, the four-time champion renaming the team Prost Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said: “It was with great sadness that I heard the news that Guy Ligier had passed away. As a child growing up in Le Mans, I was inspired and entranced by his iconic and beautiful pale-blue-and-white Ligier Formula 1 cars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The former F1 driver and team owner Guy Ligier has died aged 85. He was a rugby player and competed in the sport before running the Ligier team between 1976-1996. The Frenchman started his motoracing career on motorbikes before moving to cars and started in Elva-DKW known as Formula One Junior. He worked his way<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[28,29,41,93,528,664,754,879,1041,1155,1269,1449,1464],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-1970s","tag-1980s","tag-41","tag-alain-prost","tag-deaths","tag-f1","tag-formula-one","tag-guy-ligier","tag-jo-schlesse","tag-ligier","tag-matra","tag-obituary","tag-olivier-panis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}