People

Robert Benoist

The son of a Rothschild gamekeeper, Robert Benoist was fascinated by speed from an early age when he was a bicycle racer with the Versailles Cycling Club. After leaving school he went to work in a Citroen garage in Versailles and in 1913 saw his first Grand Prix at Amiens. This boosted his passion for cars and he went to work for the Gregoire company. His dreams of being a racing driver were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. He served in the infantry until volunteering for the Armee de l'Air as a pilot. Initially he was a reconnaissance pilot but despite this (and being shot down on one occasion between the two front lines) he managed to shoot down one German plane. Eventually he convinced his commanding officer to transfer him to fighter training but the war was coming to a close by the time this was completed. Benoist then spent time as an instructor at the famous aerobatic school at Pont Long near Pau.

Demobilized in August 1919 with 19,500 flying hours to his credit Benoist resumed his search for work as a racing driver. It took 18 months before the Marcay company agreed to let him test a 1100cc cycle car it had built. In the summer of 1921 Benoist began to race for Marcay and this brought him to the attention of the Salmson company for the 1922 season. Benoist was soon a winner, one of his early victories coming at Brooklands. In 1923 he was a dominant force in cyclecar racing and at the end of the year he was signed by Louis Delage to be the driver of his new Grand Prix challenger. Under the wing of veteran Rene Thomas, Benoist developed into a very quick GP driver but his first victory did not come until the French GP of 1925 when Antonio Ascari was killed and the Alfa Romeo team withdrew from the event.

For the 1926 season Delage built a new car for the new Grand Prix regulations. These suffered serious overheating problems as the exhausts were too close to the cockpits and became known as "the traveling ovens". Eventually Delage withdrew to redesign the car and in 1927 Benoist proved to be unbeatable. He won every major Grand Prix event that season and took Delage to the World Championship. The enthusiastic French press labeled him "The World Champion" and he was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.

But times were hard with Delage running into financial trouble and a change of formula meant that all the major manufacturers withdrew from racing and there were no jobs for professional racing drivers. Benoist had to find work as the manager of the Garage Banville in Paris, the very first multistory car park in the world. In 1928 Benoist was asked to race an Itala in the Le Mans 24 Hours and convinced Ettore Bugatti to run him in at the French GP. After that he raced only sportscars, winning the Spa 24 Hours for the Alfa Romeo factory team in 1929 with Attilio Marinoni.

It was not until 1932 that Benoist was asked to do some development work for Bugatti. When a vacancy arose in the Bugatti factory team Benoist got the job and in 1933 he joined Achille Varzi, Rene Dreyfus and "Williams" in factory cars.

In May that year Guy Bouriat, the manager of the Bugatti showroom in Paris, was killed racing and Ettore Bugatti asked Benoist to take over. In 1934 he continued to race but the German teams were becoming more and more powerful. At the end of that season Bugatti's head of competition Meo Constantini resigned and Benoist was given the job.

He and Bugatti decided that the best policy would be to withdraw from Grand Prix racing and race in the Le Mans 24 Hours instead. The company built the famous streamlined Type 57, which became known as "The Tank" and Benoist led the team to victory at Le Mans in 1937 (with Jean-Pierre Wimille). He retired after the victory but went on to oversee a second Bugatti win at Le Mans in 1939.

After serving with the French Army Benoist was recruited to the British secret organization the Special Operations Executive by his former team mate "Williams". After "Williams" was arrested, Benoist escaped to England, underwent SOE training and returned to France to rebuild the networks. He became an important figure in the French Resistance in Paris but was captured in June 1944. He was deported to Germany and executed by slow strangulation at Buchenwald concentration camp in September that year.