People

Dominique Delestre

Delestre studied marketing at the Ecole de Commerce in Reims and spent some time in England studying economic science before he went to work for the electronics company Philips in France. At the age of 25 he discovered motor racing and started competing in Formula Renault in 1980. It was a struggle but by 1985 he was a front-runner in the French Formula 3 Championship, racing for Eddie Jordan, who had established a French team after the European Formula 3 Championship was canceled at the end of 1984. Delestre finished fifth in the French F3 series in 1985 and moved to Formula 3000 the following year but he had a nasty accident at Silverstone, colliding with the slowing car of Thierry Tassin which was hidden from view in a cloud of spray. Both drivers were injured with Delestre suffering multiple fractures to his arms and legs.

The crash effectively ended his racing career and in 1988, when he had recovered from his injuries, he acquired the old ORECA factory at Magny-Cours and established the Apomatox team, running a Reynard for Philippe Gache in the European F3000 series in 1989. The following year the team ran Didier Artzet and he recorded third place in the street race in Birmingham in 1990. The team was able to expand to two cars and in 1991 ran Paul Belmondo and Andrea Chiesa without any major success. At the end of the year Delestre decided to run rising star Emmanuel Collard and in 1992 the team landed major backing from the Elf oil company and fielded Collard and Olivier Panis. It was not a great success but the team was restructured in 1993 and Collard was joined by Jean-Christophe Boullion. The team did not start winning races until 1994 when Franck Lagorce won at Silverstone and Hockenheim to finish runner-up in the title to Boullion, who had switched to the rival DAMS team. The team did not win again until 1997 when Christophe Tinseau won a surprise victory at Hockenheim.

At the end of 1998 Delestre decided to sell Apomatox to Alain Prost's Prost Grand Prix. The team moved into the old Ligier F1 factory at Magny-Cours, became known as Gauloises Junior and ran Stephane Sarrazin and Italian Marcelo Battistuzzi. Sarrazin won the new team's first race at Ochersleben and finished sixth in the series and in 1999 he won again in Budapest.