Born and raised in Paris, Laffite trained as a racing driver with the Winfield Racing School at Magny-Cours in 1968. Laffite twice entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Ligier before making his Formula One debut at the 1974 German Grand Prix with Frank Williams. Laffite remained at Frank Williams through the 1975 season, scoring his maiden podium at the German Grand Prix and winning the European Formula Two Championship with Martini. He moved to Ligier in 1976, taking several podiums amongst his maiden pole position in Italy. Laffite retained his seat the following season, taking his maiden win at the Swedish Grand Prix. After a winless season in 1978, Ligier constructed the highly-competitive JS11 in response to the ground effect era. Laffite won the opening two rounds of the 1979 season—including a grand slam at the Brazilian Grand Prix—but ultimately finished the championship in fourth after suffering eight retirements. Laffite again finished fourth in the 1980 and 1981 championships, losing out on the latter by six points to Nelson Piquet and taking several wins across both. Laffite failed to finish 11 of 15 Grands Prix in 1982, leaving for Williams at the end of the season. After two winless seasons with Williams, amongst further reliability issues, Laffite returned to Ligier in 1985, scoring several podiums. At the 1986 British Grand Prix, Laffite was seriously injured in a multi-car collision that broke both of his legs. He subsequently retired from Formula One, having achieved six wins, seven pole positions, seven fastest laps and 32 podiums.
Jacques-Henri Laffite was born in Paris on 21 November 1943. He attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school.[4] He was trained as a racing driver in 1968 at Winfield Racing School in France.
The 1979 season opened with Laffite winning the first two races. He fought for the World Championship title until the last races, but eventually placed only fourth, with 36 points. The following two seasons were similar, with two more fourth places in the Championship and a further three victories. In 1982, however, Laffite finished only 17th in the final classification, with only 5 points scored.
During the early 1980s, Laffite also made three end of season trips to Australia to race in the non-championship Australian Grand Prix. He failed to finish his first race in 1981 (he was lucky to start after his car hit the wall on the outside of the last turn of the short (1.609 km (1.000 mi)) Calder Park Raceway in qualifying, but his local crew were able to repair it for the race). He finished second to fellow Frenchman Alain Prost in 1982, and third behind Brazilian Roberto Moreno and Australian John Smith in 1983. In all of his pre-Formula One AGP drives, Laffite drove a Formula Pacific or Formula MondialRalt RT4 powered by a 1.6-litre FordI4 engine.
Results in the next two seasons were not much better, when he moved back to England, again to race for Williams (11 and 5 points, respectively). Now in his forties, Laffite returned to Ligier in 1985: in that season he was on the podium three times (Great Britain, Germany and Australia), for a total of 16 points. In 1986 he scored 14 points including two more podium finishes in the first half of the season, but he broke both legs in a crash at the start of the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch and thereafter retired from Formula One, ending his career tied with Graham Hill for the most Grand Prix starts at 176. He was the most successful driver in Ligier's history, having taken six of their nine wins.
As a result of Laffite's injuries, new safety rules were enforced from the 1988 season that stated that in all cars the driver's feet must be behind the front axle line.
He is now a television commentator for the French network TF1, best known for his reaction to the incident at the 1997 European Grand Prix in which Michael Schumacher collided with Jacques Villeneuve, and Laffite reacted with curse words on live television.
Laffite made his 2007 FIA GT3 European Championship debut at the 2008 Bucharest City Challenge, driving for AutoGT Racing Team.
[5]
Laffite has two daughters: Camille and Margot, a sports journalist of Formula One on Canal+. He is also golf enthusiast, is a shareholder of Dijon-Bourgogne Golf.
Also deeply attached to the Creuse for Golf Fisheries and nature, he has a property in Creuse near Aubusson.
^The fastest lap at the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix was initially credited to Masahiro Hasemi. This was a measurement mistake and, several days later, Fuji Speedway issued a press release to correct the fastest lap holder of the race to Laffite.[1] This press release was promptly made known in Japan, and the Japan Automobile Federation and Japanese media corrected the record.[2][3] This correction was not made well known outside Japan; thus, Hasemi is credited with the fastest lap in many record books.
