Eric van de Poele
Eric van de Poele ( born September 30, 1961 in Verviers ) is a Belgian racing driver and former Formula 1 driver. He was reported for 29 Grands Prix but failed to qualify for five, in which he was able to win any championship points.
After a difficult 1984 season in French Formula 3 van de Poele won the Belgian and Benelux Formula Ford and drove in the Belgian Touring Car Championship. In the following three years he raced in BTCC and DTM and won together with the driver Didier Theys and colleague Jean -Michel Martin, the 24 - hour race at Spa-Francorchamps. He also dabbled in the British Formula 3 In 1987, he won the championship title in the DTM with a BMW M3 (E30) without even winning a race.
In 1989 he moved into Formula 3000 and finished fourth, the 1990 season, he finished as runner-up.
Then he signed with the Modena team for the 1991 Formula 1 season a contract where he drove a 291 Modena Lamborghini engine. In the first two races he failed to qualify, but could be for the Grand Prix of San Marino qualify. There he impressed in the rain and drove towards the end of the race in fifth place when he dropped back to ninth place due to lack of oil. The team located in financial difficulties could not build and van de Poele drove this year no other race on this success.
In 1992 he moved to the Brabham team also financially weak. The Belgian qualified for the opening race in South Africa and ended it as Thirteenth, but failed to qualify in the inferior Brabham BT60B no more time.
For the Hungarian Grand Prix, he joined the promising Fondmetal team. He qualified in first attempt, but retired in the race from. After that he started from 15th place at the Belgian Grand Prix, which he finished in tenth place and qualified again for the Grand Prix of Italy, at which the clutch but failed. Then Fondmetal ran into financial difficulties and withdrew. Van de Poele went no further races.
Besides his work as a test driver for Tyrrell in 1993 van de Poele had then great success with touring cars and sports cars, winning the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1995 and 1996 and the Petit Le Mans. At the 24 - hour race in Le Mans he was in 1998 by 2010, ten times at the start.
2006 drove van de Poele in the Grand Prix Masters series.