Franck Lagorce

Franck Lagorce ( born September 1, 1968 in L' Haÿ -les -Roses ) is a French racing driver.

Monoposto

Franck Lagorce was one of the talented young pilots of the 1980s. Lagorce went through a number of junior formulas and was released in 1993 in the formula 3000th After six years as kart pilot Lagorce 1990 overall winner of the French Formula Renault Championship. It was followed by two years in the French Formula 3 Championship, he was crowned in 1992 with the title. He also managed the leap into Formula 1, but could not prevail there.

In his first year in Formula 3000, he was team-mate Olivier Panis at DAMS. He won in the last two races of the season at Magny -Cours and Nogaro and finished fourth in the championship. In 1994, he joined the team Apomatox and celebrated two victories of the season again. In addition to its involvement in Formula 3000 Lagorce was a test driver for Ligier and gave the Grand Prix of Japan at the end of the season his debut in Formula 1 Also at the race in Australia was Lagorce for Ligier at the start. After a failure at Suzuka he binned in Adelaide in eleventh.

1995 Lagorce again had to make do with the role of test driver at Ligier and could next contest just a few races in the Renault Spyder series. After the hope was not fulfilled to a fixed cockpit in this series after negotiations with some Formula 1 teams to Lagorce turned 1996 on the single-seater sport and switched to racing cars.

Racing car

Lagorce was back in 1994 as a partner of Alain Ferté and Henri Pescarolo Courage for his debut in Le Mans, but could not finish the race after an engine failure. His first goal arrived, he reached in 1996, when he finished seventh in common with Pescarolo and Emmanuel Collard. In 1997 Lagorce the French DAMS team and played now in a Panoz next to Le Mans and the FIA GT Championship. Lagorce and Éric Bernard completed several championship races among the top 10, but scored no championship points. Her best result was a seventh place at the 4 -hour race at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello. The following year Lagorce received a cockpit in the Nissan factory team for Le Mans. Together with Michael Krumm and John Nielsen, he drove to fifth place overall, his best result in the 24- hour race. In addition, he also denied in 1998 some selected rounds of the FIA GT Championship for DAMS.

His good results in sports car 1999 allowed the change to the work team of Mercedes, where he should be driving a Mercedes -Benz CLR Le Mans together with Bernd Schneider and Pedro Lamy. The trio will be placed in the qualification on a promising fourth place. After the two flashovers the Sister vehicles both in training and during the race, Mercedes pulled back early from the race. By the end of the season Lagorce was therefore looking for a new team. He received an offer to participate by Riley & Scott in the remaining races of the FIA ​​Sportscar Championship. However, he was able to finish at the side of Philippe Gache none of the race. Through its commitment to Bill Riley, he received in 2000 the possibility of a driver's seat in the Le Mans Prototype program from Cadillac to get, which was implemented jointly with Riley & Scott. However, it lacked the Cadillac Northstar LMP performance and reliability, so that all emergency vehicles arrived at Le Mans only in the back of the midfield to the finish. Therefore Lagorce joined the Panoz factory team, in which he several races in the American Le Mans Series and European Le Mans Series played at the side of Klaus Graf. But the newly developed Panoz LMP -1 Roadster S was not fully developed. While he and Earl always qualified in the top seven, the driver duo could only finish the race at Mid-Ohio in sixth place. The following year Lagorce drove for Henri Pescarolo again a sports car of Courage. He, Jean -Christophe Boullion and Sebastien Bourdais drove to different driver combinations in both the FIA Sportscar Championship and at Le Mans. His best result was a third place at the Circuit de Dijon -Prenois 2002. 2003 remained at Lagorce Pescarolo Sport and drove his last year in sports car environment. Like last year, the rotated driver combination in the various races. While he initially again with Boullion and Bourdais shared his vehicle, he drove later with Stéphane Sarrazin, with whom he scored two podium finish.

After that Lagorce tried in rally raids in the French GT Championship and as a moderator for motor sports events at France Télévisions, Canal and Motors TV.

Le Mans results

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