Lucien Bianchi

March 30 1969. During a practice session at Le Mans Lucien Bianchi, loses control of his Autodelta Alfa Romeo prototype on the Mulsanne Straight, hits a telegraph pole disintegrating the car in a blaze of fire. Lucien Bianchi was killed instantly.

Lucien Bianchi was born on the 10th of November 1934 in Italy (Milano). His father, a technician at Alfa Romeo's experimental facilities moved to Belgium in 1950 to take care of the racing cars of Johnny Claes. Thanks to his patronage the young Lucien got an excellent mechanical training at the Jaguar, Mercedes and Alfa factories. His racing career starts in 1952 with Jacques Herzet asking Bianchi, who didn't have a driving license at that time, to form a team driving a Jaguar. The amateur team did well and moved to a two liter Ferrari the next year. Bianchi now 18 got to learn to drive rally's and showed a natural talent which got noticed by Olivier Gendebien, one of the fastest rally drivers at the time. With Ferrari factory backing they won several international events and Luciens talent started to shine. With Olivier Gendebiens patronage Lucien got more factory drives and started participating not only in more rally's, but also in track events.

With Lucien winning more and more road events (a record of four times Tour de France winner) his reputation got stronger and he became Belgian rally champion and was internationally acclaimed as one of the best rally drivers in the world.

While most of Belgium was looking at the young Jacky Ickx, F2 European champion in 1967, Luciens track successes didn't get the exposure they deserved. After an attempt at the 500 miles of Indianapolis (Lucien was the 4th Belgian driver to pass the rookie test) which he couldn't follow through because he had to go of and win the 1000 kms ot the Nurburgring Lucien returned to F1 for the 1968 season.

1968 was his best season. With a modest Cooper-BRM he came in third at the F1 Monaco Grand Prix, with a Ford GT 40 he won Watkins Glenn and finally Le Mans and in rallying only a strange road accident 160 kms before the finish prevented him from winning the greatest rally of all times: the London Sydney Marathon. Lucien Bianchi could do it all: single seater racing, sports car racing and rally driving. Great things were expected for the 1969 season when the fatal testing accident at Le Mans halted the career of one of most gifted drivers of his generation.

Asked about what made him such a successful all round driver Lucien Bianchi commented in his book "Mes Rallyes" (Flammarion - 1969) that he learned everything with his eyes watching other drivers like Olivier Gendebien at the wheel. He has no preferences for single seaters, sportscars or production cars. He doesn't care if they are front or rear wheel drive and calls his driving style adaptive. Adapting the cars behavior to the road and making it go as fast as possible means choosing between forcing the car round corners in four wheel drifts in rally's or calculated fingertip contro on the track.

The images on this page are from the Lucien Bianchi collection. The story of Lucien Bianchi in the 1968 London Sydney Marathon can be found right here in the virtual garage.