Thierry Marc Boutsen (born
July 13 1957 in Brussels
, Belgium
) is a former
racing driver who raced for the
Arrows, Benetton, Williams, Ligier and
Jordan teams in Formula One.
Career
In 1977 Boutsen entered the Belgian
Formula
Ford 1600 championship and won it in 1978 with 15 victories in
18 races. For 1979 he moved to
Formula 3,
winning three races in 1980 and second place in the
European title race,
behind
Michele Alboreto. In 1981 he
moved to
Formula 2 and was again second in
the
European
championship, this time behind
Geoff
Lees. He also entered the
1981 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race
started at 3pm - one hour earlier than usual due to the
Parliamentary elections
held on the same weekend.
At 4:06pm
Thierry Boutsen suffered a massive accident just after the
Hunaudières kink, some 400 metres before the Mulsanne
bosse (the
"hump") when his WM P81-Peugeot was travelling at some 350
km/h. A suspension piece had failed and the car hit the
guard-rail losing the entire rear end. Boutsen was untouched, but
the debris field of hurled parts and bodywork was spread over 150
metres. Three marshals were struck by the debris. One of them,
Thierry Mabillat was killed, struck in the chest by a detached
piece of the guard rail. Two of his colleagues were seriously
injured, Claude Hertault and Serge David, who lost an arm.
In 1983 Boutsen drove in the European Touring Car Championship and
in World Sportscar races, where he won at Monza with
Bob Wollek.
In 1983 he paid $500,000 for a drive in Formula One, and made his
debut with Arrows at the
1983
Belgian Grand Prix, but a greater opportunity came when he
moved to Benetton in 1987 where he scored six 3rd place finishes
for the team. In 1989
Frank Williams
signed him on a two-year contract, where he had his three Grand
Prix wins.
In 1989 and he won the rain-soaked Canadian and Australian Grands Prix and in
1990 he scored a victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix over his
friend Ayrton Senna's McLaren
-Honda. In
1991 he moved to Ligier and from there to replace
Ivan Capelli at Jordan in 1993, after which he
retired from Formula One. Boutsen briefly drove sports cars in the
US, driving for Champion Racing in a Porsche, alongside
Bill Adam and Hans Stuck. The trio finished 2nd in
class at the
24 Hours of Daytona
in 1997.
After a crash at Le
Mans
in 1999 he retired from racing
altogether.
Today
Thierry Boutsen runs his own company, Boutsen Aviation, in Monaco
. He
also owns a
Mégane Trophy racing team.
Complete Formula One results
(
key) (Races in
bold indicate pole position; races in
italics indicate fastest lap)
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