Nobody had the same skill to sign a time. His trajectory carried Jacky Ickx from the formula 1 to the sands of Dakar passing by the Hunaudières. Meeting with the charming and deep man whom masked the driver…

Son of an automotive and sports journalist, you obviously had the dream of racing…
That didn’t interest me. Yes, I saw Fangio driving at Francorchamps; yes, Moss crossed several times our house; but except the Dinky Toys, I had no interest for the automobile. Nor for the school moreover. I liked the nature and I lived in a wild way, often alone. My father liked the motorcycle, and possessed a certain opening of spirit. He wanted to show me different things to motivate me at the school. And then a fate builds itself which we do not master always. When I was young, my professors did not stop saying to me : “you are not good for nothing, you are bad in everything“. And in the sport, I was not too bad. One takes taste in the success. Was it the fascination to take a bend at 360 kph that fascinated me, the stimulate and the company? No. It was a question of being the best, of winning, and of satisfying my ego.

How would you characterize your career ?
Longevity, eclecticism, but I have no merit, circumstances took care of it. I made 32 or 33 seasons, a hallucinating thing. There are seasons where I raced 48 weekends! Mustang, F1, proto, Nascar at Daytona…

For the money ?
Forget the money. We were happy to drive everything… It was not a business. Today, naturally, it is necessary to be always passionate, but the money took incomparable dimensions. They are two planets. When I drove in F2 for Tyrrell, I got 100 £ for departure bonus. If we won, Champion offered 30 £, Shell 15, or opposite… With that, we had to eat, sleep in cars. A great life, all living in the same way. Beside maybe for Stewart, precursor there as well as in security matter. From my debuts until the end of the 70s, there was a driver, or two, good ones, which disappeared every year… Maybe that I had defenses a little bigger than the others, unconsciously. Nevertheless, the results were there. Then why that one, why not the other one, we know nothing about it. And nobody was disturbed… It is not anymore tolerated, or with difficulty today. The accident is not anymore accepted as a fate. Someone has to be responsible !

Looking back, that doesn’t seem regrettable to you to get rid of circuits like Spa or Nürburgring ?
Regrettable maybe, but it stays in the logic of the sport’s evolution. Because a 22 km circuit, it is uncontrollable. They are two magic places… We have never made better. The current circuits are very secured and cars also, but they lost a little of their character. The only one which suits to nothing, and to no regulation, it is Monaco. Monaco with a formula 1, it is a miracle of talent, precision, mastery. There is no error margin, otherwise it’s the abandonment. Touching a rail, it’s already too much. Nevertheless, there is unanimity to go there! As well as the constructors as the drivers. It is a fascinating exercise. It is necessary to imagine that today they make that with 800 or 900 horse power : they go out of the tunnel to almost 300 kph. Hallucinating! The current cars are “assisted”, except for the efforts of gravity, the G force, gears are changed with the fingertips, your steering, your brakes are assisted, you do not have to be an athlete because it’s not anymore a so physical effort. But it stays in term of perfection and concentration. It’s also difficult because the level of driving considerably increased for the last thirty years.

Are the drivers more closed from each other ?
Oh yes. For sure.

What circuit was best convenient for you as driver ?
Nürburgring, Francorchamps, frankly, I was not bad… And in the rain, I was not bad either. All the team prayed so that it rains, me I hated that. Everybody hates that. A guy who likes the rain, he is not normal.

How do you explain this superiority ?
I made a lot of motorcycling before. On two wheels, it is necessary to be sweet, flexible, attentive. Because the management of a race is made with the head, but the sensations pass all the same by your bottom. One drive with his bottom or through its ties, his wrists, to know if it slides with the front, the back. What is sure, it is that I ran at the right time, because there was place for a certain amateurishness. I was serious in races, but the repetitive practices, in the same place during three days, it made me crazy.

Ferrari complained about it…
With good reason! Fiorano, that annoyed me. I was not fascinated enough maybe, a little bit lazy. Doing only one thing and thinking at that only… Impossible!

According to you, until which moment did you progress ?
Until the moment when one begin to fall down and then, it is a very fast, a soapy hillside. My six races with Ligier, it is a true happiness. Having “indulged in shady dealings” three or four seasons in the hope of a steering wheel to go back up, I became aware that ever I would not be ready, intellectually, for the necessary effort to be on the first row. That eliminates frustration and regrets. My regret, it is to have not known how to show at the time my gratitude to those who allowed me to race. The more I move in the time, the more it sets place. Those who put up tires, tighten wheels, which are there to work at night to change you things.
It is in customs, during a speech, to thank those who help you, at least for the form. But today I feel that without this mass of passionate persons, I wouldn’t have that career. I am better, at the level of my thought, than I was when I was twenty years old. But maybe at that age, this rage is needed as well as this egoism to be successful. I don’t know, I shall have to study that during the next ten years (laught).

During your first Dakar, you said how much Africa touched you…
But it changed my life! Thierry Sabine and his Paris-Dakar… The horizon of the African continent and the awareness that there were other people than us on the planet. There is no day when I don’t think about this man. Sabine was touched before us and the fate is that instead of becoming general for the army, it became a perfect general for all those who wanted to leave for the adventure. For people like me who came from the clinical universe of the track, clean, quite prepared, engine warmed, etc… Magic. Each of us was able to show himself to himself. Africa. The poorest of us, here, is another nabab compared to the people of over there. You know Maggy Barankitsé? She received the Nobel award from the children. During the war in Burundi, during a massacre, she was with two children in her arms, orphans of a friend. Ten years later, she has five thousand of them in charge. Five thousand, you understand? Tutsi and Hutus mixed. That is called the Shalom house. Her generosity, her intelligence… She lives the death in everyday life, the AIDS, etc… And she laughs all the time. Whom are we regarding to people like that? I am sought to be in the committee of honor of such or such thing… No interest. The interest is in the time which we give it personally and in the anonymity. Without having to benefit from a ego’s satisfaction. Let us try to be generous, attentive, to listen to, to speak, all the things which I didn’t make (laught). It is an interview to be published in The Cross, I am going to make you cry!

You find the car-racing pointless today. Don’t you believe that the driver holds after all a role ? From release to the violence, for example.
Or the dream part. Nine persons on ten don’t have the life about which they dream. Everybody has his constraints. Then, a certain number of persons are making others dreaming. People say it to me for me, and it is very touching. Me, Eddy Merckx made me dreaming. Or Barry Sheene. Today, when I see Valentino Rossi ridding as he does, to win the races which he wins… And there are things which he doesn’t make because he has meetings with friends! It is him. That makes dreaming.

What is your best drive? Matra F2, Ferrari F1, Cortina Lotus at your debuts, proto of Le Mans…
I made beautiful races, but there is one about which I can say that I sublimated there. It is Le Mans 1977, with the Porsche 936. I have never drove certainly so well in my whole life. Incredible! I also sublimated the others! The mechanics, the other drivers, everything. And we transformed a collapse race into a victory. I did double relays, during the night, in the fog, in the rain. I was at the absolute limit of the circuit, the car, the conditions… I made such distances on the Renault armada which was comfortably settled that nobody believed in it. I stopped in the pits, Barth was ready:
“You want to change ?
– I’ll stay in.“
And you become the boss, nobody dare to tell you a word. Ask the Porsche engineers, they have never lived the similar thing. Me neither! We turned around Renault and they were not one-armed persons : Pironi, Jaussaud, etc.

Almost a mystic moment.
It is the grace! It is for that that I stopped racing. To rest my guardian angel (laught). When Senna, with a certain innocence, began to speak about his faiths, about his respect for the gift which he received every day to drive well, to win, at the beginning, one looked at him with a smile, one took him for a visionary. Today, that does not any more lend to laugh.

Le Mans, six victories, it’s something !
I had good cars and good team members. The success is that too. Bell, Redman, Mass… We drove well, we made it great. I knew that when Bell handed me the car, it was intact, he knew when I handed it to him that it would not be “rotten“. We understood each other in four words: “At such place, attention“. Total osmosis. He is indeed a great guy, with beautiful thought. I ran with people intellectually elegant. It is necessary to privilege them. Those who are making sh.., it’s necessary to remove them, we have no time to lose. There are so many nice people although we shall never know!