Philippe Streiff (born 26 June 1955 – dead 23 Decembre 2022) is a former racing driver from France.
He participated in 55 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on October 21, 1984. He achieved one podium, and scored a total of 11 championship points. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
A late starter in motor racing, Philippe Streiff was 22 years old when he won the Volant Motul competition at Nogaro’s racing school at the end of 1977. He started racing the following year in Formula Renault and won his first race at the French GP meeting at Paul Ricard. After finishing fifth in the series he moved into European Formula 3 in a privately-entered Martini-Renault but after switching to a Toyota engine he became fully competitive. In 1980 he beat the Martini factory team at Zolder and then, racing in French F3 iwith an Ecurie Motul Nogaro Martini-Alfa Romeo he won the title in 1981.
Then came a graduation to Formula 2, joining Henri Julien’s AGS team and he was a frontrunner for the next three seasons. He finished in the top six in each year although took only one victory, at Brands Hatch in 1984. That year also saw his F1 debut at Estoril, racing a third works Renault RE50 alongside Derek Warwick and Patrick Tambay , though he retired with transmission problems.
In 1985 he drove for AGS in F3000 but midway through the season Ligier signed him to replace Andrea de Cesaris for the final few GPs, at Monza, Spa, Brands Hatch and Adelaide (where he finished third). However, in the Australian race he had attempted to overtake team-mate Jacques Laffite for second place but in doing so his front wheel axle was severely damaged. Fortunately, fourth placed Ivan Capelli was a lap down in his Tyrrell and despite only have three wheels firmly attached to the car, Philippe was able to limp the Ligier JS25 across the line, with its wheel bouncing up and down over the last lap. This would be a career best finish for him though one can imagine team boss Guy Ligier’s reaction to his cars colliding. The South African GP took place during those GPs but several teams, including Ligier, boycotted the race due to political issues over apartheid and he went to Tyrrell for this one race.
He signed for Tyrrell for 1986 and took seventh in the season’s opening race in Brazil while his best results during the year would be sixth in Britain and fifth in Australia. He stayed with them the next year, racing alongside Jonathan Palmer, and with the Ford powered car took sixth place in France and fourth in Germany.
From here he returned to AGS, which had moved into F1, and regularly qualified in the midfield. On a few occasions they challenged for a top-six position, particularly at Detroit and Montreal, which was a good performance considering that including Philippe, the team consisted of 12 personnel.
Sadly, in pre-season testing for 1989 he crashed heavily in Rio de Janeiro and suffered neck injuries which left him paralysed.
After Elio de Angelis’s fatal accident at Paul Ricard in spring 1986, Philippe had been immediately behind the Brabham BT55 when it left the track. After hearing the news on the car radio later that he had passed away from his injuries, he began to question his racing and considered retiring, especially for the sake of his family. However, he continued racing and tragically, almost three years later, came a pre-season test session at Jacarepagua. AGS were testing their new car and it was scheduled to be Philippe’s final day at the wheel as new team-mate Joachim Winkelhock would take over the following day.
Of the accident, many years later Philippe recounted “I remember leaving the pits and then just black, a void. The accident happened at the fast right-hand kink before the hairpin onto the back straight. There was no footage of the actual accident, just the aftermath, but I ended up rolling many times, tearing the engine, gearbox and all the wheels off. But, most importantly, the rollhoop of the car was gone too. The car was completely destroyed and I ended up over the guardrail.”
The top of the chassis, where the rollhoop mountings were fixed, was broken off at the base by the massive forces of the impacts with track, grass and barrier.
He sustained a broken shoulder and two fractured vertebrae in his neck, which sadly left him paralysed and quadriplegic. However, questions were later raised as to whether his injury was made worse by the following treatment there and aftercare. After the crash, the marshals righted the car, which caused rebounding energy on his head and neck and then pulled his helmet off. He was then removed from the cockpit and rested on the grass before an ambulance arrived.
Philippe stated “The people who reached me first were corner workers and they did what they thought was right, of course. But they were not medically trained people who worked to a procedure. Today, after an accident you cannot move the head and you must keep a casualty completely still and block any movement with special padded restraints. So what happened to me immediately after my accident ensured I would never walk again.”
The AGS mechanics had arrived at the scene but were denied access to where he was being treated but it was said they could see he was moving his arms and legs but it would be 30 minutes by the time the ambulance had taken him back to the paddock.
He was then out onto a medical helicopter bound for one of Rio’s top hospitals but “The pilot of the helicopter was from Sao Paulo and he didn’t know where the hospital was in Rio,” says Streiff. “He took over an hour to get near to the hospital. It was 22km away from the track!”
Unbelievably, his wife and physio arrived at the hospital before he did with the lost pilot initially landing on Copacabana beach among the sunbathers!
His wife liaised with Dr Gerard Saillant, a spinal surgery specialist and long-time acquaintance of theirs.
In a stroke of luck, one of the Rio doctors had studied under Dr.Saillant in Europe and they talked through an initial surgery over the phone. Five days after the accident he was transferred back to Europe and taken to the Institution des Invalides ‘but the damage had been done and was told that “the lack of care in Brazil after the accident had compounded the injuries.”
Back in France, Nicolas Sarkozy (at that time mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine) organised a police escort for the ambulance to rush him straight to the care unit. They had had to leave their two year old son Thibault in Brazil, an awful situation for him without his parents but “the AGS people were superb and looked after him well. Philippe Alliot, Alain Prost and Yannick Dalmas were very helpful, and Nelson Piquet offered his private plane at short notice, but we had to get a specialist medical one. But those offers of help will never be forgotten.”
Later, at Suzuka, all the drivers donated a large sum of money towards his care and medical bills. His life hung in the balance for many weeks and an emergency tracheotomy was performed to aid his breathing. On one occasion when he woke, he told one of the nurses “you have to get me out of here. I need to get to the Jacarepagua circuit for the Brazilian Grand Prix.” The nurse told him he was in France now but he still thought he was in Brazil, “I couldn’t take it all in. They had to get my rallying friend, Bertrand Balas, to make me realise I was in France. And you know what Bertrand did? He brought a TV into my room and we watched the San Marino GP with [Gabriele] Tarquini driving ‘my’ car. I was so confused because in my mind I had driven out of the pits with those new wheels just a few hours before.”
It took two full years for Philippe to perfect his breathing reflex and regain some movement of his shoulders and he only returned to his newly adapted home in 1992. The rehabilitation was hard, but he eventually established a successful business empire plus organised the annual Bercy karting event. In the first Bercy event in 1993, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna raced in it and it would be the last time they raced against each other. There was nearly a return to F1 as a team owner, in partnership with ORECA’s Hugues de Chaunac, with a proposal to buy the Ligier team in early 1994 but it never came to fruition. He later opened Streiff Kart, a karting centre in the north of Paris, ran a company which converts vehicles for disabled users and became the French importer for Gillet sports cars.
Gallery F1 F2/F3000 F3/F Renault Other
