Bertrand Gachot (born 23 December 1962) is a French former racing driver. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
At Spa in 1991, Eddie Jordan took a chance on a young driver named Michael Schumacher, placing him alongside Andrea de Cesaris in his team for the Belgian GP. Despite his race lasting less than a lap, it saw the launch of Michael’s amazing career, which had inadvertently been caused by another driver’s fateful taxi ride in London.
The son of a French European Commission official in Luxembourg, Bertrand Gachot started in karts and eventually attended the famous Winfield School at Paul Ricard. Winners of the school’s ‘Volant Elf’ (fastest driver) received financial help towards Formula Renault, though Eric Bernard beat him and Jean Alesi to it.
Despite being at university, he dropped out of his course to compete in Formula Ford 1600 in 1984 He was third in that year’s FFord Festival at Brands Hatch and won the 1985 RAC British FF1600 Championship with Pacific Racing’s Van Diemen RF85. Staying with the team, he moved up to FF2000 and six victories in 1986 saw him win the British title ahead of Mark Blundell. Mark said he had some great battles with epic drivers during his FFord racing and Bertrand was his biggest rival. There were a lot of flare-ups but they were some of the greatest days of racing he had and he felt fights like that contributed to it being special. At Castle Combe there was an incident with Bertrand when he ended up on the wet grass and barely missed a marshal’s post. When he wanted to discuss it with him afterwards Bertrand refused to take his helmet off but his visor was open enough for Mark to get his knuckles through it!
With backing from Marlboro, he graduated to British F3 with West Surrey Racing and after another no holds barred battle, he took 3 victories and finished second to Johnny Herbert in the Championship. He then drove a Spirit-TOM’s Reynard 88D-Cosworth in 1988’s F3000 Championship, taking second place finishes at Vallelunga and Silverstone (where he started from pole).
Then came Formula 1 when he was signed by the Moneytron sponsored Onyx team and he raced alongside Stefan Johansson. However, the team had to go through pre-qualifying and his first grid appearance came in France, where he started eleventh (two places ahead of his team mate) and was running in the points until battery problems dropped him back to finish thirteenth. Despite qualifying for four of the next five events, he was replaced by JJ Lehto after the Italian Grand Prix. After sitting out the next two races without a drive, Bertrand found a race seat for the final two races with Rial but the team were struggling and eventually folded over the winter.
1990 saw a switch to Coloni and he was the team’s sole entry, racing their Subaru powered C3B. Unfortunately the team never got through pre-qualifying and Subaru withdrew after the British GP. However, despite changing to a Cosworth engine, and the withdrawal of Onyx promoting him to the main qualifying sessions, the team still struggled and failed to make the grid all season.
In spite of this, he was still highly regarded and signed for the new 7-Up sponsored Jordan GP team. Using Ford HB engines, the Gary Anderson-designed 191 was competitive, and after some early problems became a regular points-scorer. He finished fifth in Canada, sixth in the German and British races plus achieved the fastest lap in Hungary and received praise for his performances. After the frustrations of the previous seasons, this year saw him only retire from three out of ten races and the team ran in the top 6 of the Constructor’s title all season, and would eventually finish fifth. Things were looking good for him during that year, added to which he won at Le Mans in a Mazda with Johnny Herbert and Volker Weidler, but then came the court case in the UK.
Whilst in London, he was involved in a minor car accident with a taxi and during an altercation with its driver, Bertrand sprayed him with CS gas. The spray was illegal in Britain and he was initially sentenced to six-months at Brixton Prison, which prompted a campaign of support, involving flags, T-shirts worn by members of the public and drivers, plus graffiti on parts of the Spa track during the Belgian Grand Prix. At Spa, besides the debut of Michael Schumacher, team mate A.De Cesaris ran second for much of the GP until the car failed in the closing laps. He was released on appeal and returned to F1 after two months, though had missed four Grands Prix but after travelling to Suzuka he was unable to retake his drive with the team. He later replaced the injured Eric Bernard at Larrousse for the Australian GP but though he failed to qualify the unfamiliar car the team were impressed enough to sign him for the following season. However it would be a disappointing time for the Lamborghini powered Larousse team, suffering reliability and financial problems throughout the season. He and Ukyo Katayama had six classified finishes between them and Bertrand achieved the team’s only point of the year with sixth at Monaco. Returning to Le Mans, he finished fourth for Mazda, alongside J.Herbert, V.Weidler and M.Sandro Sala.
With no F1 drive in 1993 he had a one off race for Dick Simon Racing in CART, finishing twelfth at Toronto, and raced in Japanese touring car for Honda. In 1994 a new team entered F1, and he signed to drive for Keith Wiggins’s Pacific squad as number one alongside Paul Belmondo for the season. Bertrand had had success with Pacific, having won his British FFord title with them some years before, and became a shareholder in the team. Frustratingly, he was only able to qualify for five races and retired from all of them.
During the off-season, the Lotus team folded and they merged with Pacific for the following season. Bertrand remained with them but the team’s finances were tight, and he stood down mid-season so that Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Délétraz could take his seat and bring in finance. They intended running Katsumi Yamamoto at Aida and Suzuki, but he was not granted a superlicence and Bertrand retook the seat. At the season’s final race, in Australia, test driver Oliver Gavin was supposed to race but he was also refused a superlicence and Bertrand was back into the car and equalled the team’s best result with eighth place. Unfortunately this would be his final Grand Prix as Pacific folded at the end of the season.
Following this he formed his own sports car team and entered a Welter Racing LM94 (with factory support and engine from South Korean company SsangYong) in 1996’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. But though the car took part in the pre-qualifying session it did not qualify for the race. Later in the season it was entered in a four hour race held at the Le Mans Bugatti circuit, the Coupes d’Automne Automobile Club de l’Ouest, where it qualified third but did not finish the race. Bertrand later drove in sports car and GT races for a variety of manufacturers and privateers but had decided to move into business.
He began investing in various businesses and in 1997 signed a distribution agreement with Hype Energy to introduce their energy drinks to France. Hype Energy had started in 1994, and had been involved in motorsport in its early years, sponsoring Arrows F1 and then Benetton and Williams plus a NASCAR team and several motorbike teams. By 2000 Bertrand had taken a leadership role within the company and it continued to grow. In 2014 they sponsored driver Andre Lotterer and the following year were involved with Force India; ironically, they had previously been Bertrand’s old team, Jordan. 2016 saw them become involved with the video game industry, sponsoring European leading eSports organisation Epsilon eSports. In 2018, they were the title sponsor of Sahara Force India’s F1 eSports Organisation, Hype Energy eForce India. Continuing to move the brand into new markets, by 2017 it had been pushing into the music industry and Hype Energy is now present in more than 40 countries across the world.
Bertrand Gachot – The driver that changed the face of 90s Grand Prix racing… and beyond – from 
