Héctor Alonso Rebaque (born 5 February 1956 in Mexico City) is a former racing driver from Mexico.
He participated in 58 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 5 June 1977. He scored a total of 13 championship points. He also ran his own Formula One team, Rebaque, in 1978 and 1979; usually he raced Lotuses but for the last three races in 1979 he fielded his own car designed by Penske which he called the HR100.
In the middle of 1980, he substituted for Ricardo Zunino as team mate to Nelson Piquet at Brabham, where he stayed throughout the 1981 season achieving his best Formula One results, finishing 10th in the Championship.
He also drove in the 1982 CART IndyCar season for Forsythe Racing including the 1982 Indianapolis 500 where he finished 13th after a pit fire on lap 151. He won his final CART race, which was the first one held at Road America. However, he was injured a week later in a testing crash at the Milwaukee Mile and decided to return to road racing as he felt oval racing was too dangerous. Info from Wiki
Bio Be Stephen Latham
Hector Alonso Rebaque was born in Mexico City on the 5th February 1956 and would go on to participate in 58 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix plus also ran his own Rebaque F1 team in 1978 and 1979. His father Hector was in the construction business plus was a prominent architect and had competed on both tracks and rallies in the 1950s and 1960s. He won a 24 Hours of Mexico Rally plus drove the North American Racing Team Ferrari 275GTB/C in 1967’s Sebring 12 Hours; the car was partially sponsored by Pedro Rodriguez, who was a close friend.
After retiring in the late Sixties he formed Team Rebaque, which was used to further his son’s career, and in 1971 entered a 15-year old Hector for a few local races and rallies. He was teamed with Guillermo Rojas for a number of races in 1972, retiring the Brumos Porsche 914 from the Daytona 6 Hours though a month later they did finish at the Sebring 12 Hours. In the following week they took an eighth place finish in the Daytona 3 Hours with a Bozzani 914 and were tenth in September with a Peter Gregg entered Porsche at the Watkins Glen 500km. There were further drives with G.Rojas in a Porsche 911 Carrera the following year, finishing twelfth in the Daytona 3 Hours and they were joined by Fred van Beuren Jr. to contest the Daytona 24 Hours with a John Buffum Ford Escort RS 1600 in the touring class. Continuing with G.Rojas and F.van Beuren Jr. in 1974 he made his Le Mans 24 Hours debut with a Rebaque Rojas Racing Team 911 Carrera RSR though they retired after 46 laps. Shortly after this they were twelfth at a Zeltweg 1000km round and in October won the Mexico 1000km in a car entered by his father. Between these races, he switched to an Ecurie Ecosse Chevron B23 in September for the 1000km round at Brands Hatch but he and Richard Robarts retired due to overheating. Hector started his single-seater racing that year and drove a Chevron B27 in a number of British Formula Atlantic rounds and results with Fred Opert’s team included fifth at Silverstone, ninth at Brands Hatch, tenth at Snetterton and Thruxton and sixth and fourteenth at Oulton Park. In 1975 he reunited with Rojas and van Beuren Jr. for the Daytona 24 Hours and they were ninth with the 911 Carrera RSR entered by his father. Continuing with Fred Opert Racing, in the five F2 races contested he took points at Thruxton plus combined this with drives for them in the Players CASC Formula Atlantic Championship in Canada. The Canadian series was run over 6 rounds and he was tenth and sixth at Edmonton and Mosport plus had a fifth place result in a non championship event at Trois Rivieres. The following year saw him back in Formula Atlantic though he was now in Haas Racing’s Lola T460 for the American and Canadian Championships. The six round CASC Formula Atlantic Players Championship saw him eleventh at Westwood, eighth at Mont-Tremblant, fifth at Atlantic Park and fourteenth in the final event at Mosport while he was ninth on his return to the non championship Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres. He ended the season’s rankings in joint fourteenth place with Marcel Talbot, with both drivers on 27 points. As with the Canadian series, the IMSA Formula Atlantic Players Championship was contested over 6 rounds and Hector finished ninth in the rankings, taking 16 points with sixth and fourth place finishes at Laguna Seca and Road Atlanta.
Then in 1977 came the leap into Formula One when Hesketh ran a third car for him for six races. He failed to qualify the 308E in Belgium, Sweden and France though made his F1 debut in Germany but retired on lap 20 with battery failure and did not qualify for the following races at the Osterriechring and Zandvoort. Keen to stay in F1 but with no drives on offer, Hector decided to start his own team for 1978 and agreed a deal with Team Lotus to buy their Type 78 model. Having such very little experience it proved a difficult year. Although he did not qualify for the season opener in Argentina, he qualified twenty second for the following race in Brazil but retired through driver fatigue. Kyalami saw another twenty second place qualifying position but he completed the distance and came home tenth. The rest of the season would see a mixture of retirements and non qualifications though in the races he finished he was twelfth in Sweden and eleventh at Zandvoort while at Hockenheim he qualified his Team Rebaque Lotus inside the top twenty and took the flag in sixth place to score a point. Continuing the deal with Colin Chapman for the following season he purchased their Lotus 79 though during the year commissioned Penske to build him his own car, the Rebaque HR100, which was designed and built at Penske’s British base in Poole. Unfortunately the season brought further disappointment and besides a non qualification in Brazil there were retirements due to an accident in the US GP West and mechanical issues at Argentina, South Africa, Spain and Belgium. He did not attend Monaco though the following races would see his first finish, with twelfth place in France, then ninth in Great Britain. Germany and Austria saw a retirement and non qualification but ironically, in what would be the last outing in the 79 he took a season best seventh at Zandvoort. Although the Rebaque car finally appeared for the final three Grands Prix it had been unveiled at Zandvoort in August 1979 but it wasn’t complete and was simply displayed in the paddock. In its first race at the Italian GP at Monza the HR100 suffered teething problems and failed to qualify. He started twenty second on the grid at Canada and ran very well in the early laps, making up four places, but then spent time in the pits and retired after 26 laps with a broken engine mount. The last race of the season was at Watkins Glen, where the first practice session was rained off and he failed to qualify in the second session. The HR100 would only enter three races as the team closed down and quit F1 at the end of the year. Speaking about his time with his own organisation, he told how “after two years we were still having lots of problems. It was complicated for me trying to drive and trying to keep the team together. We were fighting against all sorts of problems, especially at that time, with pre-qualifying and the special Q-tyres the other teams were getting. We also had to try to keep our cars as similar as possible to the ones from the factory. It was very complicated. We had sponsors… and I feel that they weren’t getting what they paid for. So it was then we decided to build our own car. We had promises from everybody to help us with tyres, and this and that, if we became a constructor, but it didn’t happen. Instead of having fun, and really enjoying what we were doing it was really tough. I thought it wasn’t fair to our sponsors to keep doing this, so I decided to quit with the team.”
With his own-car drive now gone he joined the Parmalat Brabham team in the middle of 1980, replacing Ricardo Zunino as team mate to Nelson Piquet from the British GP onwards. His first appearance in the BT49 in July at Brands Hatch saw him take the flag in seventh place but despite tenth and sixth place finishes in Austria and Canada he retired at Hockenheim, Zandvoort and Imola. He stayed with Brabham for the following season and, in what would be his last year in F1, achieved his best results and finished 10th in the Championship with 11 points. He retired in the first two rounds, through an accident in the US GP West and spun off in Brazil but mechanical failure in Argentina ruined what could have been a podium result. He had driven smoothly and tidily in qualifying to start in the top six and by lap seven was running fourth, behind Nelson Piquet, Carlos Reutemann and Alain Prost. Eventually he overtook Reutemann on lap 15 and began to pull away but his run in second place behind his team mate came to an end on lap 33, when a rotor arm within the distributor broke and his BT49C coasted to a halt out on the circuit. He followed this with a career best fourth place at San Marino after a neat and tidy drive though then had retirements due to an accident in Belgium and gearbox problems in Spain. The Monaco GP took place between the Belgium and Spain races but with so many cars keen to enter the prestigious race, the circuit’s congested nature meant there would only be 20 cars allowed in the race as opposed to the usual 24. There was a pre-qualifying session on the Thursday ahead of the usual qualifying session in order to downsize the field but after final qualifying, despite Piquet putting his Brabham on pole position, Hector was out of the race after failing to qualify, along with the two Fittipaldis, a Ligier and the two Osellas. However there were three consecutive finishes in the summer with ninth in France, fifth at Britain and a strong showing at Germany produced a fourth place. His race in Austria ended due to engine problem but he followed this with a further fourth place at Zandvoort in late August. Monza proved particularly frustrating, as when the field left the grid to start the race, ignition problems caused his Brabham to fail on him and it was wheeled off the grid into the pit lane. The season’s two final races saw him spin off in Canada and Las Vegas ended due to a sticking throttle. Hector wasn’t retained for the following season, with Riccardo Patrese coming into the team, and this marked the end of his F1 adventure. Jackie Oliver offered him a seat at Arrows but he decided to try Indycar and 1982 saw him driving a March 82C for Forsythe Racing. He only raced at Atlanta, Cleveland, Michigan and Riverside and after starting fifteenth at Indianapolis, came home in thirteenth place, after a pit fire on lap 151. However, he scored an upset victory over Al Unser, Bobby Rahal and Rick Mears at the Road America 200, achieving his greatest international win when Al Unser ran out of fuel on the last lap. Unfortunately he was injured a week later in a testing crash at Milwaukee and decided not to continue CART racing after this.
He made a final F1 appearance with Brabham in 1983’s non-championship Race of Champions. Only thirteen cars were entered for the event as many teams were at a scheduled F1 tyre test at Paul Ricard in preparation for the following week’s French GP. Brabham elected not to use regular drivers Nelson Piquet or Riccardo Patrese, hence Hector’s presence in the car, though he retired on lap 23 with tyre and suspension problems.
After retiring from racing Hector worked in architecture and became involved in real estate development. He designed, built and then ran hotels but eventually sold them to a big hotel group and concentrated on designing and building apartments in Mexico, at which he was very successful. As a reminder of his grand prix racing he keeps his Rebaque HR100 mounted in the sitting room of his house! He completed a few demonstration laps at the 1986 Mexican GP then in 2002 made a rare appearance at a CART event to mark the 20th anniversary of his CART win. He served as the Grand Marshal for the Road America Motorola 220 at Elkhart Lake, plus was there to show support for the Mexican drivers competing in the event. In 2020, the March 82C raced by Hector, in which he took his IndyCar victory in 1982, was auctioned for charity at a Mecum Indy Auction on behalf of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (MSHFA). After Hector’s time with the car it was purchased at the end of the season by McLaren Engines Inc. in Michigan, to serve as a test bed for the development of the 209 cubic inch ‘stock block’ Buick V6 turbo engine that would debut at the Indianapolis 500 in 1984. Later in the decade it was used as a show car for Buick’s later Indy 500 efforts and then donated to the MSHFA in the early 1990s where it had been on static display. The car at the auction featured a King Motorsports Mac Tools livery (similar to the one raced in an Indy 500 by Jim Crawford) and all proceeds would go to benefit the MSHFA, which preserves the history of the sport and honours motor racing’s ‘Heroes of Horsepower’.
Hector Rebaque – Not so speedy Gonzales – from 
