Olivier Panis

Olivier Jean Denis Marie Panis (born 2 September 1966) is a French former racing driver.

He won a championship in Formula Renault in 1989 and finished second in French Formula 3 in 1991.

He eventually found himself in Formula 3000, and he won the series' championship there in 1993.

The 27-year-old Panis earned an F1 drive in 1994 for the French-based Ligier team.

He made his debut at Brazil, finishing eleventh.

He earned another surprise second place at the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, in spite of being two laps behind the leader Damon Hill, and he also added a handful of fourths to his resume, giving him an 8th-place finish in the championship.

Panis raced in Formula One for ten seasons, earning his first and only win at the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix for the Ligier team.

Panis' manager has been Didier Coton.

He is the father of racing driver Aurélien Panis.

Born in Oullins, Lyon, Panis, like many Formula 1 racing drivers, raced karts early in his career.

After graduating from karts, Olivier raced several years in a number of "junior" series before racing in French Formula 3.

Panis took a shock win in the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix.

At the 1997 Canadian Grand Prix, he broke both legs in a high-speed accident, causing him to miss the next seven races of the season.

His place in the team was taken by Jarno Trulli, until he returned for the final three races of the season.

He achieved sixth place at Luxembourg and appeared to show that he had fully recovered from his accident, as he drove as well as he had done before the crash.

However, his full potential was restricted by the pins which remained in his legs, a legacy of the surgery following his crash in 1997.

1998 would prove to be a difficult season for Panis.

He failed to score a single point for the Prost team, primarily due to a poor quality car.

The highlight of the season was a ninth-place finish in Australia, although he also ran strongly at the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix until car failure intervened.

An indicator of the team's problems in 1998 was the solitary point scored by Panis' team-mate Jarno Trulli at Spa-Francorchamps.

The following year saw an improvement for the partnership.

A stronger car, and unusual circumstances, saw an irregular return to form for the Frenchman.

After a troubled race he still claimed 6th in Brazil, a feat he repeated at Hockenheim.

He began to qualify much more strongly, with a third place in France, fifth at the Nurburgring, and sixth at Suzuka, where he spent the first stages of the race in third.

Despite the signs of a return to form in 1999, strategical errors and misfortune restricted his points tally.

He earned a surprise second place that season at Hockenheim ahead of teammate Éric Bernard, and finished 11th in the standings for the marque.

He finished every race except France.

He was however disqualified in Portugal for illegal skid block wear.

Starting 14th on a wet track, Panis passed other rivals on the narrow circuit, including Martin Brundle, Mika Häkkinen and Johnny Herbert, and timed his change onto slick tyres perfectly.

He overtook Eddie Irvine at the Lowes Hairpin and was running in third place before the Williams-Renault of Damon Hill and Benetton-Renault of Jean Alesi both hit terminal technical difficulties.

One of only 3 cars to finish the race, (Brits David Coulthard and Johnny Herbert being the other two) Panis held off a late charge from Coulthard to win.

The race finished on 75 of the 78 scheduled laps due to the two-hour time limit being reached.

Panis' victory was the Ligier team's first victory in 15 years (and their last), and it was the first French victory in a French car at Monaco in 66 years.

However, it was the only highlight to his season, and he otherwise failed to do any better than 5th place in Hungary.

Panis had the potential for a big season in while driving for Alain Prost, who had purchased Ligier.

On Bridgestone tyres, he took the tyre company's first podium at Brazil.

He was running second in Argentina before retirement.

After 6 races, he stood third in the championship thanks to another podium finish with second place in Spain.

A win could have been possible in that race had he not been held up lapping backmarkers for seven laps, losing him a total of 6 seconds to leader Jacques Villeneuve.

Despite missing half of the year, he still managed 9th in the championship with 16 points.