19/8/1954
Record updated 19-Aug-21
A latecomer to motorsport Larrauri took up Karting at the age of 20. Mainly a pretty decent Sports Car driver he had a brief and unrewarding two years in F1 with EuroBrun.
Oscar Rubén Larrauri took up local karting in the Santa Fe region of Argentina in 1974 at the ripe old age of 20. He turned out to be quite quick winning the local championship in 1976, 1977 and 1979. In 1976 he also won the provincial champion.
In 1979 along side his karting he enter Argentine F3 with encouragement from Juan Manuel Fangio. He realised that to move into professional motorsports he would have to go to Europe and in 1980 he did just that, entering the European Championship. He struggled to start with in the more competetive series, however when joined the Pavanello Euroracing F3 team in 1982 things looked up. That year he won seven races, taking the European championship.
With Fangio's support, Oscar was being hailed as the next great Argentine racing driver. Fangio had secured a Ferrari testing contract for 1983 but a poor season of Formula 2 liaison with Minardi but a brake on his single seater aspirations.
Larrauri thus that year he turned to sports cars with Brun Motorsport driving their Group C Porsche 935 sports cars where he remained until the early 1990s. He took a number of podium finishes and a win at Jerez with Jesus Pareja in 1986, as well as second place finishes at Watkins Glen and Le Mans.
In 1988 Walter Brun decided to turn his hand to F1 and 'Poppy', now aged 34, got his break into the top echelon of motorsport, making him the oldest driver to make his Grand Prix debut in modern times. But sadly it was not to be a happy experience trying to qualify uncompetetive machinery especially in the era of pre-qualifying.
By 1990 he was back plying his trade back in sports cars. In Italy, he drove a Jolly Club Ferrari 348 in the GT Supercar championship for the next two years. And at the end of 1991 he won the final round of the All-Japan GT championship in a Ferrari F40 to victory
In 1995 he raced in the Italian Superturismo series in a Jolly Club Alfa T155 and in 1996 he returned to race for the first time in a decade in his native Argentina taking back to back Super Touring titles in 1997 and '98 with a BMW 320i before retiring from competition to pursue a political career and run his cold storage business.
historicracing.com