Richard Dallest

15/2/1951

Record updated 15-Feb-07

Richard Dallest is a French racing driver who won the Volant Elf competition but despite going on to win the French Formula 2 Championship on two occasions he was never offered an F1 drive.

Richard Dallest is a French racing driver who maybe should have had a drive in F1. He started out by winning the Volant Elf competition at the Michael Knight's French Winfield Racing School in 1974. Pironi had asked Elf if he could enter the Challenge de Formule Renault Europe with his own team in 1974. They agreed to this and with a change of engine tuner, Didier won the championship with Dallest, his team mate coming 4th.

In 1975 Richard Dallest finished 6th in the Championship on 83 points and in 1976 he was 5th with 88 points.

In 1977 Richard Dallest gave Henri Julien (AGS) his best result in Formula Renault with four second places and fourth in the Formule Super Renault series. Julien decided to move up to Formula 2 with Dallest in 1978 and in 1980 the combination won two European Championship races at Pau and at Zandvoort and the French Formula 2 Championship.

Dallest stayed on in 1981 winning the French Formula 2 Championship again. However the organisation turned out to be disastrous and for the 1982 season the team hired Philippe Streiff and Pascal Fabre.

Apparently Dallest was a bit of a practical joker and once locked Prost in his hotel room, five floors up, just before the start of a race in 1979. Prost had to batter his way out.

AGS decided that in 1986 it would enter Grand Prix racing but supplied the F3000 Danielson team with an GS JH20B chassis which was run with limited success for Dallest. He scored three points in the F3000 championship with a fourth place at Pau.

A talented driver, not only did he make the AGS F2 cars look good, he even managed to make the Merzario and Merzario Marches look good on occasion. Never considered for a F1 drive by any of the teams, he now works at the AGS racing school, alongside Patrick Gaillard (Whose birthday is two days before Richard's), as a racing instructor.



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