Latest news with #ThierryBoutsen
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mirror
Belgian GP star who raced against Michael Schumacher quit F1 to become aircraft dealer
Thierry Boutsen competed in Formula One for a decade, racing against some of the greatest ever drivers in the sport, but has since made a fortune away from the track Thierry Boutsen once raced alongside Formula One icons, but he is now a multimillionaire aircraft seller. The Belgian competed in F1 between 1983 and 1993, sharing the track in his final years with the likes of Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen, Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle. He raced for teams such as Arrows, Benetton, Williams, Ligier and Jordan across 164 Grands Prix. Boutsen claimed 15 podium finishes and even beat the legendary Senna on his way to achieving three race wins. Now, aged 68, Boutsen's post-racing career as a businessman in the aviation industry has proven even more successful. Over the past 25 years, the Monaco-based former racer has amassed a fortune selling business jets. In a 2020 interview with Monaco Life, Boutsen explained how his passion for aviation began: 'I honestly had no idea that private jets existed until I was 18-years-old. 'A family friend was CEO at Abelag (a private jet operator) in Brussels and he invited me to work there as a mechanic in the aircraft maintenance department. I enjoyed every minute of it – discovering these extraordinary flying machines. 'I was even invited on board to do a post maintenance test flight. That is when I promised myself, should I one day have earned enough money, I would buy and fly my own plane. I had to wait 12 years for that. Since then, flying has been a passion, like driving race cars.' He went on to say: 'I had no intention of starting a company in the beginning. I was always flying my own plane from racing event to racing event, or marketing event to marketing event, for private or business purposes. 'Then I had a request in 1997 from a colleague of mine, former F1 driver Heinz Harald Frentzen, who wanted to buy the same plane I was using at the time but he didn't know how to get it or how to complete the paper work etc. So, I said I would do it for him, and he ended up being my first customer. 'Immediately afterwards, I had a request from Keke Rosberg to buy a similar airplane for him; then I had to buy one for Mika Hakkinen, and then Michael Schumacher came to me and said he wanted to sell his Challenger. I did about 10 transactions, just in the racing world. I was doing the job as if it was for me – with a lot of passion, dedication and attention to detail. People loved it. 'So, we decided to go further and explore Europe. My wife Daniela and I started Boutsen Aviation: she was in charge of the marketing and presentation and I was in charge of the commercial side. 'At the end of 2000 we had our first employee, Dominique Trinquet – who is still with us today and is now president of the company. We have nine people working with us here in Monaco, and we have representatives in India, Russia, northern Europe, eastern Europe and Switzerland.' Reflecting on his business achievements, he added: "We have sold 385 planes to date, and every time we make a sale, we celebrate it as a success for the whole team. Our team in aviation is like a racing team – everyone is working together to get the job done and using their capabilities to 100 per cent, or sometimes even more. It will be a very important milestone when we get to 400, but it is due to the hard work of everybody of the company." 'We have 16 planes for sale on an exclusive basis. We sell all types of business jets, but 70 to 80 per cent of our planes are transatlantic, like Challengers, Gulfstreams, Falcons… big planes that can travel from Nice to Los Angeles, for instance. We also sell biz-liners like the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) and Airbus Corporate Jet (ACJ). 'These planes used to sell for between 20 and 35 million. Today, it's between 15 and 25 million for exactly the same airplane. This is because the inventory has increased. 'During lockdown, some people wanted to get rid of their planes because they had no need for them. A plane is expensive to buy and maintain, so if you have one that just sits in a hangar for six months, it's not worth it.' He also runs three other businesses: Boutsen Design, providing decoration services for business jets, superyachts and residences; Boutsen Classic Cars, which sources and sells premium classic road and race cars; and Boutsen Racing Team, which competes all over the world.
The Guardian
25-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Guardian
‘I lived my passion': how Christine Beckers and a group of intrepid female drivers blazed a trail in 1970s Monaco
Monaco's place in Formula One history has long since been established but two little-known races from the principality 51 years ago remain etched in the memory of those who took part, when women blazing a trail in the male-dominated motor racing world took to the track in Monte Carlo. Christine Beckers competed in the first Grand Prix Monte-Carlo Féminin on 26 May 1974 and now, at 81 is as irrepressibly enthused about racing as she was when she fell in love with the sport as a teenager. 'I lived my passion,' she says. 'There's no better way to live. Driving, I always felt that's what I like the most in life. That's where I'm happy. That's where I forget everything else. Only having the best time.' It is a philosophy she has long followed, determined not to be constrained by the attitude toward her gender of the time. 'I have to admit that I think it helped me,' she says. 'Because I was quite a nice girl, good looking, smiling, a bit crazy. So everybody was laughing at me but saying: 'Why not? Why not? She's so crazy, she could do something.'' She did. The Belgian has embraced the sport her entire life. Last year she became the oldest driver to have taken to the wheel of an F1 car, the 1985 Arrows A8 lent to her by her compatriot Thierry Boutsen, which she drove at Zolder. She also raced competitively at Spa-Francorchamps in the same model of Alfa Romeo she had previously driven 50 years before. After all this time she still vividly remembers the moment the sport captured her. 'I was 14 and in 1958 my father took my brother and me to Francorchamps to see the Formula One Grand Prix I have a picture of me in a racing car that day and you can see in my eyes that I really decided I want to do that,' she says. 'So I told everybody I was going to be a Formula One driver. I was just looking at the car and the sound of the motors and the atmosphere. I even liked the special oil they were using at that time and later on I wanted to do a perfume with it.' But she also admits it was far from straightforward to even begin to achieve the dream. 'I was very bad at learning to drive. Nobody wants to believe that, but I was very bad. All the family had to try together because there were no lessons at that time,' she recalls, with a hearty chuckle. 'Then at 18 I quit school because at mathematics I was awful. So my father was very angry with me. He was crazy about a girl saying she wanted to be a racing driver and not having good results at school. But I never doubted, I really was sure I was going to be a very good racing driver.' Her conversation as we discuss race in Monaco is peppered with the enthusiastic laughter of a competitor never happier than when discussing the sport they love. While the races she competed in at Monaco have previously been barely a footnote in racing history, the story of the 1974 and 1975 Ladies' Monte-Carlo Grands Prix are among those collected in a new book, 100 Years of Women: Motorsport & Monaco. The only women-specific support races at the Monaco GP were held before the main event and run over 15 laps. Being the 1970s the principality's paper ran a picture of the drivers with the headline 'Ces jolies filles demain sur le circuit pour le Premier Grand Prix Monte-Carlo Prix féminin' which roughly translates as 'These pretty girls will be on the circuit tomorrow for the First Ladies' Monte Carlo Grand Prix'. For the participants, who were racers as opposed to jolie filles, it was an important moment. 'All the girls were invited from everywhere in the world,' says Beckers. 'Monaco is always very special, it's like a dream. I knew that somebody who wins at Monaco is somebody very special. It was fantastic for me, even if it was a very small car and not many horsepower, I didn't mind, because not many people can say: 'I've been racing in Monaco.'' The car was but a moderately souped-up version of the road-going Renault 5 and, as the press noted at the time, it was 'comical' to have drivers at the top of their game in a ride designed for tootling around town. Beckers was a five-time Belgian women's national champion at this point and that year she would also set a record alongside her teammate Yvette Fontaine as the first all-women team to win their class at the Le Mans 24 Hours. At the time she was also racing under the mononym 'Christine' – a rather amateur attempt to avoid her parents finding out– and while she cared little for the cars, she loved the chance to race on the streets of Monte Carlo. 'When you are racing, you are not really interested in the others. You are interested in who you can beat,' she says. 'When you have your helmet on, you don't know if it's a girl or a man. You want to be first. So you are in a sort of other world. I knew the track, I've been walking on it; I was not afraid at all because the car was very slow. I was used to driving faster cars. But as it was in Monaco, it was not important.' Beckers attended the traditional pre-race reception with Prince Rainier and Princess Grace and notes, with no little glee, the actor Elizabeth Taylor, too. However, in terms of the race she remains aggrieved that her 'sort of friend' Marie-Claude Beaumont, with whom she had raced in rallies, proved ruthless. The pair were on the front row of the grid in 1974. Beckers believed they had made an agreement to enter the first corner together but says Beaumont cut across her and took the lead, from which there was no chance of a comeback. 'I had to follow her during the whole race and I finished second and that was awful,' she says. The American driver Paula Murphy was also somewhat disarmed but in her case by the formal reception. 'I kind of walk around the fringe of the room, and I'm gawking, and finally I sit down in a chair,' Murphy recalled in 1976. 'The butler came over with a big silver tray. So, I had a champagne and smoked a cigarette. I thought: 'Well, I've had my glass of champagne, and I've met them all.'' So she left. 'The next day Jackie Stewart got into the car and said: 'Princess Grace was worried about you last night and she wanted to know what happened to you.' Well, I thought it was a cocktail party – at least that's what the man at the hotel desk had interpreted to me – and it turned out it was a dinner, and I had left before dinner.' Beckers was invited to the race again in 1975 but was unable to compete because her car rolled in a pre-race practice. She went on to drive the Le Mans 24 four times, including in 1976 alongside Henri Pescarolo and Jean-Pierre Beltoise for the highly respected Inaltéra team and a year later for the same team she partnered with Lella Lombardi, still the only woman to score an F1 championship point, to take 11th in the vingt-quatre, which remains the highest finishing position for a female driver squad. She was the first woman to compete in the Paris-Dakar rally, drove the Daytona 24 Hours twice and competed at Daytona in Nascar. It has been an extraordinary journey and one she has no intention of ending any time soon. 'I'm so happy to live my dream. In Monaco I was realising every minute of it.I was saying to myself: 'Here I am.' The people who were saying I could never do it, well, you see, here I am.'
