Guy Ligier

Guy Ligier (12 July 1930 to 23 August 2015) was a French racing driver and team owner who also played rugby, worked as a butcher and built a construction business. Orphaned at seven, he became a French rowing champion in 1947, founded the public works company Ligier Travaux Publics in Vichy in the early 1960s and won the French 500cc motorcycle championship in 1959 and 1960. He raced Porsche and Ford GT40 sports cars and scored his single Formula One championship point in 1967, then stopped racing after the death of his friend and partner Jo Schlesser in 1968. That year he established Ligier Cars to build his own sports-racing cars, beginning with the JS1, and in 1976 he formed Equipe Ligier after buying the assets of Equipe Matra Sports; the team contested 326 Grands Prix and won nine, the last at Monaco in 1996 with Olivier Panis. He sold the team in 1992.