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Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives (AGS) was a small French Formula One Constructor from 1986 through 1991 . They took part in various racing classes during more than 30 years. The team was founded by the French mechanic Henri Julien who ran a filling station - the "Garage de l´avenir" in a picturesque provincial village called Gonfaron. In the late 50s and early 60s, Julien regularly attended racing events in minor classes . He was a mediocre driver but showed some technical knowledge. Therefore he eventually changed his attraction to constructing racing cars. His first car, the AGS JH1, saw the light of day in 1969. It was a petite monoposto, dedicated to the "Fomule France". The car was designed by Juliens former apprentice, the Belgian mechanic Christian Vanderpleyn who had been with the garage (and the racing team) since the very late 1950s and who would continuously stay on until 1988! Soon, AGS went ahead and produced its own Formula 3 cars which were ambitious but not good enough to compete seriously with the state-of-art Martinis who dominated that series in the 1970s. Nevertheless, AGS took another step ahead in 1978 when the AGS team bravely started competing in the European Formula 2. Still, the car - by now the AGS JH15 - was self-penned (by Vanderpleyn), self-built and self-run. Formula 2 was a difficult task for the small team, racing 1978 and 1979 without scoring any championship points. The early 1980s were somewhat better. AGS was one of the few teams who ran own cars (Maurer, Minardi and Merzario were the others), and eventually the team was able to score points regularly. Soon, also some victories came, too. AGS made some kind of history when works driver Philippe Streiff won the final race of Formula 2 in 1984, using an AGS JH 19C. In 1985, AGS switched to Formula 3000 but Julien was not content with regulation and organisation of the new series, so he started thinking about taking another step ahead into top class motor racing. By late summer 1986, it was done: AGS entered the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, its very first Formula 1 race. The structure was some kind of bizarre: The team had no more than 7 employees and was still operated from the garage de l´avenir in Gonfaron. Compare this to the situation at Williams, McLaren or Ferrari which had even in those days gigantic facilities! AGS appeared with a car that was once again penned by Vanderpleyn. The JH21C was a strange mixture between former AGS 3000 vehicles and Renault Formula 1 parts which were used extensively. The car was powered by a well-used Motori Moderni Turbo engine (the only time these Carlo Chiti-penned engines were given to a customer team) and driven by newcomer Ivan Capelli. A few weeks before, the car had been tested by Didier Pironi who made his first step in a F1 car since his awful accident in 1982. Neither in its first attempt nor in the following race in Portugal Capelli saw the finish line due to technical failures. In 1987, the car which was otherwise much the same as before was prepared to use a normally aspirated Cosworth DFZ. Team driver Pascal Fabre was a newcomer. He was reliable but awfully slow. Things went better in the last two races of the season when Fabre was replaced with the Brasilian Roberto Moreno (who saw his first chance in Formula 1 since 1982 when he had failed to qualify a Lotus works car). In Adelaide, Moreno scored the first championship point for AGS which finished the season equally to the well-situated Ligier team. In 1988, AGS started with a new car and Philippe Streiff as the teams only driver. Steiff drove quite powerful and qualified well, but he saw the chequered flag only four times; in all the other events of that year technical failures or accidents had to be recorded. Financially, the year started well and ended with a disaster. AGS had a solid sponsor - the French Bouygues group - which promised to support not only the racing activity but also the erection of a new factory outside Gonfaron. After AGS had started to work on the new facility, Bouygues withdraw from the team, leaving Julien without any support. To save the team, he eventually had to sell it to Cyril de Rouvre, a French entrepreneur with various ambitions. From now on, things got bad and things got worse. The new team management changed frequently (Vanderpleyn for instance went to Coloni) and brought a lot of disorder. Worse was to come; Streiff was paralysed in a testing accident in Brazil before the 1989 season. In the second part of the 1989 season, the team had to prequalify - a task that was nearly never done by Gabriele Tarquini (who had replaced Streiff after his near-fatal accident in Brasil) and Yannick Dalmas. Within the summer months, there were severe rumours saying that AGS would soon use a new W-12-engine penned by the French designer Guy Nègre. This strange MGN (Moteurs Guy Nègre) machine was saw the light of day in late 1988 and was tested in an old AGS-chassis in the Summer of 1989. It it clear that AGS was not related to these tests; they were completely private attempts by Nègre. The engine never found its way to a Grand Prix but it was announced to be used in a 1990 Le Mans car called Norma M6. That car was presented but never raced. Finally, AGS had to use Cosworth engines again in 1990. That year brought no improvement at all, and by the beginning of the 1991 season the team was obviously close to its end. Money lacked everywhere (at the first 1991 Grand Prix the mechanics didn´t even have some money to buy a lunch), and de Rouvre sold his team to some Italian entrepreneurs, Patrizio Cantù and Gabriele Raffanelli. Both changed little except for the driver line-up (Stefan Johansson was needlessly replaced with newcomer Fabrizio Barbazza) and the colours of the car (which now where blue-red-yellow instead of white). A new car was shown in the early autumn, but by then the team was in rags again, so the Italians closed the door after the Portuguese grand Prix. AGS survived as a prosperous Formula 1 driving school (in Le Luc, near Gonfaron) and finally produced a new formula 1 car in 2002. The Garage de l´ Avenir is still in existence, too. EXTERNAL LINK AGS Formule 1 |
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