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| Full name | Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives |
|---|---|
| Base | Gonfaron,France |
| Founder(s) | Henri Julien |
| Noted staff | Cyril de Rouvre Patrizio Cantù Hughes de Chaunac Gabriele Rafanelli Christian Vanderpleyn Claude Galopin |
| Noted drivers |  Ivan Capelli Pascal Fabre Roberto MorenoPhilippe Streiff Joachim WinkelhockGabriele TarquiniYannick Dalmas Stefan JohanssonFabrizio BarbazzaOlivier Grouillard |
| Formula One World Championship career | |
| First entry | 1986 Italian Grand Prix |
| Races entered | 80 |
| Engines | Motori Moderni,Cosworth |
| Constructors' Championships | 0 |
| Drivers' Championships | 0 |
| Race victories | 0(best finish: 6th,1987 Australian Grand Prix and1989 Mexican Grand Prix) |
| Pole positions | 0(best grid position: 10th,1988 Canadian Grand Prix) |
| Fastest laps | 0 |
| Final entry | 1991 Spanish Grand Prix |
Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives (also known asAGS andGonfaron Sports Cars) was a smallFrenchracecar constructor that competed in various racing categories over a period of thirty years, includingFormula One from1986 to1991.
AGS survived as a prosperous Formula One driving school, inLe Luc, nearGonfaron.[1]
The team was founded by the Frenchmechanic,Henri Julien, who ran afilling station, the "Garage de l'Avenir", inGonfaron, a provincial French village.[2] In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Julien regularly attended racing events in minor classes. Although not an outstanding driver, the technical knowledge he gained eventually prompted him to start constructing racing cars.
Julien's first car, the AGS JH1, saw the light of day in 1969. It was a smallsingle-seater, intended for the category of "Formule France". The car was designed by Julien's former apprentice, theBelgian mechanicChristian Vanderpleyn, who had been with the garage (and the racing team) since the very late 1950s and who would stay on until 1988. Soon, AGS went progressed and manufactured its ownFormula 3 cars, which were ambitious but not good enough to compete seriously with the state-of-artMartinis which dominated the series at the time.
AGS took another step ahead in 1978 when the team started competing in the EuropeanFormula 2 Championship. Still, the car - by now theAGS 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 its own cars (Maurer, Minardi and Merzario were the others), and eventually the team was able to score points regularly. Soon some victories came, too. AGS made history when works driverPhilippe Streiff won the final race of Formula 2 in 1984, using an AGS JH19C.
In 1985, AGS switched toFormula 3000 with the JH20, based on the Duqueine VG4 Formula 3 chassis.[3] The JH20 used aCosworth DFV engine supplied through the Swiss tuning firm Mader.[3]Results were mediocre in 1985 and 1986.
By late summer1986, AGS entered theItalian Grand Prix inMonza, its first Formula One race. Its structure was somewhat bizarre: The team had no more than seven employees and was still operated from theGarage de l'Avenir in Gonfaron.
AGS appeared with a car that was once again penned by Vanderpleyn. TheJH21C was a strange mixture between former AGS F3000 vehicles andRenault F1 parts which were used extensively. The car was powered by a well-usedMotori Moderniturbo engine (the only time theseCarlo Chiti-developed engines were given to a customer team) and driven by ItalianIvan Capelli.[3] A few weeks before, the car had been tested atPaul Ricard byDidier Pironi, driving an F1 car for the first time since his leg-breaking accident in the1982 German Grand Prix. Due to technical difficulties, neither in its first attempt nor in the following race inPortugal did Capelli see the finish.
For the team's first full F1 season in1987, Vanderpleyn penned theJH22, which used anormally-aspiratedCosworth DFZ but was otherwise much the same as the JH21C.[3] The car was initially driven byPascal Fabre, who had driven for the team in Formula 2 in 1982. He proved to be a reliable driver, finishing eight of the first nine races, but was never in serious contention for scoring points and failed to qualify on three occasions. AGS improved in the last two races of the season when Fabre was replaced by theBrazilianRoberto Moreno (who saw his first chance in Formula One since 1982 when he had failed to qualify aLotus works car). InAdelaide, Moreno scored the first championship point for AGS,[3] which meant that the team finished the season equal on points with the better-financedLigier and the returningMarch team.
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In1988, AGS started with a new car, theJH23,[3] andPhilippe Streiff as the team's only driver. Streiff drove quite powerfully and qualified well, but he saw the chequered flag only four times; in all the other events of that year technical failures or accidents were 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 completion of a new factory outside Gonfaron. After AGS had started work on the new facility, Bouygues withdrew from the team, leaving Julien without any support. To save the team, he eventually had to sell it toCyril de Rouvre, a French entrepreneur with various ambitions.
Things went soon from bad to worse. The new team management changed frequently (Vanderpleyn for instance went toColoni) and brought a lot of disorder. Worse was to come; Streiff was paralysed in a testing accident in Brazil before the1989 season.[4]
Streiff was replaced withGabriele Tarquini,[4] who surprised with some great performances in the first half of the season. He was very close to the points in both the1989 Monaco Grand Prix and1989 United States Grand Prix, but retired in both races. Then things went better in the1989 Mexican Grand Prix, where he finished sixth and scored his first point. But after these highlights, the team was never able to be as competitive again.
In the second part of the 1989 season, the team had to prequalify - a task that was nearly never achieved by Gabriele Tarquini andYannick Dalmas. AGS then finished 15th in the Constructors' Championship, equal with theLolas used by theLarrousse team. During the summer months, there were strong rumours that AGS would soon use a newW12 engine developed by the French designerGuy Nègre. This strange MGN (Moteurs Guy Nègre) machine saw the light of day in late 1988 and was tested in an old AGS JH22 chassis in the summer of 1989.[5] It was 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 1990Le Mans car calledNorma M6. The car was presented and attempted to race, but failed to qualify over engine issues.
Finally, AGS had to useCosworth engines again in1990. That year brought no improvement at all, Dalmas's 9th in the1990 Spanish Grand Prix was the best result and by the beginning of the1991 season the team was obviously close to its end. The team lacked money – at the first two Grands Prix of 1991, in Brazil andPhoenix the team's mechanics had to pay for their own hotel rooms.[6] In the race itself, Tarquini finished 8th, which was the last finish ever of an AGS car.De Rouvre sold his team to some Italian entrepreneurs, Patrizio Cantù and Gabriele Rafanelli. Both changed little except for the driver line-up (Stefan Johansson was replaced with newcomerFabrizio Barbazza) and the colours of the car (which were now blue, red and yellow instead of white). A new car, the JH27, was raced in the early autumn, but by then the team was in rags again, so the Italians closed the doors after the1991 Spanish Grand Prix.
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