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The 2004 Formula 3 Euroseries was one of the most competitive in the prestigious junior category’s history.
On the grid that season were current Mercedes F1 team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, multiple DTM champion Bruno Spengler, grand prix winner Robert Kubica and Formula E star Lucas di Grassi.
Also part of that line-up was Loic Duval. Like di Grassi he was part of Flavio Briatore’s Renault Driver Development Programme, but unlike his contemporaries, he had to take an unusual route to securing a place at motorsport’s top table, but the Le Mans and World Endurance Champion is finally able to show what he can do in a global single-seater series.
Inspired by his father, Duval had barely started school when he began racing motor bikes: “He put me on a bike when I was four/five years old and basically I was doing a lot of biking but I was crashing quite often and then I broke some arms, some legs and then he got a little bit afraid about it. One day he just told me he’d sold the bike and I looked at him and said ‘ok, but I’d like to do something else.’
“I was really into soccer, but then the Christmas that followed he offered me the chance to go-kart on a Wednesday afternoon or during the weekend just to have fun because we had a track not that far from home. That’s how it started. My father was probably more of a fan of motorsport than I was at the beginning. But then for sure, being there and having so much fun I started to love it. Just step by step, we started to go to a few local competitions and ended up in the French championship and the European, the world championship, and here we are…”
Although most people’s experience of karting is the arrive-and-drive events beloved of stag dos or corporate days out, at a serious competitive level budgets run into hundreds of thousands of pounds a season. Unsurprisingly, at some stage even the most generous of parents start to feel the strain of supporting their child through this, and Duval’s father was no different, although unusually it was Loic who decided that enough was enough.
“Basically go-karting was expensive and my father was paying for it, and actually I told him at the end of 2001, that it was enough. I didn’t want to spend such a big amount of money in go-karts and we didn’t have enough money to race cars, so for five months I quit. I went back to work, I was working for Orange in France with my father not telling me but working on a project with the French Federation.”
Duval had been a Team France driver in karts, and his father’s discussions with the FFSA resulted in him securing the support he needed to make the switch to cars and the Formula Campus championship. Racing alongside his sales support job at Orange, Duval won the championship and a huge step was taken towards becoming a professional racing driver.
“Winning the championship meant you got a budget to step up and run in Formula Renault. I won the championship straight away and I signed with Renault Formula 1, with RDD, and they paid for most of the Formula 3 championship.”
RDD placed Duval in the Signature team. It had been a leading player in the French national series, but was committed to running Opel engines at the time when Mercedes had upped the ante and teams running with the three-pointed star dominated the series. After a second season with Signature that yielded five podiums but no wins, Duval was given a chance to experience what he’d been up against when he was invited by the Mercedes-powered ASM team to take part in the season-ending Macau Grand Prix.
With Sebastian Vettel as his team-mate, Duval made an instant impression by going fastest in qualifying, which he converted into pole position with victory in the qualification race. He was leading comfortably in the main event only to pick up a penalty for a jumped start, which dropped him back in the race to sixth as di Grassi swept to glory. His performance had caught the eye of Satoru Nakajima, who was watching his son Kazuki take part in the race. Nakajima, is a racing legend in Japan, where he runs a team in the Super Formula single-seater series and the Super GT championship.
“As soon as I jumped out of the car, I got a phone call from them to do a test. One week after I went to Suzuka for a test and it worked pretty well. I found it a really professional series, also when I got the contract I was being paid for racing which was the first target for every young kid when they are doing go karting - to be lucky enough and earn money from racing, from their passion. On top of that, it was with Honda and in my contract it said if I win a championship I will have some testing with Honda in F1.”
So while his F3 rivals were moving up the F1 ladder via GP2, Duval was on his way to Japan. After two winless seasons in F3, it didn’t take him long to taste the victory champagne once more, claiming two Super Formula wins and a single GT success in his debut season. Initially Duval commuted from France, but with an increasing number of young Europeans also taking that career path including Benoit Treluyer and Andre Lotterer, he decided to relocate to Tokyo.
The move was rewarded with the Super Formula (or Formula Nippon, as it was called at the time) title in 2009 and the GT crown in 2010. Unfortunately, by this stage Honda had called time on its F1 programme, so the promised test never materialised.
“I had a fantastic few years in Japan and Tokyo. Tokyo is a fantastic city, there is lots of great people, the food is great. The atmosphere, it’s really safe and there is a lot of respect between the people. I have to say without Fukushima in 2011 I would still probably be living in Japan. I really loved Japan and I was not thinking [of leaving] at all, even being with Audi now, it could’ve been possible to stay in Asia. I had a lot of good times, I will always be a big fan of racing in Japan so I’m really happy when I have to go back there.”
Even though racing in Japan had always been Duval’s primary focus, he had always kept his foot in the door of global racing, whether that was via A1GP or in sportscars with the Oreca team at Le Mans and the classic Sebring 12 Hours, which he won in 2011. This, along with his success in Japan, attracted the attention of Audi and in 2012 he became part of the manufacturer’s World Endurance Championship line-up, taking his first win at Spa.
Paired with sportscar legends Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish, Duval had a stunning season in 2013, winning the Le Mans 24 Hours and the world championship. Although it’s the former that generally gets the most attention, it was the latter than has a really special significance for Duval, because although his team-mates had a phenomenal 12 Le Mans wins between them, neither had a world title on their illustrious CVs.
“I’m really proud that I’ve been able to help my two team-mates to become world champions, after what they have done for endurance racing. If they would’ve stopped without this title… so to do it with me is something really special.”
Having returned to Europe and become an established part of the Audi WEC squad, Duval had been keeping an eye on the developments at Formula E, without actively seeking a drive. However, in early 2015 there was an unexpected call…
“I was testing in Sebring. I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to try Formula E and I said yes, why not? That was just 10 days before the Miami race. I actually found out that Jerome [D’Ambrosio] asked the team to give me a call to see if I was available. I knew Jerome from RDD, which was eight years earlier. From that contact [I knew] it would be a good combination and I agreed with Jay [Penske] and the team to go to Miami to look at it. It was really positive from my side, from their side too and we decided to carry on.
“It’s always difficult to join a championship right in the middle that’s for sure, especially when you see the level of the drivers but also it’s really a different car compared to what I’m used to driving in terms of mechanical grip and downforce, brakes and power! You don’t drive those cars like you would drive a conventional racing car, you don’t drive the same way and you can see it from so many young drivers, so competitive, so talented like Oliver Rowland who came for Punta del Este. The guys who won the championship like Formula Renault 3.5 come here and they are not P1 and P2. It’s really difficult to drive these cars with the amount of time that we have, with testing and the amount of laps you do at 200kW to catch the guys who did the whole summer test, it’s really not easy."
On his debut in Miami, Duval struggled in qualifying and started back in 18th, but he raced strongly to seventh. Next time out in Long Beach he once again wanted for one-lap pace and lined up 17th only to race his way into the points and ninth place. Race by race Duval’s qualifying competitiveness improved. He cracked the top-10 in Berlin and for the London finale he started third, which was where he finished third to end the season on a high.
With a full off-season of testing under his belt, Duval and Dragon hit the ground running in season two. He was a strong fourth in Beijing, was heading for a podium when broken suspension forced him out in Putrajaya, and followed this up starting on the front row in Punta. Buenos Aires was his least competitive outing of the season, but he was still sixth to cement fourth place in the drivers’ standings.
“I did struggle a little bit, my pace was not as good as I wanted in qualifying but I always had really good pace in the races and after being able to test at Donington in the summer I was much better in qualifying. In the races we are still competitive, still good on energy. I believe there are teams that are a little better than us but what we are able to get out of our package is quite good for the moment. If you give us back our points from Putrajaya, I think we would be P1 in the team championship which shows that the guys are doing a really good job technically, the mechanics as well and the drivers are there to bring some points, it’s really positive.”
In a world where Formula 1 drivers tend to garner all the publicity and plaudits, talents such as Duval’s can often go under the radar. But at Dragon, where alongside D’Ambrosio he is part of probably the most competitive driver line-up in the series, he is getting the opportunity to show a new audience just how good he is and he’s loving it.
“I’m having more and more fun, fighting a little bit more at the front does help. I think the team is happy for the moment with the drivers’ job. My contract goes on until the end of this year so everything is open. If they don’t want me to stay I’m not staying and if there are some other opportunities, we will see. So far, everything is open and I’m here to do my best. It’s really promising for the future, it’s really positive. I’m having more fun behind the steering wheel because I understand the car more.”
Duval’s next opportunity to shine is in the Mexico ePrix on March 12. For viewers in the UK, this race will be streamed live on www.fiaformulae.com as well as on our official YouTube page.