1,000 Greatest Drivers: Jean-Pierre Malcher
The fastest man on ice.
Well, I tried to conduct the COVID-19 test I bought at Walmart yesterday. I did not succeed. As I was trying to detach the dropper from what it was attached to, I ended up ripping the bottle and getting some of the fluid on myself. I finally figured out how to do it the second time, or so I thought, but after my 15 minutes were up after the test, it didn’t record a result, and all I could see was the color-coding control line, which hadn’t changed after I conducted the test. So I basically wasted both tests that came into that box and was unable to get a complete one. The workers at the nursing home potentially offered to test me, but I think I’m going to stay away until Monday, by which point I will almost certainly not be contagious anymore (if I was before), and they think even Mom will have gotten over it because they say she’s doing better. I’m behind on some work anyway, but I wrote this pretty quickly because I had already done most of my research, and because Malcher is so obscure, there wasn’t a lot I really could write about him, so there was a lot less I had to cut.
Because I never resolved my ARFID eating disorder, I’ve been getting pretty dependent on Soylent meal replacements since I can get them down, and they are healthier than almost anything else I can get down (which is not to say they are as healthy as whole foods, but the texture of actually healthier things would probably induce gagging, as it always has before). However, there’s a real shortage going on right now, and I’m out, and Soylent bottles aren’t being shipped anywhere near as quickly as they were before, so I’m probably almost in withdrawal even. If I have any symptoms of anything right now (and I don’t really think I do; I don’t feel that bad this week after last week’s virus, which might have itself been COVID, although I have heard/felt some weird popping in my left ear), it’s probably some kind of dehydration/malnutrition/withdrawal from Soylent after I’d become too dependent on it. I need to figure out if there’s some other meal replacement that might be easier to get that I want to try, or if I just need to try come up with some kind of whole food I won’t gag. Not looking forward to that…
As seemingly the main analyst who rates touring car drivers higher than any other analyst does, it should come as no surprise that I will also be including many obscure ones who were undeniably great but weren’t household names. Malcher is one of them, as he is one of only four drivers with three French touring car titles, and he’s a lot better than two of them (Éric Cayrolle and Soheil Ayari, who I don’t know if I’m even listing, but I’ll tell you Ayari is more likely; I currently have Ayari in but not a lock and Cayrolle out). My main discovery today was that there was actually a 24-hour endurance race on ice that I didn’t know about, called the 24 Hours of Chamonix. I knew about the Andros Trophy ice racing championship, of course, but somehow I had missed the Chamonix race. Malcher was the first driver to win this race five times, and he actually won all his races before the other five-time winners, four-time WTCC champion/one-time BTCC champion Yvan Muller, and the other three-time FTCC champion, Dany Snobeck, won any of theirs. Now, do I think he’s as good as any of them? No. Muller is obviously one of the best touring car drivers of all time since he crossed over internationally (although I’d rate fellow French touring car champion Laurent Aïello over any of them). Muller also won the Andros Trophy a record 10 times to Snobeck’s 2 and Malcher’s 0. Snobeck also won a French rally title when none of the others did, and they all did a lot more outside of France. They’re all a lot higher in my touring car model too (Aïello: .490, Snobeck: .279, Muller: .236). But is he close enough that he should be a lock too? Hell yeah! And should somebody make an English-language Wikipedia page for him? Hell yeah again! (Now that I know about the Chamonix race, I might need to slightly edit my Snobeck and Muller entries to mention that. Oh well.)
JEAN-PIERRE MALCHER……….FRANCE
Born: February 19, 1950
Best year: 1981
Best drive: 1986 24 Hours of Chamonix
A legend of sports cars, touring cars, and ice racing, Malcher is very similar to his contemporary Dany Snobeck and is likewise one of the best drivers without an English-language Wikipedia page. Malcher was the second of four drivers, along with Snobeck, Éric Cayrolle, and Soheil Ayari, to win the French Touring Car/Supertouring Championship three times. You could even argue Malcher has as many as five titles, depending on which years you count. He was also the first of three drivers (along with Snobeck and Yvan Muller) to win the 24 Hours of Chamonix (the only endurance race on ice) five times.
Malcher first emerged in the French Touring Car Championship in 1980, winning the 1300-1600cc class championship. Although he lost the overall title to Snobeck, he had an estimated four wins to Snobeck’s one (win totals are uncertain because much data is missing from this series). The next year, Malcher won his first overall FTCC title with 8 wins, setting what is believed to be a single-season record until Laurent Aïello’s 11-win 1994. Although he never dominated like that again, he remained consistently relevant for the next decade and a half. He won Chamonix for the first time in 1984 with two-time European Rally Champion Bernard Darniche. In 1986, he won again in a Citroën with event organizer Franz Hummel, who has no other reported wins ever. Malcher is probably best known for setting the all-time ice speed records in 1988, reaching 153.43 mph on snow tires and 155.72 mph on studded tires.
After a brief lull, Malcher bounced back in touring cars, winning the FTCC Group A title in 1988, then earning his last two overall titles in the renamed French Supertouring Championship in 1989 and 1990, along with two more Chamonix wins those same years. His only blemish was never winning the full-season Andros Trophy French ice racing championship, although he finished second to Eric Arpin in the inaugural season in 1990 and second to Snobeck in 1992. Malcher then pivoted to sports cars, winning the Porsche Carrera Cup France title in 1991 (making him the last champion before Dominique Dupuy and Christophe Bouchut won eight consecutive titles), and the Porsche Supercup title in 1995, where he drove for two-time F1 winner Jean-Pierre Jabouille. Throughout his career, he also served as a journalist and test driver for the French magazine Auto Hebdo.
Unlike most of the other French touring car champions, Malcher never really got his due because he seldom competed internationally outside of France. It doesn’t help that Porsche Supercup is the most overlooked series relative to its talent level, and French touring car racing is poorly archived as well. However, he’s obviously legendary regardless, as he successfully competed with all the French touring car stars who competed globally despite his personal lack of international ambitions. While I think Aïello is the best French touring car driver, and Muller is the best ice racer, Malcher was close enough to both that he’s still an obvious choice.
Touring car model: #589 of 1676 (.020)
Teammate head-to-heads: 4-8 (0-3 vs. Laurent Aiello, 0-1 vs. Alain Cudini, 1-0 vs. Philipp Peter, 1-0 vs. Ulrich Schumacher, 2-4 vs. Marco Werner)
Year-by-year: 1980: C+, 1981: E, 1982: C+, 1983: C, 1984: C, 1986: C-, 1988: C-, 1989: C+, 1990: C+, 1991: C+, 1992: C, 1993: C-, 1994: C, 1995: C+, 1997: C