Benoit Treluyet - Is he stuck in wilderness?

About 2/3 years ago I was convinced this guy was about to become the best (ok well 3rd or 4th best) thing since sliced bread - particulalry as French drivers go.

He seems to have got stuck in F Nippon even though he's probably making a living for himself, along with the ocassional sportscar drive.

Has his F1 ambitions gone for good, should he come back and have a pop at GP2? Would he be able to generate the funding if he's not attached to any F1team/selfless corporation?

I can't help but think that had GP2 arrived a couple of years earlier he could have been benefitting from the slight resurgance in promoting French talent (I.E Premat, Gommendy, Lapierre, Perera etc..) and may not have needed to become a 'Gai-jin' so to speak.

Worth a discussion folks?

I'm not sure I would ever have rated Benoit Treluyer quite as highly as you, but he was and is a decent enough driver.

The trouble is that for French drivers as much as for British ones, unless they have the backing to progress their careers beyond F3, they will lose out on the upper echelons of the single seater world. Sebastien Phillipe and Nicolas Minassian also come to mind. Stephane Sarrazin is another, although he is currently making a decent career out of being a Subaru rally driver and an Aston Martin GT driver.

You're probably right that things might have turned out differently if GP2 and WSR had been around at the time, although I suppose there was F3000.

Treluyer will be 30 at the end of the year, so I'd say there's not point in him changing direction now. If he's making a reasonable living out of racing, then that's no bad thing. There are plenty of others who have not even managed that.

I hadn't realised he was 30 odd, mind you he's been around International Single seater racing since the mid/late 90's.

Seriously though, although he didn't win the French F3 title he was a front runner for a couple of seasons and has arguably done far more than the likes of Cochet and I thought he would have gone better in 3000.

This has been backed up by his prefromances in Nippon where for the last few seasons he's been pretty much top gai-jin.

I suppose the series isn't as strong as it was in the early 90's when it had a phalanx of top line drivers on the bubble.

Dunno, just one of those who got away if you know what I mean?

Can anyone remind me who his chief rivals were in F3?

Among his rivals in 2002 French F3, were Bruno Besson, Olivier Pla, Nicolas Lapierre, Laurent Delahaye and... Yuji Ide.

Thanks Mekola, it appears that it was a pretty strong group of drivers then.

Gommendy must've been involved as well?

I would say that Benoit would rate as highly if not better than most of them, yet Pla and Lapierre have pretty much been the pick of the French crop in GP2 the last 2 seasons.

Among his rivals in 2002 French F3, were Bruno Besson, Olivier Pla, Nicolas Lapierre, Laurent Delahaye and... Yuji Ide.

he moved to Japan in 2000 race or INGING and taken F3 title with MugenXDome