Jacky Ickx wins the 1968 French Grand Prix as Jo Schlesser is killed at Rouen

The 1968 French Grand Prix was won by Jacky Ickx, but it is remembered through two sharply different facts: a young Belgian’s first Formula 1 victory for Ferrari, and the death of Jo Schlesser in a Honda that had already caused deep concern inside its own team.

Rouen-Les-Essarts was a demanding road circuit with fast downhill sections, heavy braking areas and little margin for error. On 7 July 1968 it was also wet. That made the French Grand Prix a difficult place to introduce a fragile and unfamiliar car, especially one as unusual as Honda’s RA302. The car used an air-cooled V8 and a lightweight construction philosophy at a time when Formula 1 design was changing quickly and not always safely.

Honda’s new car and Surtees’ refusal

John Surtees, Honda’s established driver and a world champion in both motorcycles and cars, had tested the RA302 and did not want to race it. He chose the older RA301 instead. Honda therefore entered Schlesser, an experienced French racer whose World Championship record was small but whose wider career included sports cars and national-level racing. It gave Schlesser a home Grand Prix start, but also put him in a car whose reputation was already troubled.

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On the early laps Schlesser crashed at Six Freres. The Honda overturned and caught fire. Schlesser was killed, and the race continued with the knowledge that another driver had been lost in a decade that had already made too much room for fatal accidents. The RA302 did not become a meaningful Formula 1 project. For Honda, the day became part of the story that led to its withdrawal from Grand Prix racing at the end of the season.

Ickx’s first win

Away from the accident, Ickx drove one of the most mature races of his early career. Jochen Rindt had started from pole for Brabham, with Ickx third for Ferrari. The conditions rewarded patience as much as speed, and Ickx had both. He brought the Ferrari home ahead of Surtees in the surviving Honda RA301 and Jackie Stewart’s Matra-Ford, giving Ferrari a first win of the season and himself a first World Championship victory.

Ickx was only 23, already respected for his ability in the wet and in long-distance racing, and this result confirmed that Ferrari had gained a driver capable of winning in heavy, awkward conditions. It also came during a season that had begun with Jim Clark’s death in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim and was still searching for a safer direction.

The last championship visit to Rouen

The 1968 French Grand Prix was the last Formula 1 World Championship race held at Rouen-Les-Essarts. The circuit had speed, character and a scenic road-course brutality that suited the old Grand Prix image, but that image was becoming harder to defend. By the late 1960s, Formula 1 was changing its cars faster than it was changing its circuits, and Rouen showed how thin the margin could be when those two timelines failed to meet.

For Ickx, 7 July 1968 was the first step in a career that would include eight Grand Prix wins and a towering record at Le Mans. For Schlesser, it was the end of a racing life that later echoed through Guy Ligier’s cars, whose JS initials honoured his friend. The result sheet says Ferrari, Ickx, Surtees and Stewart. The race itself never separated victory from loss.