Formula E is paying tribute to the late Adrian Campos during its Valencia E-Prix weekend. After Campos’s untimely death earlier this year, we looked back on his impact with the help of those he worked with in Formula E and junior racing
Adrian Campos, whose passing at age 60 was announced earlier today, competed in 17 grands prix for Minardi in 1987-88, but this is only a footnote in his motorsport legacy.
After hanging up his racing gloves, he became a successful team owner, winning five teams titles in F3, Euro Open by Nissan and GP2, and having a hand in nine drivers’ titles in a variety of series.
Audi Formula E driver Lucas di Grassi, who raced for Campos in GP2 and went on to become an F1 driver and Formula E champion, says that Campos’ death will be a “big loss for motorsport in general.”
Di Grassi was a key part of one of Campos Racing’s great successes – winning the 2008 GP2 teams’ title in the squad’s final year before Alejandro Agag’s takeover turned it into Addax.
“I met Adrian, I think first in F3, and then by chance in 2008. Alejandro bought the team, but it was still called Campos Racing,” di Grassi told The Race today.
“Adrian was always really thinking forward, a really good guy, and he pretty much won everything that he was in charge of” :: Lucas di Grassi
“The team was not the best team in GP2. I joined in mid-season and the team was great, the car was great, so it was a really good experience to have with Adrian who I always saw as a very professional, motivated guy.”
Di Grassi replaced Ben Hanley six races into the 2008 GP2 Series and went on a scintillating and unexpected run of three second places before taking wins at Hungaroring and Valencia to line up an unlikely tilt at the title.
“Actually, I didn’t really want to join the team but because I was driving so little in F1 testing, back then, like only a few days of the year, I thought about it and thought ‘OK, no pressure, let’s go’,” recalls di Grassi, who was Renault’s F1 reserve at the time.
“[Alberto] Longo actually was the team manager and Alejandro had just bought the team.
“There was a couple of good engineers, like Joan [Orus] who later was in Formula E when he and Nelson [Piquet Jr] won the championship in 2015, he was a great engineer.”
At Spa in the penultimate event di Grassi was battling for position with then points leader Giorgio Pantano but was wiped out by the Italian at La Source – resulting in Pantano’s exclusion.
“We would have been fighting for the championship if it was not for Pantano taking me out in the Spa race,” reckons di Grassi
“But it was a great experience with them [Campos]. I really enjoyed working with Adrian. We kept a relationship after because he was the boss of HRT [during its formation]. We talked a few times about a drive there but nothing happened in the end.”
Di Grassi says that he admired Campos for making the notoriously tricky switch from racer to team owner, pinpointing his shrewd business acumen.
“Adrian was always really thinking forward, a really good guy, and he pretty much won everything that he was in charge of apart from maybe Formula 1 with HRT, which was impossible to do anything with.
“I always admired him because he was a racer and then he built a very good racing team. Professional, a proper business model of a team making money.”
Though di Grassi came up short of the GP2 drivers’ title, Campos lifted the teams’ crown courtesy of the points scored by the Brazilian along with future F1 podium finisher Vitaly Petrov.
He dedicated his life to motorsport. I happen to be on his team. We won many races together, we won GP2 Championship. He spent all his time with the team. He created the sports ground, the simulators for the pilots. My condolences to the family. Rest in peace Adrian Campos 🙏 pic.twitter.com/s7yHsxDaKK
— Vitaly Petrov (@vitalypetrov) January 28, 2021
The team would be fully taken over by Agag in 2009, and raced on as Addax.
“Adrian gave me passion for racing,” Agag told The Race.
“We had many good experiences, and we had many victories, we won a championship together.
“His death today is terrible news because he was very well loved by the racing community in many different championships.”
Agag would go on to set up the all-electric Formula E championship, and says Campos “called me immediately” to say he wanted to be involved.
And this involvement would make possible another of his major triumphs.
“He obviously changed my life. I’ll retire one day knowing that I won a world championship and and that was thanks to Adrian” :: Nelson Piquet Jr
In the first-ever Formula E campaign in 2014/15, Campos’s team supplied operational and technical capability to the Team China Racing entry.
Among its drivers was Nelson Piquet Jr, still in the process of rebuilding his top-line career after the Singapore Grand Prix crash scandal in F1.
Team China and Piquet started slow, but gathered such momentum during the season that the Brazilian ended up winning the first-ever Formula E title.
“Adrian was the only guy that believed in me in the beginning of Formula E that I had the potential to do well,” Piquet told The Race today.
“Obviously we didn’t know we were going to win a championship but he was the one person who gave me the opportunity to win a world championship and I’ll never forget that.
“While a lot of teams doubted me, he was the one that believed in me, and the year after all these other teams wanted to hire me to race for them. So he made a big, big difference in my life.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t win more championships due to other circumstances. But I think he obviously changed my life. I’ll retire one day knowing that I won a world championship and and that was thanks to Adrian.”
Team China wasn’t Campos’ only client in Formula E, as he also worked with Mahindra.
“Adrian was like a bit of a mentor for me when I came into Formula E,” Mahindra CEO Dilbagh Gill told The Race of Campos today. “He was very generous with his time and his experience.”
Gill shared an anecdote: “I think one of the stories which really struck was he told me he initially wanted to race motorcycles. And so he started racing motorcycles, but he was always beaten by another gentleman from his own village or town, Alzira.
“This guy turned out to be Jorge ‘Aspar’ Martinez [80cc and 125cc world champion, and ex-MotoGP team boss].
“So when he went to speak to his dad about if he could become a motorcycle racer, his dad sort of told him: ‘If you’re beaten by someone in your own town, how are you going to race for the world championship?’ Adrian laughed a lot about that!”
Alberto Longo, now Formula E’s deputy CEO, worked with Campos not just at his GP2 team but at China Racing, too. He said he was “deeply saddened” by the passing of “a dear friend and former colleague”.
Longo added: “Not only on a personal level for all he had taught me and the times we shared together, but for the wider motorsport community, who have lost a visionary and true motorsport fanatic.
“My thoughts are with his family and colleagues at this time – and I’m sure I’m not the only one who will ensure his memory is kept alive inside the racing paddock.”
Pictures courtesy of XPB Images, Formula E and Alejandro Agag/Alberto Longo
