After being a motorcycling champion, he switched to car races. Amédé Gordini wanted him in his own team. The cars weren’t competitive and results were late coming. In 1955, he was hired by Maserati and he came second at the 1956 and 1957 Argentinian GP.  When the Trident’s team retired from races, he was offered a contract by BRM, but the car wasn’t really performing. He won some races with the Porsche RSK and he created “his” own F2 car with the Stuttgart horse team. It was a disappointing experience.

He had a brief experience with Ferrari, but their relationship broke off due to some not very flattering declarations that Jean Behra made to some French journalists, after the French GP. He participated in the Avus race and he accepted to drive a Porsche instead of the BRM. That race was fatal to him… he was a driver who loved races a lot, maybe too much.

He was an honest man, not very diplomatic and not an adulator at all. The public understood and admired him. Enzo Ferrari said “Jean Behra has been an attack driver. A real and very brave man. He left Ferrari as he didn’t agree any more with the sports director of the time”.