Yet his stint at Renault was just one chapter in a long and varied motorsport career that included the design of the chassis in which he took the title at the end of a hard-fought campaign in the 1976 European Formula 2 Championship.
Jabouille, who has died aged 80 after a long illness, was an engineer by trade rather than training: he’d briefly studied modern art at the Sorbonne. His intuitive mechanical skills made him the perfect choice to lead Renault’s entry into F1 with its turbocharged 1.5-litre V6 engine, which joined the grid midway through 1977.
