My grandmother's Mini 1000 is white. I still have it and I've restored it perfectly. It's part of the family now.

In the Pernaut family, I would like…

From grandparents to great-grandson, the passion for  The automobile smooths the way and strengthens ties. Olivier Pernaut explains.

To tell you my childhood story, I will first pay tribute to my dad and his famous 1 p.m. news broadcast, imagining his words if he had had to introduce a report on our family:

 "And now, let's head to Picardy to meet the Pernaut family, passionate about motor racing from father to son for four generations. The grandfather, Jean, a founding member of the region's Automobile Sports Association, his eldest son Jean-François, a rally driver on a Mini-Cooper with his brother Jean-Pierre in the support team, the grandson Olivier, a mechanical engineer and professional driver, and finally, the great-grandson Léo, who is already trying his hand at karting."

The cameraman would have started with a shot of my grandmother Françoise Pernaut, a small centenarian woman, full of joie de vivre and particularly talkative.  She would have remembered giving me her Mini twenty years earlier, on the eve of her 80th birthday, the one I used to practice handbrake turns on gravel. She would have charmed all the viewers with her good humor, talking about Sunday family meals where conversations revolved around my uncle's misfortunes or triumphs during his last rally, and would have recounted the time he went off the road, battling the river water that was rising in his car. 

We would have discovered stunning images of the country house where I spent such wonderful childhood moments: weekends tinkering with my father, building models, nights modifying and repairing the remote-controlled cars we raced together. Then, the journalist would have interviewed me, and I would have gladly shared my many memories with my dad during the 24 Hours of Le Mans…

Every Le Mans race was unmissable for us. My dad's fame gave us access to the entire circuit. We followed the race from the best seats in the house, filled with the fervor unique to those driven by the same passion. When the darkness made my eyelids too heavy, we would both fall asleep in the race car park, in the back of the family car, which had been converted into a makeshift hotel, for a few hours of rest. In the paddocks, I could get close to my favorite drivers and their cars.

There were also the Formula 1 Grand Prix weekends. Thanks to my dad's friends, Jacques Lafitte, Jean-Louis Moncef, and the Auto-Moto team, I even got to sit behind the wheel of Jean Alesi's F1 car one day. Imagine what goes through a 15-year-old boy's mind at that precise moment! I remember my father's delight at such innocent enthusiasm.

At that time, I wasn't even considering becoming a racing driver. Apart from a few go-kart races organized by TF1's employee committee, I had never experienced competition. For my 22nd birthday, my father had the brilliant idea of ​​giving me a driving course at the Bugatti circuit in Le Mans. It was my first taste of speed, my first adrenaline rush. Focused on calculating braking points and studying the track layout, I had caught the racing bug.

So I continued racing alongside my engineering studies. The beginnings were difficult because all the drivers my age had been karting since childhood. Often disappointed by my performance, I did everything I could to persevere. Every winter, the Andros Trophy, in which we both participated, provided me with many fond memories of camaraderie with my dad. Facing much stronger competitors than us, like Alain Prost or Olivier Panis, these ice races were always synonymous with shared joy and bursts of laughter.

Finally, in 2015 I won the French GT Championship, and I reached the top step of a podium for the first time driving a Porsche IMSA.  What a joy to see that touching glimmer of pride in my father's eyes!

I had encountered many obstacles throughout my racing projects, and that day I understood that the real challenge had never been performance. The real challenge was to develop a project and do everything possible to be on the starting line. In my father's eyes, there wasn't just pride in hearing the Pernaut name linked to the world of motor racing; there was, above all, pride in the energy I had devoted over the years to living the passion he had passed on to me.

Standing at the edge of the go-kart tracks where I admire my son today, I hope he understands as soon as possible that the journey is often more enriching and fulfilling than the finish line.

In my role as team manager at Orhès, I organize numerous entries in all sorts of motorsport competitions, from the Fun Cup to GT4, the Ligier European Series, NASCAR, Le Mans, and the upcoming Paris-Dakar Rally. This allows many other enthusiasts to realize their motorsport dreams. Nothing prevents you from becoming a driving ace, even if you started out in your grandmother's Mini!

I have so many happy memories of those times spent with my dad, but very few photos. I really like the one taken at  Monaco with Jacques Villeneuve. I was 14 years old.