Adrien Devereux

Adrien Devereux (born January 24, 1985 in Lyon, France) is a French race car driver. He is mostly known for his willingness to speak his mind, regardless of the consequences, a trait that has earned him as many fans as it has enemies.

Despite racing under the German spelling of his first name (Adrian) for most of his career, Devereux has expressed a desire to race under the French spelling recently. His request was granted during the 2011 Karjala Grand Prix after he was approached by officials to confirm his request.

VSCC
After acquiring sponsorship from Calton-Morel, Devereux dominated the 2008 RROL Season while driving the #46 Calton-Morel Development car, despite several crashes, the safety of the RROL's "Car of Tomorrow" program prevented any serious injury. Devereux was critical of the RROL's car and the RROL competitors in 2008, which did not earn him much respect in the paddock. Despite being an apparent shoe-in for a TM Master Cup Series ride for 2009, the Frenchman opted to hone his skills in 2009 in the RROL while making scattered TM Master Cup starts for Sam Morel Racing in a third car, carrying Calton-Morel sponsorship. Whenever Devereux's car was entered, he usually outpaced teammates Tom Delgado and Sam Morel despite his part-time schedule and inexperienced engineering team.

Devereux admitted later that if he could, he would not have run the entire RROL season in 2009, since he felt that all he needed to really hone in that category was his performances on short ovals.

2009
In 2009, TM Master Cup series pundit Lance Andrews named Devereux, along with Ethan Everett, Arto Kekkonen, and Chris Johaanes as potential superstars. Throughout 2008 and 2009 Devereux made sporadic appearances in a third car for Sam Morel Racing, a #96 car carrying Calton-Morel sponsorship. Devereux usually beat both of his teammates in his appearances, being able to squeeze more speed out of Sam Morel's cars than either of his teammates.

2010
“These tracks and their pack racing are only going to get people killed. There's no skill involved in them and you are in no control of your destiny... if someone makes a mistake it will take you with them even if you are in the back.„ Devereux, during practice for the 2010 Round of Alabama.

Devereux's Hodges-Walter Racing debut at the 2010 Round of Japan began with an incident with Arto Kekkonen in practice. Kekkonen complained that Devereux had been racing him too hard in practice, to which Devereux questioned Kekkonen's commitment to racing. Despite attention thrown on him for perhaps the wrong reason, he managed an average result in Japan. He dominated the 2010 Round of Australia to capture his first TM Master Cup series win in dominant fashion.

Devereux easily took out Rookie of the Year honors in 2010, defeating fan-favorite Ethan Everett, and nearly took out the championship in his first full season, following up his win in Australia with another dominant showing at Decatur. His Decatur win was particularly impressive, since in order to win the race Devereux made a three-wide pass from third to first, a move that Channel 44 commentators Dan Mullen and Lance Andrews called one of the best overtakes they had seen.

Despite the brilliant performance at Decatur, Devereux was ultimately defeated by Alexis Rainsford for the TM Master Cup Series title. Devereux said afterwards that he lost the title because he wasn't able to capitalize on a bad day the same way Rainsford had. Rainsford notched two spectacular results after qualifying deep in the field, including Decatur. Devereux, on the other hand, struggled on the short ovals and he admitted that he was nervous about super speedways because he felt the danger element was unreasonable. Devereux notably refused to go out for practice for the 2010 Round of Alabama after qualifying.

2011
I'm happy for my team, but I feel like two of these races should not have even happened. —Devereux during the 2011 off-season.

The 2011 season started off slowly for Devereux, a few nondescript performances early in the season were followed by a win at Brands Hatch and several strong runs through the European tour that propelled the Frenchman to the points lead. Devereux nearly won at Road America, but a controversial active time penalty was handed to him after colliding with Chris Johaanes, after Johaanes threw a block well into a braking zone. Devereux still finished third, but insisted that he was robbed of a victory afterwards, but bounced back to win the next race at the Grand Detour of Quincy. The car Devereux drove to his first TM Master Cup championship in 2011.

During the red flag period at the 2011 Round of Daytona, Devereux railed at the stewards for putting the drivers in such an unsafe position, after the frightening crashes of Woody Watts and Leslie Riggs. Devereux said that he would never race at 'Death Trap Speedway' ever again, which did not endear him to the older generation of race fans.

The 2011 Round of Brazil was, like Talladega the previous year, a race Devereux was nervous about entering. After Scott Hamilton's vicious crash midway through the race, Devereux said that the negligence of the TM Master Cup series stewards after Daytona was a contributing factor. After learning of Hamilton's death, Devereux was, according to his girlfriend Lise, very deeply affected.

Devereux's ability to settle for minor points finishes when a podium or top ten result was key to his 2011 campaign, a lesson he learned from Alexis Rainsford the previous year. However, his relentlessness and cool demeanor under pressure were perhaps more beneficial to him, as Devereux won the 2011 championship by a single point over Chris Johaanes by passing Yuliya Nosova with two laps to go. With that championship he becomes the first driver to win both a TM Master Cup Championship and a RROL/VSCC championship. He is also the first non-American driver to win the TM Master Cup series title.

2012
Preseason testing looked favorably on Devereux and new teammate Luciano Soveral. Both Devereux and Soveral dominated testing, sometimes by wide margins. The radical Calton-Morel Altair was seemingly unassailable on the road courses, but on the ovals, it seemed that the Hodges-Walter cars were vulnerable. That myth was shattered when Devereux and Soveral swept the front row for the season opener at Las Vegas, a race Devereux went on to win, scoring a Perfect 70 in the process. Devereux and Soveral both said after the race that they had been running engines that had been tuned down to ensure they would last the whole race.

Fears that the pair would dominate the season were furthered when Soveral took his first career win at |Road Atlanta, with Devereux winning again at Carbondale, with a surprise challenge from Greg Woodard. Despite protests that the cars driven by Soveral and Devereux were illegal, Hodges-Walter Racing and Devereux maintained that the cars were legal to the letter and spirit of the regulations. After the cars were declared legal before the Round of England, it appeared some of the other teams had caught up to Hodges-Walter Racing. Devereux qualified off the front row for the first time, but was the quickest car on the track when he was eliminated by Chris Johaanes.

The remainder of the European tour demonstrated that Devereux could very easily control races from the front by opening up huge leads early on, however he was plagued by bad luck or mechanical failure at every race except the Karjala Grand Prix. Devereux admitted that he was not optimistic he could win Karjala due to his starting position, but still thought that a good result was possible. After being eliminated on lap 2, however, he refused to talk to reporters and kept his helmet on during the entire walk back to the paddock. Russia was another race that Devereux dominated only to have a slow pitstop and a puncture late in the race which dropped him to 8th. After Russia, he declared that he could have won every race but Karjala during the 2012 season. Devereux led every lap at the Round of Wales.

He seemed indifferent to criticism thrown at him that he was perhaps pushing too hard, which supposedly caused most of his problems. Despite missing the pole for the Round of Wales, Devereux made a very risky start and blasted past teammate and pole sitter Luciano Soveral in the first corner and never looked back, leading every single lap and winning the race by 9 seconds. This victory was especially sweet as Devereux had recently gotten married.

Soveral was reportedly not happy with the pass in turn 1, to which Devereux replied; "He lost the lead, why should he be happy?".

Devereux entered the Round of Quebec feeling optimistic, however, after turning Mathias Taube, he was given an Active Time Penalty. Devereux refused to accept the blame for the collision with Taube. "He exited so slowly, it was like he was holding me up so the car behind could get by. I don't know why he wanted to do that". TM Master Cup series pundit Lance Andrews criticized Devereux, calling Devereux "an idiot" unless he hadn't seen replays. Devereux still logged a solid points finish in Quebec, coming home 8th.

A cut tire late in the 2012 Round of Ohio left Devereux with an unsatisfying 18th place finish, after he ran solidly in the top-10 for most of the event. Devereux won his fourth race of the 2012 campaign after a photo finish with teammate Soveral at Indianapolis, a feat that had not been done since 2006.

Personal
Devereux has a sister, Sabine, who owns a TM Europe team. Sabine Devereux's team, Equipe D1, is currently leading the championship with Mélanie Clévenot.

Devereux is known to be a very private person off the track, and discloses few of his personal details with the media. He married his longtime girlfriend Lise after the 2012 Round of Russia.

Article About Devereux in 2010
Adrien Devereux, of Lyon, France, does not have the racing resume one would expect of a TM Master Cup series driver. Devereux is one of two French drivers that currently competes in the TM Master Cup series full-time, the other being Jacques Bouvier. But unlike Bouvier, who had no interest in single-seater racing, Adrien Devereux made a serious attempt at the road to Formula A. Devereux was a French karting champion in 2003 and 2004. In 2004 he made his first Formula Gasnier start, where the only impressions he made were on the gearboxes of his competition after a rookie error caused a massive first-corner pileup in wet conditions.

Despite this error, Devereux was urged to join the Equipe Moreau team in 2005 for a full tilt at Formula Gasnier -- reportedly due to sponsor pressure to have two French drivers. Devereux was chosen due to his relationship with the team in the past, despite his disasterous debut with the team. The team cared more about his nationality and his image rather than his ability. Despite carrying the German variant of the name 'Adrien', which was given to him in honor of a maternal grandfather, Devereux was often billed as 'Adrien Devereux', against his wishes.

Devereux started eight of the ten Formula Gasnier races in 2005, the two he missed were due to a controversial collision at Nogaro, in which Devereux collided with Miguel Romero, eliminating both. Devereux scored 21 points for Equipe Moreau -- more than they had in the past two years combined, and these efforts landed him a drive in French Formula C, with TRT Grand Prix, which carried the new and potent Calton-Morel engine. His Formula C results were nothing short of disastrous, after six races, he scored four points next to his teammate's twenty-nine, and had retired from four races, all of which due to crashes, however only one of those crashes was of Devereux's own doing.

He was promptly released from TRT, after which Devereux publicly stated that he had enough of the politics and blatant team orders of Formula racing. However, it was his connections with Calton-Morel that landed him a career in the silhouette-stock cars that were all the rage in the United States, and had begun to appear in Europe.

Devereux attended his first TM Master Cup series race in 1999, when the teenaged Devereux became enamored with racing cars. The 1999 Karjala Grand Prix, originally a battle between American and Soviet racing drivers in the middle of a Finnish forest, had hooked him on his racing career. Following the Cold War, the Karjala Grand Prix had become a battle between American and European drivers and teams, driving under American regulations. Towards the late 1990s, the race had been largely a battle between American and European teams, rather than drivers.

As Calton-Morel, an automotive company run by British motorsport mogul John Calton and the engineering excellence of the American brothers Sam and Paul Morel, began to make its foray into TM Master Cup series racing in 2006, Adrien Devereux migrated Stateside, running sportscars in the States for Paul Morel's team in 2007.

The CM connections landed him a drive in the RROL, a lesser-known feeder category to the TM Master Cup series, with Sam Morel's Research and Development team, alongside Englishman Kirk Sigurd. While he was not expected to perform well, he took the RROL championship in 2008 by a convincing margin while his teammate struggled. Devereux was quick to gloat over his championship, claiming; "Formula A missed out on my talents. It's okay, I'll be there to race in front of my home crowd soon enough, in cars that take real talent to drive."

Devereux's attitude continually annoyed some of his competition, but others found his attitude just what was needed in order to succeed at the Master Cup level. In 2008, his lone TMMC (accepted abbreviation for TM Master Cup series) qualification being in the season finale at Decatur, where he outpaced his car owner, Sam Morel, and his teammate, Tom Delgado.

He returned to the RROL in 2009, where collisions and mechanical failures left him 4th in the RROL championship, but what impressed TM Master Cup series team owners most was his part-time outings in Sam Morel's extra car, liveried in the traditional black, orange, and purple of Calton-Morel. Devereux outpaced Morel and Delgado in all of his attempts, often being the only one of the trio to qualify whenever the #96 car he drove was on the entry list. Devereux's 2009 TM Master Cup series efforts garnered attention from many team bosses in the paddock.

During the 2009 Karjala Grand Prix, Devereux qualified a fine 4th, the highest for a French driver ever in that race. His race was marred when he made an ambitious dive for the lead in the first corner, tapped the back of current Formula A driver Hans Eichel's car, sending Eichel spinning in front of the entire field. Amazingly, Eichel's spinning #12 Saar was only collected by ... his teammates, Chris Allen and Chris Johaanes. Devereux was reprimanded for his recklessness after the race. Devereux himself was unapologetic, saying to the British press;

"This is the biggest race of my life, and normally in these cars, if you bump someone coming out of a corner, if they have enough talent they can save the car and continue. Guess those Formula A guys aren't so good after all, I barely touched him. If it had been Leonid Roderick or Tony Durbin I did that to there would not have been a crash and we would have been 3 wide into the Madigan corner."

Later in the season, he showed his promise when he finished second to superspeedway master Scott Bates on the Canadian Blue Ridge, but his result was somewhat overshadowed by a controversial pitlane incident between Team Saar USA's Ryan Nawrocki and the Volpi Racing Team's Alexis Rainsford. Rainsford was a serious contender to repeat as series champion, and Nawrocki's teammate, Tony Durbin, was also a contender for the title. The ensuing chaos between the two teams allowed fellow American Leonid Roderick to take his 4th TM Master Cup two weeks later.

Adrien Devereux, though, had been announced as the second driver on the Hodges-Walter Racing team, owned by Welshman Alan Hodges and American Carl Walter. Devereux would start the 2010 TM Master Cup series season in the #26 Calton-Morel Corsair alongside two Karjala-winning teammates -- Alan Hodges in car #13, and a fan-favorite, "The Rockstar" Danny Savin in car #91. Despite the vastly superior experience of Hodges and Savin, Devereux boldly said in the press that he will defeat Hodges and Savin on the track.

"I can beat them both on a regular basis. I know I can do it and Alan [Hodges], Carl [Walter], and Calton-Morel have given me the car to do it. I am happy the car is also in blue as well. Les Bleus can find the winner's podium soon in the TM Master Cup series. Multiple times."

Devereux's car carries Haas Incorporated (fictional sponsor) sponsorship, and thus carries the dark blue, black, and orange of the company. Alan Hodges only responded that it was Devereux's self-confidence that led to his signing. Hodges is the first driver to win a TM Master Cup series race who did not race as an American driver.

Devereux quickly raised the ire of some of his competitors on the track, with Finnish driver Arto Kekkonen calling Devereux; "unreasonably reckless" during practice for the first race of the 2010 season, the Round of Japan at the Twin Ring Motegi. Devereux fired back at Kekkonen, saying that Kekkonen; "should know that this kind of racing involves running side by side and taking any opportunity to pass. I am practicing how to pass him. If he doesn't like it then he can go back to rally, because nobody ever passes anyone over there."

2008 TM Master Cup series champion Alexis Rainsford, the first ever female champion, was more congratulatory of Devereux, saying that the Frenchman; "will be a lot of fun to race against, because he and I both race to win."

For Rookie of the Year, Adrien Devereux is pitted against the likes of 18-year-old Ethan Everett, who scored a win last season, but is still eligible for Rookie of the Year since he did not make enough starts in 2009. Everett is driving for Team Saar USA, arguably the best team on the grid. Jacques Bouvier, the 2009 TM Lights champion, is the other French driver on the grid. Bouvier drives for the Flare Motorsports team, which is the Lenard team in the TM Master Cup series. Flare has not been regarded very highly in the press in the past few seasons, an embarrassing fall from grace for the once potent Lenard factory team.

Devereux had to qualify for the race through a qualifying race, which he managed to do quite easily. Teammate Savin also managed to make it through the other race. Alan Hodges was exempt from the qualifying race. During the actual race, a random mechanical failure on Canadian Zach Duff's car held up most of the field. Duff's teammate, Alexis Rainsford, went on to win the race (for her first win on an oval) after a fierce duel with Arto Kekkonen and Independent's Trophy contender Cyrus LaTerza at the end of the race. Devereux's team made a poor pit stop, leaving him 27th of 39 starters.

His second outing, in the Round of Australia at Barbagallo, though, backed up all of his preseason boasting, where Devereux easily made it through qualifying, started 2nd on the grid, and easily dominated the race, leading 44 of 51 laps after snatching the lead on the first lap. Devereux marked the first time a French driver won a TM Master Cup series race. Teammate Danny Savin finished 40th of 41 cars after an early engine failure, and Alan Hodges had a very anonymous race, finishing 13th.

Devereux was quoted as saying; "I was serious when I said I was going to beat my teammates in the preseason. They better step it up."

Alan Hodges found Devereux's comments amusing, saying the Frenchman; "Keeps team harmony behind closed doors. He has a way of motivating me in a way I've never had before. So look out Adrien, I'm coming!"

Alexis Rainsford left Australia still leading the championship, scoring a 4th place in Australia. Rainsford, normally the Queen of Road Courses, suffered from slow pitwork, after which she admitted Devereux was probably not going to be caught.

"Adrien was unstoppable out there, and the Saars are way faster than we are down the straights, so fourth was probably the best we could manage." she said after the race.

Devereux enters round 3 of the TM Master Cup series championship 6th in the points, 38 points off Alexis Rainsford's lead. 38 points, with the TM Master Cup series points system, is not a very large margin at all, and can be overcome in one race. The third round of the TM Master Cup series took place in Brazil, on a high-speed-but-still-very-tricky 1 mile oval originally built for Indycar racing. With Brazilian driver Carlos Donzelo on pole, and Devereux down in 13th, it remains to be seen if the French rookie continues to back up his talk with more fantastic drives.