DAMS — racing today as DAMS Lucas Oil — is one of the most decorated names in single-seater motorsport, a French team whose junior-formula pedigree stretches back to the late 1980s. Founded in 1988 near Le Mans, DAMS has been a fixture of the FIA Formula 2 grid since the championship's launch in 2017, contesting all ten seasons through 2026, and in 2025 expanded into FIA Formula 3. Across the years roughly 22 drivers have raced under its banner. Its crowning F2 achievement came in 2019, when the squad lifted the Teams' Championship.
Origins
DAMS was founded in 1988 by Jean-Paul Driot together with former Formula One driver René Arnoux. The name is an acronym: Driot-Arnoux Motor Sport — though over time it has also been rendered as "Driot Associés Motor Sport." The team made its competitive debut the following year in the International Formula 3000 championship, the top step of the single-seater ladder at the time, and quickly became a benchmark operation. In F3000 DAMS collected four teams' titles and three drivers' crowns, the latter with Erik Comas, Olivier Panis and Jean-Christophe Boullion — names that would go on to Formula 1 careers. The team is based near Le Mans, in the French motorsport heartland.
GP2/F2 pedigree
When Formula 3000 folded after 2004, its role as F1's principal feeder series passed to the GP2 Series, and DAMS continued at the front. In GP2 the team won two teams' championships (2012 and 2014) and three further drivers' titles: Romain Grosjean in 2011, Davide Valsecchi in 2012, and Jolyon Palmer in 2014 — all three drivers who reached Formula 1. In parallel, DAMS dominated the Formula Renault 3.5 / World Series, taking the drivers' title with Kevin Magnussen in 2013 and Carlos Sainz Jr. in 2014, again grooming future grand prix drivers. When GP2 was rebranded as the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2017, DAMS was on the inaugural grid and has remained ever since, making it one of the series' most experienced constructors.
2019 title
DAMS' standout Formula 2 result came in 2019, when it sealed the Teams' Championship — its maiden F2 title. The squad's driver pairing of Nicholas Latifi and Sérgio Sette Câmara amassed the points: Latifi finished runner-up in the Drivers' standings, and Sette Câmara's victory at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi clinched the teams' crown. The triumph carried deep emotion: founder Jean-Paul Driot had died on 3 August 2019 after a long battle with leukaemia, and the team dedicated the championship to him. (Note: the 2019 F2 Drivers' title was won by Nyck de Vries with ART Grand Prix — not DAMS.)
Identity
Under Driot's stewardship DAMS built a reputation as a relentless title machine across more than three decades — F3000, Formula Renault 3.5, GP3, GP2, Formula 2 and Formula E, the latter through the Renault e.dams operation Driot co-founded with Alain Prost in 2014, which won early Formula E teams' titles. The current sponsorship identity, DAMS Lucas Oil, continues that lineage. Its 2025 step up into FIA Formula 3 extends the team's footprint across both rungs of the modern F1 feeder pyramid, reinforcing a singular role: a French institution that has launched a remarkable number of drivers toward Formula 1 while collecting silverware at almost every level of single-seater racing it has entered.