After graduating from karts, Olivier raced several years in a number of junior series, including before
French Formula 3. He won a championship in Formula Renault in 1989 and finished second in French Formula 3 in 1991. He eventually found himself in
Formula 3000, and he won the series' championship there in 1993.
Formula One The 27-year-old Panis earned an F1 drive in 1994 for the French-based
Ligier team. He made his debut at
Brazil, finishing eleventh. He earned a surprise second place that season at
Hockenheim ahead of teammate
Éric Bernard, and finished 11th in the standings for the marque. He finished every race except
France. He was however disqualified in
Portugal for illegal skid block wear. at the
1995 British Grand Prix. Panis earned another surprise second place at the
1995 Australian Grand Prix, in spite of being two laps behind the leader
Damon Hill, and he also added a handful of fourths to his resume, giving him an 8th-place finish in the championship. Panis took a shock win in the
1996 Monaco Grand Prix. Starting 14th on a wet track, Panis passed other rivals on the narrow circuit, including
Martin Brundle,
Mika Häkkinen and
Johnny Herbert, and timed his change onto slick tyres perfectly. He overtook
Eddie Irvine at the Loews Hairpin and was running in third place before the
Williams-
Renault of Damon Hill and
Benetton-Renault of
Jean Alesi both hit terminal technical difficulties. One of only three to finish the race, British drivers
David Coulthard and
Johnny Herbert being the other two, Panis held off a late charge from Coulthard to win. The race finished on 75 of the 78 scheduled laps due to the two-hour time limit being reached. Panis' victory was the
Ligier team's first victory in 15 years (and their last), and it was the first French victory in a French car at Monaco in 66 years. However, it was the only highlight to his season, and he otherwise failed to do any better than 5th place in
Hungary. Panis had the potential for a big season in while driving for
Alain Prost, who had purchased Ligier. On
Bridgestone tyres, he took the tyre company's first podium at
Brazil. He was running second in
Argentina before retirement. After 6 races, he stood third in the championship thanks to another podium finish with second place in
Spain. A win could have been possible in that race had he not been held up lapping backmarkers for seven laps, losing him a total of six seconds to leader
Jacques Villeneuve. At the
1997 Canadian Grand Prix, he broke both legs in a high-speed accident, causing him to miss the next seven races of the season. His place in the team was taken by
Jarno Trulli, until he returned for the final three races of the season. He achieved sixth place at
Luxembourg and appeared to show that he had fully recovered from his accident, as he drove as well as he had done before the crash. Despite missing half of the year, he still managed 9th in the championship with 16 points. 1998 would prove to be a difficult season for Panis. He failed to score a single point for the Prost team, primarily due to a poor quality car. However, his full potential was restricted by the pins which remained in his legs, a legacy of the surgery following his crash in 1997. The highlight of the season was a ninth-place finish in
Australia, although he also ran strongly at the
1998 Canadian Grand Prix until car failure intervened. An indicator of the team's problems in 1998 was the solitary point scored by Panis' team-mate Jarno Trulli at
Spa-Francorchamps. The following year saw an improvement for the partnership. A stronger car, and unusual circumstances, saw an irregular return to form for the Frenchman. After a troubled race he still claimed 6th in
Brazil, a feat he repeated at
Hockenheim. He began to qualify much more strongly, with a third place in
France, fifth at the
Nurburgring, and sixth at
Suzuka, where he spent the first stages of the race in third. Despite the signs of a return to form in 1999, strategical errors and misfortune restricted his points tally. Irrespective of the improvements, Panis ended his relationship with the Prost team. Panis was a consideration to drive for
Williams, a team that was in a state of flux at the time, but turned it down to test for
McLaren. This helped showcase Panis to other top teams in F1, where he would regularly match the testing times of regular drivers
David Coulthard and double World Champion
Mika Häkkinen. He was rumoured to replace
David Coulthard for the
2000 Spanish Grand Prix after his plane crash, however Coulthard was cleared to race. Due to this he landed a drive with
BAR for 2001. BAR wasn't the top team he had hoped, and he finished in 14th place during both of the years he was there, scoring a total of 8 points. His highest finish for BAR was in
Brazil with fourth position. He had been fourth at his debut race for the team in
Australia but was penalised for a yellow flag infringement which added twenty five seconds to his race time and put him seventh, and enabled
Kimi Räikkönen to score a debut point. at
Indianapolis, his 150th Grand Prix. Panis left for
Toyota's racing team in 2003. He was signed to drive and provide the second-year team his knowledge, as well as help his new Brazilian teammate,
Cristiano da Matta, learn the ropes of F1. Early results were an improvement, in part because he handled the new one-lap qualifying well, but the end result wasn't much different from previous seasons, as he was 15th with 6 points. Panis remained with Toyota for 2004, his tenth season in Formula One. In early October 2004 he announced his intention to retire from racing following the
2004 Japanese Grand Prix; he planned to continue at Toyota as a test driver in 2005 and 2006. Before his retirement, he was the oldest active driver in F1 at the age of 37. 2004 saw him again score only six points, before being replaced for
Brazil by his Brazilian teammate test driver
Ricardo Zonta. Panis was the nominated third driver for Toyota in
France in 2005, but this was the last time he participated competitively at a Grand Prix weekend. On 18 September 2006, Panis announced his complete retirement from F1 in order to race in other disciplines. His final outing as a Formula 1 test driver took place at
Jerez, Spain on 14 December 2006. Panis was highly regarded for his racecraft. He was also considered by the likes of Häkkinen, who was particularly upset when Panis left the McLaren testing team to return to full-time driving, to be one of the best test-drivers in the field.
Sports cars at the
2010 1000 km of Spa. Panis returned to racing in 2008 with the
Oreca Courage team in the
Le Mans Series. He has also worked as a consultant for the
French A1 Grand Prix team and participated in the
Andros Trophy ice race. He had an appearance in an episode of
Top Gear, facing the team in an ice race, where he was jokingly referred to in the intro as 'France's second-best racing driver', presumably to
Alain Prost. In 2016, Panis formed his own
sports car racing team, Panis Barthez Compétition, alongside professional
footballer turned racing driver
Fabien Barthez. The pair entered cars in the
European Le Mans Series and the
Blancpain GT Series, overseen by
Tech 1 Racing, before Barthez stepped down at the end of 2019. Panis Racing subsequently picked up two consecutive podiums in the
LMP2 class of the
24 Hours of Le Mans, in 2020 and 2021.
TDS Racing took over from Tech 1 as operational partner in 2024, a year that also saw the team strike a sponsorship deal with
Marc VDS, one that yielded Panis its first major title: the
2025 ELMS LMP2 crown. VDS then made way for Forestier Racing in 2026. ==Racing record==