Jean-Pierre LeClerq is the Principal of the International Race School.
History[]
Early History[]
At some stage, Jean-Pierre LeClerq became a teacher at the International Race School for aspiring hover car racers. During his time working at the Race School, LeClerq taught the future pro racer Alessandro Romba, and eventually became the school's principal.
After Ariel Piper won her regional races that enabled her to qualify for entry into the Race School, LeClerq refused to admit her, believing there was no place for women in professional hover car races. However, the Australian Court overruled the decision, forcing LeClerq to enroll her to as a student.
Unwilling to accept the potential of female racers, LeClerq conspired to make Ariel's time at the Race School as tough as possible in order to make her quit or unfit to continue, and recruited Wernold Smythe of the Parts and Equipment Department to provide her with faulty equipment.
Hover Car Racer[]
On the first day of the school year, LeClerq welcomed the new students and gave a short speech about how the year would progress, during which he noted for the sake of the present reporters the upheavals that had already occurred (Ariel's enrollment). When his speech was over, LeClerq surprised the students and reporters by inviting the visiting Romba onto the stage.
Before the School's season of racing began, LeClerq and Smythe's initiated their plan to remove Ariel from the school by having the latter provide Ariel with some improperly-charged magneto drives and a bad batch of thinned coolant, and shortly before Race 1, Smythe sent a computer virus to the Pied Piper to remove Ariel's control of her car. Though Ariel nearly crashed and lost the Piper, she was saved thanks to Jason Chaser's intervention.
Almost mid-way into the racing season, LeClerq called an assembly to inform the students about several students. First, LeClerq was excited to announce that whereas the International Racing School was previously offered two places in the New York Masters' Challenger Race at the end of the year, they had instead been offered four places. LeClerq then went on to note the format of that year's Sponsors' Tournament as a series of match races, and the decision to cancel Races 23 and 24 due to the inclement weather.
During the course of the Sponsors' Tournament, Barnaby Becker's navigator/mech chief Guido Moralez was caught draining the power of Team Argonaut's magneto drives, and so LeClerq and Smythe found it more difficult to arrange faulty parts for Ariel in subsequent races. Furthermore, LeClerq was furious when Jason gave Ariel the opportunity to humiliate Fabian during an exhibition race in Italy and garnered her a lot of support from women around the world as a result.
Early on the morning of Race 50, LeClerq met Smythe in the darkness of the schoolgrounds. LeClerq congratulated Smythe on slowing Ariel's rise up the championship ladder, but that she still had a chance of finishing in the top four and going to race in New York, which he did not want. Despite the firewall that had been placed in Ariel's pit machine recently, Smythe was certain that he could make a new virus that would bring down her machine, and LeClerq ordered him to make it happen.
However, their conversation was overheard by Jason, who warned Ariel about the impending attack lead her and her mech chief to install a new firewall. Thus, when Smythe sent the virus to attack the pit machine, it was blocked and instead attacked the school's power grid, resulting in a power cut that forced a manual pit stop from the remaining racers. After the race, investigations into the power cut led back to Smythe, and when he was confronted by Stanislaus Calder, he quickly confessed and revealed LeClerq's plot to end Ariel's racing career. Though LeClerq protested the accusation, he was quickly determined to be guilty and so was fired from the International Racing School.
Personality[]
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Trivia[]
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