Yesterday I was in a conversation about the amount of German drivers on the grid at the moment and remembered how many solid French drivers were in the F1 field from late 60's through to early 80's.

There was Depailler, Jabouille, Arnoux, Prost, Laffite, Jarier, Beltoise, Pironi and Cervert. All of them bar Jarier were race winners.

Is this an example of how good the French oil companies were in sponsoring young talent or was there a particularly high interest in F1 from France at the time?

Their record as far as French drivers in that period go was quite extraordinary considering there was a similarly high number of Italian drivers entering F1 throughout the 80's, and with one or two exceptions, they were awful.