29/03/2009 Australia
05/04/2009 Malaysia
19/04/2009 China
26/04/2009 Bahrain
10/05/2009 Spain
24/05/2009 Monaco
07/06/2009 Turkey
21/06/2009 Great-Britain
12/07/2009 Germany
26/07/2009 Hungary
23/08/2009 Europe
30/08/2009 Belgium
13/09/2009 Italy
27/09/2009 Singapore
04/10/2009 Japan
18/10/2009 Brazil
01/11/2009 Abu Dhabi01 Lewis Hamilton
02 Heikki Kovalainen03 Kimi Räikkönen04 Giancarlo Fisichella(Out) Luca BadoerFelipe Massa
05 Robert Kubica06 Nick Heidfeld07 Fernando Alonso
08 Romain Grojean(Out) Nelson Piquet Jr09 Jarno Trulli10 Timo Glock11 Jaime Alguersuari
12 Sebastien Buemi(Out) S. Bourdais14 Mark Webber15 Sebastian Vettel16 Nico Rosberg17 Kazuki Nakajima20 Adrian Sutil21 Vitantonio Liuzzi22 Jenson Button23 Rubens Barrichello
01 Jenson Button95
02 Sebastian Vettel84
03 Rubens Barrichello77
04 Mark Webber69.505 Lewis Hamilton49
06 Kimi Räikkönen4807 Nico Rosberg34.5
08 Jarno Trulli32.5
09 Fernando Alonso2610 Timo Glock2411 Felipe Massa2212 Heikki Kovalainen2213 Nick Heidfeld19
14 Robert Kubica1715 Giancarlo Fisichella8
16 Sebastien Buemi617 Adrian Sutil5
18 Sebastien Bourdais219 Romain Grosjean020 Luca Badoer021 Jaime Alguersuari0
22 Kazuki Nakajima023 Nelsinho Piquet024 Vitantonio Liuzzi0
172
153.5
71
70
56.5
36
34.5
26
13
8
Räikkönen started karting at the age of 12 and enjoyed considerable success in the sport before turning to single-seater racing in 1999 for four races in British Formula Renault. He had a few outings in Formula Ford and then decided to concentrate on Formula Renault and entered the Winter Series in Britain with Manor Motorsport. He won all four events. He stayed with Manor for the 2000 season and won seven of the 10 races and was on the podium in the other three events. He also took part in three European races, winning two of them.
Such was his success that in September 2000 the Sauber team tested him at Mugello and immediately decided to sign him up for 2001 as team mate to Nick Heidfeld. It proved to be an inspired choice and Räikkönen finished sixth on his Grand Prix debut in Australia and went on to score on three more occasions (twice finishing fourth) in the midseason. McLaren decided in August to make a bid for the Finnish driver to replace Mika Hakkinen and he was signed by McLaen on a five year deal in September. In 2002 he failed to win a race but looked strong on several occasions and he won his first F1 victory in Malaysia in 2003. There would be more than 18 months of frustration with poor cars before he won again in Belgium in 2004.
In 2005 he was joined at McLaren by Juan Pablo Montoya. The team was very competitive and Räikkönen won a string of races and would have won the World Championship but for poor reliability.
There was further frustration in 2006 as the McLaren was not fast enough and Räikkönen decided to take up the offer to join Ferrari in 2007, as replacement for Michael Schumacher. The 2007 season started with a stunning pole position, fastest lap and victory in Melbourne in his first race with Ferrari - a feat not achieved since Nigel Mansell in 1989. He followed this with two podiums, but a string of four races seemed to indicate he was struggling against teammate Felipe Massa, who was profiting from detailed advice from Michael Schumacher, while Räikkönen seemed to disdain. This turned round quickly with successive wins in France and Britain as the Finn at last seemed comfortable with his car.
After 10 of the 16 races, Räikkönen was only fourth in the Championship standings behind the McLaren pair of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, and Massa, 18 points behind Hamilton. From then on, he was never off the podium, whittling away at Hamilton's lead and winning in Belgium. But with only two races to go, victory over the McLaren steamroller still looked only an outside chance. The turning point was the Chinese race, which Räikkönen won while Hamilton slid off in the pit entry gravel trap and failed to finish. That made the final race in Brazil the decider, Räikkönen three points behind Hamilton and seven behind Alonso.
Victory at Interlagos gave the Finn the World Championship by a single points from Hamilton and Alonso, having won six races and scored six other podium places.
From Sao Paulo, Massa arrives in Formula 2 after four seasons in motor racing, although his karting career spanned a seven year period beginning in 1990 when he was nine years old. In 1998 Massa was able to test a Brazilian Formula Chevrolet Championship for Riccardo Tedeschi, a family friend, and he did well enough to be offered a ride in the series that year. He finished fifth but stayed on the following season and won the title.
He then took the decision to go to Europe and in 2000 won both the Italian and European Formula Renault Championships at his first attempt. Rather than moving to Formula 3 he took the decision to join Draco Racing in the European Formula 3000 series. He was completely dominant, winning six of eight races and in September did his first tests for the Sauber team, which was looking for a replacement for Kimi Räikkönen.
He impressed the team and was signed up to be Nick Heidfeld's team mate in 2002 and did well but was replaced by Sauber at the end of the year. Massa had talks about joining Jordan but eventually settled for the job of being the second test driver at Ferrari in 2003. He returned to Sauber in 2004 and 2005 and did sufficiently well to be hired by Ferrari for 2006. Paired with Michael Schumacher, Massa did a solid job and was rewarded with his first GP victory in Turkey and another win in Brazil. This took him to third in the World Championship.
Heidfeld began racing in 1988 and in 1994 he moved into cars in Formula Ford 1600. He won eight of the nine races inhis first year of competition and the following year finished second in the German national championship. This led to a drive in Formula 3 in 1996. He won three races in his first season and the following year won the title and did his first tests with the McLaren Mercedes team, thanks to the support of the German car manufacturer.
In 1998 he continued to do McLaren testing and moved into Formula 3000 with the West Junior Team (a McLaren subsidiary) and won three races but failed to win the title as a result of losing pole position at the final race as the result of a mistake by the team over fuel. He was forced to start at the back of the grid and despite a strong drive lost the title to Juan-Pablo Montoya.
In 1999 remained the McLaren test driver and stayed in Formula 3000. He won four races and the F3000 title. He was also a member of the Mercedes team at Le Mans until the cars were withdrawn because of their tendency to flip.
In 2000 he joined Prost Grand Prix but failed to make much of an impression. He signed a three-year deal with Sauber and stayed with the team until the end of 2003 when he moved on to the struggling Jordan team. However support from BMW helped him to win the second Williams seat in 2005.
He did well, finishing second at Monaco and the Nurburgring, and at the end of the year was signed to drive for the BMW Sauber operation in 2006. Things did not go well at the start of the year but Heidfeld got a wake-up call when the team replaced Jacques Villeneuve with Robert Kubica and ended up on the podium in Hungary and ninth in the World Championship.
Kubica was mad about speed when he was just a toddler and at four talked his father into buying him a tiny off-road vehicle. He then moved on to karts at seven but could not get a licence to race until he was 10 and so had to make do with running around in car parks. He then did three years of racing in Poland before his father decided to take him international.
After three races they ran out of money but the CRG kart company recognised his talent and took him on to test and race. That year he became the first foreign driver to win the Italian national kart championship and was second in the European series and he remained a top level kart racer until switching to cars in 2001. He was signed up as a member of the Renault Development Driver programme and in 2002 finished runner-up in the Italian Formula Renault series and seventh in the European series. He was due to move up to the Formula 3 Euroseries in 2003 but was a passenger in a serious road accident and suffered serious arm injuries which meant that he had 18 titanium bolts in his arm.
Despite this he entered the Euroseries with Prema Powerteam and won his first race and was 12th at the end of the year, despite his late start. In 2004 he moved to ASL Mucke Motorsport but it was a poor year and was dropped by Renault. He decided to race in the Renault World Series in 2005 with the Epsilon Euskadi team and dominated the championship and so earned an F1 test drive with Renault and did so well in that test that three weeks later he was signed by the BMW Sauber F1 Team to be its test driver in 2006. His impressive showings in Friday testing at races and in private tests led BMW to decide to drop Jacques Villeneuve before the Hungarian Grand Prix. Kubica set tongues wagging when he qualified ninth and raced to seventh before his car was excluded for being fractionally underweight - a disappointment for the ambitious Pole. At Monza - his third race - he led the Grand Prix and finished third. This impressive work led to him being retained by the team in 2007.
Alonso's father built him a kart when he was only two years old but it was not until he was 13 that he was able to do any serious racing. He won the Spanish cadet national kart title in 1994. Two years later he won the World Junior Karting title and he continued in karts until 1999 when he moved into car racing in the Nissan Open series in Spain, driving for former F1 driver Adrian Campos's team. He won the title at his first attempt and then moved into Formula 3000 with backing from Telefonica. He raced for Team Astromega and won the Spa race and finished fourth in the series. He was signed to a management contract by Flavio Briatore and as a result was soon named as a Minardi test driver and in 2001 became the number one driver for the team, which had just been bought by Australia's Paul Stoddart.
After an impressive first season Alonso took the decision to become the Renault test driver in 2002, in the knowledge that he would graduate to the race team in 2003. He joined Renault as expected and with the impressive R23 was able to well and won his first victory in Hungary in August. Life was rather more difficult in 2004 but in 2005 he was a strong challenger early in the season and then settled back to defend a World Championship lead. He did this with much maturity and as a result won the World Championship, becoming the youngest ever F1 title winner. Within a couple of months, however, it was announced that he would be moving to McLaren in 2007. Despite this Alonso stayed on at Renault in 2006 and won the world title for a second time.
The move to McLaren did not prove a success. Alonso quickly found himself overshadowed by new kid on the block, Lewis Hamilton, his own teammate. Furthermore he was implicated in a spy scandal when it was revealed that Ferrari information had been leaked to McLaren. Four wins were not enough to get the Championship and, once the season was over, he returned to Renault.This was not a success and he was soon being linked to a drive at Ferrari in 2009.
Luca Badoer (born 25 January 1971) is an Italian Formula One driver who has raced for the Scuderia Italia, Minardi, Forti Corse and most recently, Ferrari teams. In addition to his racing duties, Badoer has been active as one of the test and reserve drivers for Ferrari since 1997 and is currently standing in for Ferrari's regular race driver Felipe Massa, starting at the 2009 European Grand Prix, after the Brazilian was injured during qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix and his original replacement, Michael Schumacher, pulled out due to injury.
Romain Grosjean (born April 17, 1986 in Geneva, Switzerland) holds dual nationality from France and Switzerland, but competes under a French racing licence. He was the 2007 Formula Three Euroseries drivers' champion and the inaugural GP2 Asia Series champion.
Promoted to a race seat alongside Fernando Alonso for August's European Grand Prix after team drop Nelson Piquet. Grosjean won all ten rounds of the 2003 Swiss Formula Renault 1.6 championship and moved to the French Formula Renault championship for 2004. He was seventh in that first season with one win and champion in 2005 with ten victories. Grosjean also appeared in the Formula Renault Eurocup and finished on the podium twice in Valencia. With his results and potential in the Formula Renault series, Romain joined the Renault Driver Development for the continuation of is career.
The 2008 season has seen Piquet promoted to the Renault Formula One race team to drive alongside returning double World Champion Fernando Alonso. It is reported that he gained preference for the seat over Heikki Kovalainen as Kovalainen was seen as a potential rival to Alonso and such a challenge to Alonso could damage the team.
The first race of the 2008 season in Australia saw Piquet start 21st and damage his car in a collision on the opening lap, before ultimately retiring on lap 31. This was exactly the same result as his father achieved in his first race. At the Malaysian Grand Prix he started from 13th on the grid and went on to finish 11th. He started the Bahrain Grand Prix from 14th but retired with a gearbox problem after his second pit stop. Piquet qualified in 10th for the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, taking part in the first top 10 qualifying session of his career. However, his race ended on lap seven after colliding with Sébastien Bourdais in an attempt to overtake. The Turkish Grand Prix saw him qualify 17th and finish the race 15th. His problems were further compounded with a pair of non-finishes when he crashed out at Monaco after failing to get to grips with the damp conditions, and spun off while chasing team-mate Alonso in Canada, before ultimately retiring on lap 42 with brake failure.
Piquet has come under increasing pressure from his Renault team over the course of the 2008 season, and there has been speculation that Piquet will lose his race seat if he does not up his game.Renault have done nothing to quell the rumours by publicly urging him to improve after the Turkish Grand Prix and suggesting after Monaco that he lacks confidence. Piquet scored his first points in F1 with a 7th place finish at the 2008 French Grand Prix passing his twice-World Champion team mate Fernando Alonso in the last few laps. In the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Piquet was at one point was laying in fourth place, having passed his team mate who was on old tyres. Piquet aquaplaned and spun out on lap 36 along with several other top runners as the wet conditions reached their worst. A race later, however, at the German Grand Prix, he finished ahead of the Ferrari of Felipe Massa to claim second place to Mclaren's Lewis Hamilton and his first podium finish, after - with a stroke of luck - being only driver on one-stop strategy and this, with the help of the Safety Car segment gained him several positions.
Nico Rosberg grew up with motor racing, the son of 1982 World Champion Keke Rosberg. He grew up visiting DTM races, in which his father raced in the 1990s. At the age of 10 Rosberg tried out a kart for the first time at a track in the south of France and in 1996 he began competing in the regional mini-kart series. He won the French title in 1997 and soon became a successful kart racer at international level. In 2002 he switched to cars, competing in the Formula BMW series, winning nine races and the title. At the end of his first season in cars he tested for the Williams-BMW team, becoming the youngest ever F1 driver. He then moved up to Formula 3 with his father's Team Rosberg and won a race at Le Mans. He ended the year as the second best rookie of the year (behind Christian Klien). At the end of the year Williams gave him another test but he stayed in European F3 in 2004, winning three races and finishing fourth overall. Moving up to GP2 in 2005, he joined the ART Grand Prix operation and quickly found his feet and was soon winning races. He was hired to be the second test driver at Williams and at the end of the year was confirmed as Mark Webber's team mate at Williams in 2006.
The year started well but as the races progressed Rosberg had too many accidents but he was retained in 2007 alongside Alexander Wurz.
It was announced on 9 October 2007 that following the retirement of Alexander Wurz, Nakajima would race for Williams in the season finale in Brazil. Nakajima finished tenth in the race, setting the fifth fastest lap quicker than his team-mate Nico Rosberg, who finished fourth. At his first pit stop, Nakajima overshot his box and hit two of his mechanics. The mechanics were taken to hospital for precautionary checks. Nakajima apologised for the error: First of all I would say I'm really sorry that some of my mechanics were injured during my pitstop and that I hope they're OK. It was a good first race for me but it was slightly overshadowed.
Patrick Head commented: Kazuki drove well on his debut. His lap times were impressive and he's set a marker for a future in Formula One. Some of our mechanics were injured today, they're having some checks done now and we send our best wishes to them.
On 7 November it was confirmed by Williams that Nakajima would partner Rosberg at the Williams team for the 2008 season. He had a successful start to 2008 at the Australian Grand Prix, finishing 7th but promoted to 6th after Rubens Barrichello was disqualified. He then finished 7th in the Spanish Grand Prix, having outqualified his teammate. A first-corner incident with Giancarlo Fisichella at Istanbul forced him to retire. Nakajima scored two points at Monaco where no Japanese Formula One driver had previously scored a point, and retired from the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix after hitting the pit wall when pitting for a new front wing. Kazuki scored another point at the 2008 British Grand Prix.
After a successful spell in karting Buemi graduated to single-seaters and found success in the German Formula BMW championship. After finishing the 2004 season third overall he came second the following year. During 2005 Buemi also made a one-off appearance in Formula 3, competing in a round of the Spanish series.
In 2006 Buemi moved up to Formula 3 full-time. At the end of the year he was 12th overall in the Formula 3 Euroseries. 2007 brought a major improvement as he stayed in the class and finished the season as runner-up. Between Formula 3 commitments Buemi also helped the Swiss team to eighth place in the A1 Grand Prix series.
Buemi showed his ability during 2007 when he was called upon by the ART Grand Prix team to fill the seat vacated by their injured driver, Michael Ammermüller. Buemi stood in at the Monaco Grand Prix support race and demonstrated great composure around the tricky street circuit by qualifying fourth and finishing seventh.
Arden International recruited Buemi to drive for the team in the 2008 GP2 Asia championship and he finished the series in runner-up spot, with four second places and a single victory. He stayed with the team for the main GP2 championship in 2008, scoring his debut win in the French sprint race. Buemi recorded another victory, in Hungary, on his way to sixth overall in the standings.
Buemi was signed to the Red Bull Young Driver Programme in 2005. In 2008 he was named as the team’s official test ad reserve driver in Formula 1. Although he didn’t get the chance to race in a Grand Prix, he did make an appearance in Japan driving the medical car. In January, 2009, Buemi was confirmed as a race driver for Red Bull’s sister team, Toro Rosso. It was with the same team that Sebastian Vettel started his Grand Prix career. The young German driver went on to score a sensational victory in the 2008 Italian Grand Prix and has since moved up to the Red Bull team, partnering Mark Webber. Red Bull will be hoping that Buemi’s rise to the top is just as meteoric.
The son of a motorcycle dealer Webber started out in motocross but then switched to karts but he was more interested in other sports in his teenage years and although he watched F1 on the television it was not until 1993 that he began to get serious about the sport and won the New South Wales state karting championship. The following year he moved into Formula Ford and ran his own team and at the end of 1995 he went to Europe and talked his way into a test with Van Diemen and was asked if he would like to race a works car in the Formula Ford Festival. He did well and Ralf Firman offered him a drive for 1996. He did not win the title but he did win the all-important Festival at the end of the year. He did a deal to drive for Alan Docking in the British F3 series but struggled for money. Despite this he won at Brands Hatch and this helped him to find support from Australian rugby legend David Campese, who produced some much needed finance in the midseason.
His performance attarcted the attention of Mercedes-Benz motorsport boss Norbert Haug and having no money for 1998 Webber decided to join the Mercedes-Benz sportscar team as team mate to Bernd Schneider. This gave him many miles of invaluable testing in powerful machinery but Webber decided to call it a day in 1999 after he survived not one but two flips at 185mph at the Le Mans 24 Hours because of an aerodynamic problem. Webber decided to try to get into F1 and was introduced to Paul Stoddart by Eddie Jordan. Stoddart was building up his Formula 3000 team and agreed to finance Webber for the 2000 season and he finished third in the championship. This led to a testing deal with the Benetton F1 team and a drive in 2001 with the Super Nova Racing F3000 team. Webber fought for the title with Justin Wilson but lost out at the end of the year but despite this he was signed to drive for Minardi (now owned by Stoddart) in 2002. Webber's debut in Australia was a miraculous affair with the Minardi coming home in the points for a fairytale finish. The rest of the year underlined Webber's promise and he was duly signed by Jaguar Racing for 2003.
There followed two frustrating seasons with the team before Webber was hired by BMW Williams for 2005. The timing was bad as Williams and BMW were about to split and performance dropped off, although Webber finished third at Monaco. He stayed with the team in 2006 but it was a tough year with the team suffering from reliability problems. Webber was in a position to win at Monaco but the car failed him and at the end of the year he signed for Red Bull Racing for 2007.
Even in the brief moments that he was a Minardi driver in 1997, much was expected of Jarno Trulli by those who knew of his speed and panache in karting where he had won national, European and, ultimately, world championships.
The previous year had marked only his first full season in cars, after graduation to six races in German F3 midway through 1995. In 1996 his press-on style earned him six victories and a clear-cut title. He was obviously a man going places.
Benetton chief Flavio Briatore had stepped in with a management contract, and after testing a Benetton, Trulli was placed with Minardi for his 1997 F1 debut. His first races revealed his flowing style, and when Prost's Olivier Panis broke his legs in Montreal in June, team owner Alain Prost lost no time in snapping up the young Italian as the Frenchman's stand-in. Trulli responded well, leading with complete confidence for half of the Austrian GP, and then finishing fourth in the German after tricking no less a person than World Champion-elect Jacques Villeneuve into a mistake.
Trulli remained with Prost for the following two seasons, but the team had lost momentum once again and he was consigned to an uphill struggle with an uncompetitive car. Having come so far, so soon, in 1997, he found the lack of success particularly tough to endure and his relationship with the team went through a bad patch. This was unfortunate, for when the chance presented itself, as it did in the extraordinary GP of Europe at the Nurburgring, Trulli stayed cool under serious pressure from Rubens Barrichello and brought his Prost AP02 home an excellent, though fortunate, second behind Johnny Herbert's victorious Stewart-Ford.
He moved to Jordan in 2000. He stayed two years but Jordan's performance had peaked and there were no major results. In an effort to revive his flagging career Trulli moved to Renault in 2002 but the team was rather a disappointment and Trulli went into 2003 looking for something to reignite the spark that had once burned so brightly. In 2004 however he was a changed man and this culminated in a dominant victory at Monaco. Soon afterwards Renault decided not to re-sign him for 2005. Trulli lost motivation and scored no major results for the rest of the year. He signed for Toyota and indeed began racing for the team at the end of 2004 after Renault decided to replace him with Jacques Villenuve. He stayed with Toyota in 2005 and 2006 but remained inconsistent, blindingly quick one day and off the pace the next. He stays at Toyota in 2007.
Glock began racing at the age of 15 in karting and in 2000 switched to cars in the Formula BMW-ADAC Junior Cup, which he won. He graduated to the main championship the following year and won that as well and so jumped into Formula 3 in Germany in 2002 with Opel Team KMS. He finished third in the series and moved to the new Formula 3 Euroseries in 2003, winning three races and finishing third in the series. In 2004 he was signed up to be third driver for the Jordan F1 team and took over the second car in Canada when Giorgio Pantano had a contractual dispute with the team. He finished seventh and when Pantano left the team Glock took over until the end of the year. he hoped to land a fulltime drive in F1 in 2005 but ended up in the United States where he raced for Rocketsports Racing in the Champ Car series. Despite good opportunities in America for 2006 Glock opted to return to Europe to race for BCN Competicion in the GP2 series, hoping that this would help him to get back into F1.
Sébastien Bourdais was born on 28th February 1979 in Le Mans, the cradle of endurance auto racing and Queen of the mythic 24 hour race since 1923. Sébastien's own cradle was probably in the form of a bucket seat: Plunged into the auto-racing environment through his native region and through his father Patrick, who had his own minor success on four wheels (an amateur, Patrick kept the flame of competition alive through rally-racing and especially endurance he took part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans between 1993 and 1997), Sébastien received his first bucket-seat, behind the wheel of a Kart, in 1989.
"I remember like it was yesterday the day I gave him his first Kart," Patrick recalls, "It was his birthday, on the Alain Prost circuit at Le Mans. I sensed that he was truly gifted from his first few laps, since he was immediately within the best lowest times. His trajectories were very fluid and he already had a good analysis of his machine."
The results were not long in coming and did not make a liar out of Patrick: Champion of the Maine Bretagne league in 1991, 4th in the France Cadets Championship in 1993, Sébastien was climbing the steps of the national hierarchy four wheels at a time.
Sebastian Vettel (born July 3, 1987 in Heppenheim) is a German race car driver. He is currently contracted to the Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula One team alongside Sébastien Bourdais after replacing Scott Speed on July 31, 2007. He had been the third (test and reserve) driver for the BMW Sauber Formula One team from the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix onwards. By taking part in Friday practice for the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, Vettel became the youngest ever Formula One driver to drive at a Grand Prix meeting, at 19 years and 53 days.
On Sunday September 30, 2007, during the Japanese Grand Prix Vettel became the youngest driver to lead a race in Formula One history. (Mike Thackwell remains the youngest driver to compete in a championship Grand Prix race; Nico Rosberg the youngest to drive an F1 car in private testing). He also became the quickest driver to get a fine in F1, being fined $1,000 nine seconds into his career, after speeding in the pitlane. He also became the sixth youngest driver to start a Grand Prix, the youngest driver to score points in a Grand Prix and lead a Grand Prix.
Barrichello scored his first World Championship point at Suzuka where he finished fifth, just ahead of his new team mate Eddie Irvine.
The 1994 season proved to a nightmare for Barrichello after two goods results in Brazil and at the Pacific GP he had a huge accident in practice for the San Marino GP at Imola. Two days later Ayrton Senna, his friend and mentor, was killed. It took Barrichello several months to overcome the effects but at Spa he took pole position. A switch to Peugeot engines at the end of that year did not really help the Jordan team and in 1995 results were hard to come by although Rubens finished second in Canada. He stayed on at Jordan in 1996 but was only able to pick up a string of minor placings although these took him to eighth in the Drivers' World Championship.
The relationship with Jordan ground to a halt and Barrichello headed for the new Stewart-Ford team. He settled in quickly, taking second place behind Michael Schumacher in the rain at Monaco in what was the team's fifth race. he stayed at Stewart for three years, taking pole position at the French GP in 1999 and scoring three podiums and a number of other placings to take seventh place in the Drivers' title that year.
He then received the call to go to Ferrari as Michael Schumacher's team mate. It was a tough job but Barrichello was strong enough to cope and in July 2000 he took his first win in a weird German GP which was interrupted by a protester who wandered out on to the race track. He finished fourth in the World Championship. In the years that have followed he has been a convincing number two at Ferrari, winning when Schumacher runs into trouble or when team orders allowed him to do so. This had increased his total of wins to nine by the end of 2004.
He left Ferrari at the end of a disappointing 2005 and signed to drive alongside Jenson Button in the Honda Racing F1 team. He stayed with the team in 2007 but results were few and far between, although he returned to the podium in the wet/dry British GP in 2008.
An extraordinarily mature and composed young driver, Button combined fearsome speed with smoothness and aggression. His first taste of F1 came courtesy of McLaren late in 1999, as his prize for winning the prestigious McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver Award the previous season. That December he staggered Prost by bettering Jean Alesi's times in a 10-lap test run in Barcelona. He seemed so impressive that team owner Sir Frank Williams was prevailed upon to give him a tryout for the role of test driver, but such was Button's pace that it became a shoot-out with Brazilian Bruno Junqueira for the second race seat. Despite his youth Button won, and made a spectacular debut in Australia, where he matched (and sometimes beat) the race times of much-vaunted teammate Ralf Schumacher.
After a decent first season at Williams he was forced to move to Renault to make way for Juan Pablo Montoya. Button's two seasons at Renault were disappointing but for 2003 he signed for the BAR team, initially as team mate to Jacques Villeneuve.
Button's progress against Villeneuve was impressive and by the end of the year Villeneuve had gone and Button was the number one driver. In 2004 the BAR-Honda combination was much more successful and Jenson scored 10 podium finishes and was third in the World Championship despite failing to win a race. In the middle of the year it was announced that he would be going back to Williams in 2005 but BAR challenged the deal and the Contract Recognition Board ruled in BAR's favour. Button stayed with BAR. A year later he decided that he wanted to stay with the team in 2006 rather than go to Williams as he was contracted to do. The battle fought the previous year was thus fought in reverse with Jenson finally buying way out of the Williams deal to take up a huge offer from Honda.
It turned out to be a good decision as Williams struggled and Honda improved dramatically and in Hungary Button won his first Grand Prix victory and went on to finish sixth in the Drivers' World Championship.
Adrian Sutil's father Jorge was born in Uruguay but moved to Germany when he was 28 after winning a musical scholarship in Cologne. He went on to become the lead violinist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and a noted violin teacher. Not surprisingly, his son Adrian grew up surrounded by music and was an accomplished pianist before he discovered kart racing in 1997, when he was 14 years old. He rose quickly through the ranks to become a factory driver with Birel and then in 2002 turned to cars in the Swiss Formula Ford series - which he won. He switched to Formula BMW in 2003 and finished sixth in the German series and then jumped straight into Formula 3 in 2004 with Team Kolles. He finished 15th in the championship and sixth in the rookie standings. He stayed in the series in 2005, moving to ASM where he was Lewis Hamilton's team mate. He scored two wins and two poles but was overshadowed by Hamilton and at the end of the year decided to go to Japan to race for TOM'S in the Japanese Formula 3 series. He also did a deal to test drive on several occasions for the Midland F1 team, run by Colin Kolles, his former boss in F3. In addition he raced for A1 Team Germany in the A1 Grand Prix Series.
The connection with Kolles played an important part in Sutil being named as the second driver for the Spyker F1 team (the Midland team renamed) in 2007.
Alguersuari took over the role of reserve driver for the Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula One teams from fellow Red Bull Junior driver Hartley in the second half of the 2009 Formula One season. Less than two weeks later, race driver Sébastien Bourdais left the Toro Rosso team after the 2009 German Grand Prix and Alguersuari was immediately suspected to be his successor, despite the lack of an official confirmation. Four days later, Toro Rosso duly announced that Alguersuari would drive for the team at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. He will become the youngest ever Formula One driver at the age of 19 years and 125 days, breaking the record held by Mike Thackwell, and only the seventh teenager to start a Grand Prix.
Though a Minardi was hardly the best car in which to make an impression, Fisichella succeeded in doing so and was rented out to Eddie Jordan for 1997. His season began badly, with a serious accident in testing at Silverstone which left him to race in Melbourne with a broken knee, and another shunt in Brazil. Then teammate Ralf Schumacher turfed him off the road in Argentina as they fought over second place behind an unwell Jacques Villeneuve. At Jordan, they secretly worried that his Italian psyche would have been irreparably damaged by the setbacks. Instead, Fisico fought back, and was soon outperforming Schumacher Jnr. He was fourth at Imola, sixth at Monaco, third in Canada, and then led at Hockenheim until a puncture forced him to abandon his fight with eventual winner Gerhard Berger. He had his revenge with a stunning second place behind only Michael Schumacher on his first visit to Spa, where he had been the only driver to match the German's pace and flair during the wet opening stages. He rounded up the year with fourth place in Austria.
Jordan wanted to keep him, but manager Flavio Briatore had him attached to a long piece of elastic that bounced him into his current seat at Benetton. Sadly, however, his career has lost momentum there. 1998 brought second places at Monaco and Canada, but although he repeated the result in Montreal in 1999 the British cars lacked the pace of their Schumacher days. Fisico's desperation was all too evident when he threw away the lead of the GP of Europe by spinning off the track.
Fisichella stayed at Benetton until the end of 2001 when his contract came to an end. He moved to Jordan in 2002 but as the team was by then struggling for money he was frustrated until the start of 2003 when he pulled off an impressive, albeit fortunate, victory in Brazil. This put him in the spotlight again and he joined Sauber in 2004 and did such a good job that at the end of the year he was being chased by both Renault and Williams. He ended up signing for Renault for 2005 and had a good year in 2005, winning in Australia and helping Renault win the Constructors' title.
In the 2006 he was overshadowed by Alonso but was retained when the Spaniard quit to go to McLaren. Fisichella became lead driver at Renault along with Heikki Kovalainen. Renault was unable to repeat the success of the previous seasons however, and things were not helped when Fisichella was disqualified in Canada for passing a red light while exiting the pits. When Alonso returned to Renault for 2008, Fisichella moved to the new Force India team.
Giancarlo Fisichella signed a contract as Ferrari's driver for the remainder of the 2009 season and reserve driver for 2010 on September 3, 2009. However, Fisichella has not ruled out continuing to race for another team in 2010, saying "if there is a good option to find another seat in another team it would be good". Beginning with the 2009 Italian Grand Prix, he replaces the injured Felipe Massa for the remainder of the 2009 season.
Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton is born 7 January 1985 in Stevenage, UK. He's currently racing for the McLaren Mercedes team and is the youngest ever Formula One World Champion. He was named after American sprinter Carl Lewis.
At the age of ten Hamilton approached the McLaren team principal, Ron Dennis, at the 1995 Autosport Awards ceremony and told him "I want to race for you one day." Less than three years later, he was signed by McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, Formula Three Euroseries and GP2 championships on his way up the racing career ladder, he became a McLaren F1 driver for 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother,Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One".
In his first season in Formula One Hamilton set numerous records and finished second in the 2007 Formula One Championship one point behind Kimi Räikkönen. His first world championship was won the following season, ahead of Felipe Massa by the same margin of a single point. He has stated that he wants to stay with the McLaren team for the rest of his F1 career.
Kovalainen was interested in racing from a young age as his father competed in ice races. He drove his first kart at the age of six and began competing as soon as he was allowed a licence at 10. He continued to race successfully in karts the end of 2000 when he won the Elf Masters kart event in Paris and decided to move into Formula Renault in Britain with the Fortec team and won two races and finished fourth in the series at his first attempt. He was signed up as a Renault Development Driver and in 2002 moved up to British Formula 3 with Fortec. He won five races and finished third in the championship behind Robbie Kerr and James Courtney. He moved on to the Nissan World Series in 2003 with the Gabord team but it was his team mate Franck Montagny who dominated winning nine times to Kovalainen's single victory. That autumn he had his first test in a Renault F1 car and later tested a Minardi before Renault decided to sign him up as a test driver. In 2004 he stayed on in the Nissan World Series - switching to Pons Racing - and won the title with six victories. At the end of that year he found himself in the international spotlight when he won the Race of Champions in Paris, beating David Coulthard, Jean Alesi, Michael Schumacher and World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb one after another. In 2005 he raced in the GP2 Series and led the championship before being overtaken in the final races by Nico Rosberg. Heikki was then promoted to be the Renault F1 test driver and was named as Fernando Alonso's replacement at Renault in September 2006.
Kovalainen's first year in F1 was uneven, marked by many achievements but some erratic moments. He scored his first Championship point in his second race, and his first F1 podium finish with second in Japan, but made some unforced errors in both qualifying and racing. However, he was more than a match for his very experienced teammate Giancarlo Fisichella, finishing ahead of him in 11 races, including eight consecutively in the second half of the season. It was an impressive performance overall, which led McLaren to take him on for 2008 to partner Lewis Hamilton after Fernando Alonso left to return to Renault.
Vitantonio Liuzzi is born 6 August 1981. On 10 August 2007 Toro Rosso confirmed that Sébastien Bourdais would drive for them in 2008, leaving Liuzzi without a seat. Liuzzi's manager, former Lotus boss Peter Collins, confirmed that Liuzzi wished to continue his involvement in F1. He had been linked to a test drive role with Williams, but it eventually went to Nico Hülkenberg. He then secured the role of test driver for the Force India F1 team on 10 January 2008. Liuzzi stated he hoped to move up to a race seat in 2010 as he is contracted until 2011, but the contracts of his teammates Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella would not expire until the end of 2009.
On 3 September 2009, Force India released Fisichella so he could replace Luca Badoer at Ferrari, who had filled in for two races for injured driver Felipe Massa. On 7 September 2009, Force India announced that Liuzzi would drive for them in the remaining five races of the 2009 Formula One season. He made his race debut for Force India at the 2009 Italian Grand Prix and qualified an impressive seventh, given the fact he started the race with a heavier fuel load than his younger teammate Adrian Sutil. He was running solidly in the points, before retiring after 22 laps with a transmission problem.
Jenson Button
Jenson Button
Jenson Button
Jenson Button
Jenson Button
Jenson Button
Sebastian Vettel
Mark Webber
Lewis Hamilton
Rubens Barrichello
Kimi Räikkönen
Rubens Barrichello
Lewis Hamilton
Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel
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