Drivers

Giedo van der Garde. The man, the myth, the legend. Okay not really. He is a okay driver though, and after years of speculation and hype in his motherland he finally made his Formula 1 debut last season with Caterham. Not exactly the best team to make your debut with but van der Garde did what he's always done: drive the car without making a complete fool of himself. His path to a race seat in Formula 1 was a long and unspectacular one, spending a lot of time in lower series without winning a championship apart from the 2008 Formula Renault 3.5 championship, which he won with a 29 point lead over the next competitor. Unfortunately for him that was the end of his winning ways, moving up to GP2 in 2009 and managing only one more top 3...

He built up a reputation as a good qualifier in the mid-late 00's. We also had the famous Trulli train back in those days too. Jarno's one and only win to date came way back in 2004, but IMHO he should have won more races in his career. He was famously dropped by Renault for losing a poduim finish at the French GP in that same season. Jarno's list of teams include: Minardi Prost Renault Toyota Lotus Jarno also owns his own vineyard out in his home country of Italy.. I've always thought Trulli was a average racing driver and even though i did feel slightly sorry for him when he got publicly sacked by Renault, i've never been given the impression by him that he's ever tried in races to go for that extra point. What are your opinions...

Who is this guy? asked Fernando Alonso. Well Fernando log on to Clip The Apex, click the link to the drivers section and I'll put you in the picture. Will Stevens was born in Essex and was karting from a young age with some success in the Asia-Pacific Championship. He then went on the usual path of racing Eurocup and Formula Renault and whilst his results wer fairly good he was not setting the world alight. He then jumped up to WSR 3.5 in 2012 with the Carlin team and hardly set the series alight with his first year. However a move to the Straka Racing team in 2013 saw a sudden dramatic change. Stevens suddenly blossomed and whilst he did not secure any race wins all season he mixed it up with the front 3 of Magnusen, Vandorne and...

2018 sees the much talked about Charles Leclerc make his debut in F1 in the Sauber. Its fair to say there is a good bit of excitement around that. He was born in October 1997 (no really) in Monaco and does race under the Monegasque flag. He was a childhood friend of the late Jules Bianchi. His father Herve Leclerc was also a racing driver, taking part in Formula 3 but unfortunately passed away last year at 54. I'm sure both these connections will make his F1 debut a bit bittersweet as they both should be there. I first saw Leclerc racing in European F3 and instantly made a joke about Napoleon's brother-in-law and General of the same name. As soon as I made the joke I realised not many people know who that is and therefore the joke is...

As I did a thread for Vergne last week I thought I better give Charlie Pic his own one too so as not to leave him out as part of this new wave of Frenchmen that F1 has for 2012. Born Feb 15th 1990 Charles Pic will be the second youngest driver on the grid in 2012 being 3 weeks younger than Sergio Perez and 2 months older than Jean-Eric Vergne. Its been a fast rise for Pic but a patchy one in fact he's never won a championship in any of the formula's he's raced in however he's impressed enough to be promoted up to the next level - maybe a bit too quickly. He came 3rd in Formula Renault Campus in 2006, 3rd in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 in 2007 and 3rd in the Formula Renault 3.5 series in 2009. He gained victories in all these...

It looks as though this guy has secured the Manor drive though it hasn't been officially announced yet. So who is he? He's an Indonesian race driver aged 23. He's had a lot of single seater experience. For the last four years he's raced in GP2 for different teams with mediocre results ( 14th 19th 15th) until last year 2015, when he raced for Campos and finished 4th. And that was quite a string field. In 2014 when he finished 14the he was partnered with Rossi, but comparing results is difficult because they didn't race against each other all season, there were team changes. Prior to his GP2 career, he raced in GO3 in 2010 he raced for Manor and finished5th , he was also F1 test driver that year. And in 2011 he raced for Marussia...

Some time ago I was nominated to write a thread about Brendon. I'm not sure why, never met the bloke and don't really like him. Anyway, he's 28, comes from New Zealand and his wife is called Sarah. What more do you need to know? More serioulsy, in 2010 he was dropped by the Red Bull young driver programme and now drives for Toro Rosso and is (probably) the oldest driver to debut for the Bulls ever. If this assertion is wrong I'm happy to be corrected. Looking back through his junior career there really isn't anything that jumps out as to why Red Bull would have taken him on in their young driver programme but with their support he won the Formula Renault 2.0 series in 2007 so Dr Marko must have seen something. He was 3rd in the...

On this very day thirty years ago came to an end the life of one of Formula One's most perduring legends. A man who embodied the concept of motor racing in its purest, most romantic form. It's hard to think of anything that hasn't been said already about Gilles Villeneuve. A man devoid of fear, who never gave anything other than his very best whatever the circumstances often capable of achieving breathtaking feats often in the face of impossible odds. We hear often the words "taking the car into positions it has no right to be in" about drivers who out-perform their machinery when they display impressive form. That expression could have been invented for Gilles, for whom the heroic was a matter of routine. Heroic feats he was made to...

How come this man doesn't have his own thread yet? DC is a true Gentleman and a credit to the sport we love. If it wasn't for him pushing for Safety in the 90's and 00's and even now when he's retired, we would have seen more deaths in F1 after the very sad weekend in San Marino back in 1994. DC was always the nearly man when it came to his F1 career piped to the title on more than one occassion by either Hakkinen and Schumacher. I wouldn't say DC was a number 2 either in his career. DC in his 247 Grand prix starts scored 13 wins, 62 podiums, 535 points, 12 poles and 18 fastest laps. DC at this current time is the all time points record holder for a Britain in F1. Can Hamilton or Button break his points tally of 535? DC has only...

So I went to post Narain's response to Vettel's comments on his thread only to find out that he is the only driver on the current grid who doesn't have one! bless his little cotton socks. So I thought I'd write him one. Born in Madras in 1977 the son of a rally driver and also related to Indian motorsports legend Karivardhan its not surprising that Narain grew up with the ambition to be India's first ever F1 driver and if you look at his junior career its no surprise really he made it. He won British Formula Ford in 1994. He won Formula Asia in 1996. He came 4th in the championship for the Stewart team in British Formula 3 in 2000 and then spent the next 4 years working his way up the leader boad in the Formula Nissan World Series...

So Roberto Mehri looks set to make his F1 debut for Caterham in the 2014 season, if not at Monza at least at some point of the season. Merhi's sudden step up to F1 is a dramatic change of fortunes for a driver who had basically dropped out of single seater racing two years prior to 2014. At 18 Merhi started racing in the F3 Euroseries and whilst his first two seasons were consistant rather than spectacular he certainly showed he had a sensible head on his shoulders. He jumped into a GP3 seat near the end of the 2010 season and scored a double podium on his first weekend. It was all a pre-cursor to his championship year in F3 Euro in 2011 where he streaked away from the rest of the field. Merhi had one retirement all season with only...

Thought I'd write an unexpected thread for an unexpected debutante. Giovinazzi's performance in his late call up seems to have impressed everyone and so he is a very worth add to the CTA Formula One Drivers section. Born in Martina Franca, Italy he is the grand old age of 23. To make some of us feel old Alain Prost had already won 4 titles and retired (twice) before he was born. Started the usual way with success in Karting and winning some trophies there (Italian and Euro), moved on to British F3 (runner up in 2013), European F3 (runner up in 2015) and GP2 (runner up in 2016). Along the way he's also had a couple of races in DTM and a go at Le Mans last year. He's certainly held his own in every series he has entered. Personally I...