If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
since he joined F1.) Giancarlo Fisichella is married to Luna and has two children, Carlotta and Christopher.
Early Racing Career:
As is the case with most current F1 drivers, he began with Kirt Racing as a youngster. After that, he moved on to competing in the Formula 3 series in Italy. He won the championship in the year 1994 (he had been runner up in 1993.) Apart from racing open-wheel, (the F1 style of racing,) he has also taken part in the International Touring Car Championship series in which he drove for Alfa Romeo.
Formula1:
Minardi 1996:
He started his Formula1 career in 1996 driving for the F1 Minardi team. However, he could not complete the year with Minardi as he was replaced with someone by the name of Giovanni Lavaggi.
Jordan Racing 1997:
He then moved to Eddie Jordan’s team where he was team mate with Ralf Schumacher or Ralfy who himself had a lot of promise being the kid brother of Michael Schumacher and a Formula Nippon champion. At the end of the 1997 season, he had more points than Ralf. One of the best races of his career was the Belgian GP of 1997 in which he finished second after Michael Schumacher. This is what prompted Benntton F1 team to sign Fisichella on for the 1998 season.
Benetton 1998 - 2001:
The timing turned out to be bad for him; Benetton suffered a major blow in 1998 when Renault withdrew from F1 leaving the Benetton team to use rebranded development versions of the 1997 Renault Engines. Despite this, Fisi managed second place finishes at Montreal and Monaco. In 1991, Fisichella again managed a few podium finishes.The 2000 & in 2001 when Renault purchased the Benetton team, Fisichella was a back marker for much of the season as the car was uncompetitive. During the season, he was driving alongside the rookie British driver, Jenson Button and he consistently outperformed Button.
Jordan 2002 - 2003:
The 2000 season was dismal for him and at the end of it, he had scored 7 points mostly because of uncompetitive Jordan
cars
The highlight of the 2003 season however was, the Brazilian Grand Prix, he won the race ahead of Mclaren’s Kimi Raikkonen in a rain interrupted race. The race had been red flagged soon after Fisichella took the lead in the 53rd lap and he was demoted to second place (per regulations). Though, several days later, FIA determined that Fisichella had already begun his 56th lap before the red flag, meaning that he, and not Räikkönen, had been leading the race two laps before its premature end, awarding the Italian his first F1 victory. He collected the winner’s trophy at the next race at Imola. Fisichella’s only other points finish of 2003 was to be a seventh place at Indianapolis.
Sauber 2004:
Next, he moved to Sauber in 2004, Fisichella drove well that year, comfortably outpacing team mate Felipe Massa (Current Ferrari Driver.)
Renault 2005 - 2007
His strong performances prompted former Benetton-Renault team boss Flavio Briatore to re-sign him for the 2005 season as partner to the young Spanish driver Fernando Alonso. A win at in the season’s opening race at Melbourne signalled the Formula One breakthrough that commentators had been predicting, but it proved to be something of a false dawn. A run of poor luck saw Fisichella fall behind his team mate in the championship standings, and at times the pair were achieving noticeably different lap times with the same equipment. It appeared that Fisichella simply did not have the pace to match Alonso.
2006 proved to be a similar season for Fisichella. Having won in Malaysia, putting in a strong performance to win from the pole position, he failed to maintain that pace for the upcoming races, and even failed to reach the top ten in qualifying for two races.
In 2007 Giancarlo Fisichella became Renault’s lead driver after the departure of Fernando Alonso. His team mate was the team’s former test driver, the young Finn Heikki Kovalainen, who was replaced as test driver by Nelson Piquet Jr.
Renault did not demonstrate the same level of pace as in previous seasons, which had seen them win successive World Championships. It remains unclear whether the difference was due to the change of tyre supplier from Michelin to Bridgestone, the lack of Fernando Alonso as a driver, or simply being outpaced in off-season development by the other top teams. Whatever it might have been but this and the previous two seasons made Fisichella look like a driver who just didn’t have it.
With Renault signing Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jr, Fisichella was announced as the number one driver alongside Adrian Sutil for the Force India F1 team for the 2008 F1 Season. The 2008 Monaco Grand Prix saw him became the 9th driver to join the ‘200′ club for drivers to have competed in at least 200 Grands Prix. The only other active drivers in the club are David Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello who as of the 2008 Turkish Grand Prix is the most experienced F1 driver ever.
For more on Giancarlo, go visit his official website.