Giancarlo Fisichella (born
January 14, 1973 in Rome
, Italy
), also known
as Fisico, Giano or
Fisi, is an Italian racing
driver. He has driven in Formula One for Minardi,
Jordan, Benetton, Sauber,
Renault
, Force India and is currently driving for
Ferrari in place of the injured
Felipe Massa. He will also be
Ferrari's reserve driver for 2010.
Fisichella has won three races in his career to date, the first of
which was at the chaotic
2003
Brazilian Grand Prix, a race abandoned for safety reasons with
15 laps remaining. After much confusion regarding rules and
technicalities (which lasted for several days) Fisichella was
eventually declared the winner in the following week, and collected
his trophy in an unorthodox ceremony at the following race. He was
brought in to the Renault team to replace fellow Italian
Jarno Trulli, and won his first race with the
team in Australia in 2005. However, after that race it was his
team-mate, the Spanish driver
Fernando
Alonso, that would win the greater share of races for Renault.
Although highly rated as a driver, Fisichella was unable to keep
pace with eventual champion Alonso, managing just one further race
win since his debut. Outside of driving, he has backed his own
GP2 team,
FMS International.
Fisichella has two children, Carlotta and Christopher, with his
longtime domestic partner Luna Castellani (a former Italian
showgirl). The couple were married on October 10, 2009.
Early career
Like most
current Formula One
drivers, he began kart racing as a
youngster in the Guidonia
's Kart
circuit. In 1992, he competed in the
Italian Formula Three
Championship, racing for the RC Motorsport team. He finished
runner up in 1993, and in 1994 he won the championship, following
race victories in
Monaco and
Macau. He left open-wheel racing
briefly in 1995, driving for
Alfa Romeo in the
International Touring Car
Championship.
Formula One
1996: Minardi
In , he made the move to Formula One, making his debut for the
Minardi team. However he did not complete
the full season since Minardi required a driver who could bring
funding to the team, and replaced Fisichella with
Giovanni Lavaggi.
1997: Jordan
For 1997 he made the move to
Eddie
Jordan's eponymous team, where he drove alongside former F1
champion
Michael Schumacher's
brother
Ralf, himself a former
Formula Nippon champion. Fisichella
gained his first podium finish at the
1997 Canadian Grand Prix, and went
on to finish higher in the points standings than his team-mate. At
Hockenheim a victory looked to be within reach for Fisichella, but
a puncture and the performance of an on-form Gerhard Berger denied
him the win. Fisichella was able to show his talent again at the
rain-soaked
Belgian Grand
Prix in which he finished a commendable second behind Michael
Schumacher. Following this race, the Benetton team signed him for
1998.
1998 - 2001: Benetton
However, the timing of this move was unfortunate.
Following Renault's withdrawal from Formula One, Benetton would contest
the 1998 season without "works" (factory-supplied) engines, instead
using rebranded development versions of 1997 Renault
engines. Despite not having the latest engines, Fisichella
still managed second places at Montreal and
Monaco, even being in contention for
a victory in Canada until gearbox problems slowed him down. In
Austria, Fisichella scored his first
pole
position, although an on-track clash with
Jean Alesi during the race cost him any chance of
a good result. He was then able to add only two more points to his
total in the second half of the year as Benetton lost ground on
their competition.
1999 proved to be a similarly inconsistent season for Giancarlo
Fisichella. He did score some podium finishes, and again came close
to a victory in the
European
Grand Prix, until he spun off whilst in the lead. This would
prove to be his best chance of a victory for the next few
seasons.
Fisichella's season was to follow a similar pattern in 2000. He
again gained some surprise podium finishes early in the year, but
Benetton's now unfortunately traditional poor second half of the
season meant that he failed to score any more points. Since joining
Benetton, Fisichella had comprehensively outperformed his Austrian
team-mate
Alexander Wurz, who would
then leave the team to make way for British rookie
Jenson Button in 2001. Renault had purchased
the Benetton team by the start of the 2001 season, but their
investment was too late to enable much progress with Benetton's
uncompetitive 2001 car, and as a result, Fisichella was battling
for much of the season with teams such as Minardi and
Prost. However, the efforts of technical
director
Mike Gascoyne and his staff
did result in improvements over the year, culminating in a 4-5
finish at the
German Grand
Prix and a third place finish for Fisichella at the Belgian
race. Despite Fisichella gaining the team's best results that
season and consistently outperforming Button, he left the team to
rejoin
Jordan for 2002.
2002 - 2003: Jordan
Fisichella managed to score just seven points for 2002, although
the Jordan-Honda car of that year was never truly competitive.
After Honda withdrew their engine supply, Jordan switched to Ford
engines for the 2003 season, but the team were still unable to
compete with the top teams on the grid. Despite this lack of
performance, Fisichella won his first race at the
Brazilian Grand Prix.
Battling
with McLaren
's Kimi
Räikkönen amidst heavy rain and numerous crashes, Fisichella took
the race lead on lap 54, soon before the race was red-flagged. However,
he was demoted to second place on the podium, because (per
regulations) Räikkönen was the race
leader two laps prior to the red flag. Several days later, though,
the
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. For
nearly two years (i.e. until his win in the 2005 Australian Grand
Prix), Fisichella was the only F1 driver to have won a race without
having stood atop the podium. 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.
2004: Sauber
Unhappy at the Jordan team's performance, Fisichella moved to
Sauber in 2004 in the hope of greater
results, and of using the team as a way of gaining access to, and a
drive for, 2003 World Champions
Ferrari, who supplied re-badged engines to
the Sauber team. Fisichella drove well all year, comfortably
outpacing team mate
Felipe Massa for
much of the season (scoring 22 championship points vs
Massa's 12).
2005 - 2007: Renault
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.
The difference in pace between Fisichella and Alonso was
noticeable, and while Alonso's metronomic consistency helped him
win the 2005 championship, Fisichella's general bad luck was to
cost him points finishes. He was overtaken and lost the lead on the
final lap of the
Japanese Grand
Prix by McLaren driver Kimi Räikkönen, despite his race
engineer urging him to avoid letting Räikkönen past.
Nevertheless, his
performances alongside Alonso throughout the season enabled
Renault to win the
World Constructors' Championship ahead of McLaren
and Ferrari, the team that had won that title
for each of the previous six seasons.
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.
This form, in addition to a penalty in Monaco for allegedly
impeding
David Coulthard, meant
Fisichella was again unable to challenge his team mate
Alonso for the drivers' Championship. Some
strong results in the second half of the 2006 season, including
finishing ahead of Alonso at the
US Grand Prix, enabled
Fisichella to obtain his best ever results: Fourth in the World
Drivers' Championship with 72 points, one win, and five podium
finishes. After finishing third in the
2006 Japanese Grand Prix,
Fisichella dedicated the result to his best friend, Tonino
Visciani, who died of a heart attack on the Thursday before the
race.
Fisichella assumed the role of team
leader at Renault for .
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. Another
possibility is that the team's wind tunnel was giving inaccurate
data in late 2006 which affected the development of the 2007 car.
This was cited by Pat Symonds in an issue of F1 Racing Magazine. In
the early races, Fisichella obtained better results than rookie
team mate Kovalainen, but in Canada and the USA it was the Finn who
claimed the higher finishes. Fisichella was disqualified from the
Canadian Grand Prix, along
with Ferrari's
Felipe Massa, for
exiting the pit lane while the traffic light was showing red, the
purpose of which is to prevent cars rejoining the race ahead of the
safety car. He later stated that he had
been busy avoiding other cars in the pit lane and had simply not
noticed the red light.
The Renault team seemed to have made
significant progress in terms of pace by the Spanish Grand
Prix
, but a series of fuel rig problems meant that
neither driver was able to capitalise on this apparent increase in
performance. Fisichella crashed into the
Super Aguri of
Anthony Davidson at the
2007 Hungarian Grand Prix which
broke his rear suspension and forced him to retire.
2008 - 2009: Force India
2008
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 season (This is the
third stint for Fisichella at the former Jordan team) on January
10, 2008. In the
2008
Monaco Grand Prix, he 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 Rubens Barrichello, who as of the
2008 Turkish
Grand Prix
is the most experienced F1 driver ever, and
Jarno Trulli, who had his 200th start
at Australia in 2009. David
Coulthard, who retired from F1 after the 2008 season, had also
competed in more than 200 Grands Prix.
Fisichella finished the season pointless, as did the Force India
team. However, there were a few moments when he found himself in a
points position, such as the Brazilian Grand Prix, where an early
change to soft compound tyres saw him climb as high as 3rd. On 17
October, Force India announced they would keep Fisichella for the
2009 season.
2009
With the new
Force India VJM02
powered by a
Mercedes-Benz engine,
Fisichella qualified 18th (promoted to 15th after both
Toyota and
Lewis
Hamilton were demoted) on the grid for the 2009 curtain-opener
at
Australia. He finished
11th in the race itself. In
Malaysia, he qualified 18th, and
was classified in the same position, having spun off in the
torrential rain that stopped the race on lap 33.
On 29 August 2009, making the most of some very effective technical
upgrades from Force India, Fisichella recorded the team's first
pole position at the
Belgian
Grand Prix. He went on to score Force India's first points in
Formula One with a strong second place finish behind Ferrari's Kimi
Räikkönen.
During that weekend, there were rumours that Fisichella might
replace fellow Italian
Luca Badoer and
become a
Scuderia Ferrari driver,
something that he admitted he always wanted to do. On 3 September
2009, an official press statement confirmed Fisichella would be
released from Force India to drive for Ferrari at the
Italian Grand Prix, his home
race.
2009 - Present: Ferrari
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 replaced the injured
Felipe
Massa for the remainder of the
2009 season.
Fisichella will remain Ferrari's reserve driver for but is keen to
keep racing for a different team.
Racing record
Career summary
Complete Formula One results
(
key) (Races in
bold indicate pole position) (Races in
italics indicate fastest lap)
References
-
http://www.gazzetta.it/Motori/Formula1/03-09-2009/fisichella-ferrari-501202529339.shtml
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