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Selected biographies
These are Featured Articles and Good articles about people related to Formula One which appear on Portal:Formula One.
Damon Graham Devereux Hill OBE (born 17 September 1960) is a retired British racing driver from England. In 1996 Hill won the Formula One World Championship; as the son of the late Graham Hill, he is the only son of a world champion to win the title. Hill became a test driver for the Formula One title-winning Williams team in 1992. He was unexpectedly promoted to the Williams race team the following year after 1992 champion Nigel Mansell's departure and took the first of his 22 victories at the 1993 Hungarian Grand Prix. During the mid 1990s, Hill was Michael Schumacher's main rival for the Formula One Driver's Championship. The two clashed on and off the track; their collision at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix gave Schumacher his first title by a single point. Hill won the 1996 World Drivers' Championship, but was dropped by Williams for the following season. He went on to drive for the less competitive Arrows and Jordan teams, and in 1998 gave Jordan its first win. Hill retired from racing after the 1999 season. He has since launched several businesses as well as making appearances playing the guitar with celebrity bands. In 2006, he became president of the British Racing Drivers' Club, succeeding Jackie Stewart.
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Alain Marie Pascal Prost, OBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (born 24 February 1955) is a French racing driver. A four-time Formula One Drivers' Champion, only Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton have won more titles than Prost. Prost discovered karting at the age of 14 during a family holiday. He progressed through motor sport's junior ranks, winning the French and European Formula Three championships, before joining the McLaren Formula One team in 1980 at the age of 25. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Prost formed a fierce rivalry with Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell. In 1986, at the last race of the season, he managed to pip Mansell and Nelson Piquet of Williams to the title. Senna joined Prost at McLaren in 1988 and the two had a series of controversial clashes, including a collision at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix that gave Prost his third Drivers' Championship. Before the end of a winless 1991 season Prost was fired by Ferrari for his public criticism of the team. After a sabbatical in 1992, Prost joined the Williams team, and won the 1993 championship but he retired at the end of the year rather than be teammates with Senna who signed for 1994. In 1997, Prost took over the French Ligier team, running it as Prost Grand Prix until it went bankrupt in 2001, and now competes in the Andros Trophy, an ice racing competition.
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Thomas Maldwyn Pryce (11 June 1949 – 5 March 1977) was a British racing driver from Ruthin, Wales. He was famous for winning the Brands Hatch Race of Champions (a non-championship Formula One race) in 1975 and for the circumstances surrounding his death. Pryce is the only Welsh driver to have won a Formula One race and is also the only Welshman to lead a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix. Pryce started his career in Formula One with the small Token team, making his only start for them at the 1974 Belgian Grand Prix. Shortly after an impressive performance at the Formula Three support race for the 1974 Monaco Grand Prix, Pryce joined the Shadow team and scored his first points in Germany in only his fourth race. Pryce later claimed two podium finishes, his first in Austria in 1975 and the second in Brazil a year later. Pryce was considered by his team as a great wet weather driver. During the practice session for the 1977 South African GP, run in wet conditions, Pryce was faster than everyone, including world champion drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt. Pryce's third full season at Shadow was cut short by his fatal accident at the 1977 South African Grand Prix, where he collided at high speed with track marshal Frederik Jansen Van Vuuren.
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Michael Schumacher; born 3 January 1969 in Hürth, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a retired Formula One racing driver. Most famous for his eleven-year spell with Ferrari, Schumacher is a seven-time World Champion and holds many of the formula's driver records including most championships, race victories, fastest laps, pole positions, points scored and most races won in a single season – 13 in 2004. After winning two consecutive championships with Benetton in 1994/5, Schumacher moved to Ferrari in 1996 and won another five consecutive drivers' titles with them from 2000–2004. Schumacher retired from Formula One driving in 2006 staying with Ferrari as an advisor; he later signed a 3-year contract to drive for the new Mercedes team starting in 2010. His career has not been without controversy, including being twice involved in collisions in the final race of a season that determined the outcome of the world championship, with Damon Hill in 1994 in Adelaide, and with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 in Jerez. Off the track Schumacher is an ambassador for UNESCO and a spokesman for driver safety. He has been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts throughout his life and donated tens of millions of dollars to charity.
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Mark Alan Webber (born August 27, 1976 in Queanbeyan, New South Wales) is an Australian Formula One driver. After some racing success in Australia, Webber moved to the UK in 1995 to further his motorsports career. He began a partnership with fellow Australian Paul Stoddart, at that time owner of the European Racing Formula 3000 team, which eventually took them both into Formula One when Stoddart bought the Minardi team. Webber made his debut in Formula One in 2002, scoring Minardi's first points in three years at his and Stoddart's home race. After an impressive first season, Jaguar Racing took him on as lead driver. During two years with the generally uncompetitive team Webber several times qualified on the front two rows of the grid and outperformed his team mates. He joined the former championship winning Williams team in 2005, for whom he achieved his best finish in Formula One to that point; a third place at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix. In the 2009 season he won two races, in Germany and Brazil. He added ten more podiums in 2010, including victories in Spain, Monaco, Britain and Hungary. Webber finished the 2010 season in third place having led for a long period, losing out to teammate Sebastian Vettel.
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Joseph Gilles Henri Villeneuve (January 18, 1950 – May 8, 1982) was a Canadian racing driver. An enthusiast of cars and fast driving from an early age, he started his professional career in snowmobile racing in his native province of Quebec. He moved into single seaters — winning the US and Canadian Formula Atlantic championships in 1976 before being offered a one-off drive with McLaren at the 1977 British Grand Prix. He was taken on by reigning world champions Ferrari for the end of the season — in only his fifth season racing cars — and from 1978 to his death in 1982 drove for the Italian team. He won six Grand Prix races in a short career at the highest level. In 1979 he finished second by four points in the championship to teammate Jody Scheckter. Villeneuve died in a 140 mph (225 km/h) crash with the March of Jochen Mass during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder. At the time of his death, Villeneuve was extremely popular with fans and with many journalists, on whom his death had a profound effect. Since 1982 he has become an iconic figure in the history of the sport, renowned for his car control, aggressive driving style, and a 'never give up' attitude. His son, Jacques Villeneuve, became a Formula One world champion in 1997.
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Maurício Gugelmin (born April 20, 1963 in Joinville) is a former racing driver from Brazil. He took part in both Formula One and the Champ Car World Series. He participated in 80 Formula One grands prix, debuting in 1988 for the March team. He achieved one top-three finish and scored a total of ten championship points in the series. He competed in the Champ Car series between 1993 and 2001, starting 147 races. He won one race, in 1997 in Vancouver, finishing fourth in the championship that year. His best result in the Indianapolis 500 was in 1995 where he started and finished in sixth position, leading 59 laps. For a period, he held the world speed record for a closed race track, set at California Speedway in 1997 at a speed of 240.942 mph (387.759 km/h). Gugelmin retired at the end of 2001 after a year that included the death of his son. He runs the family business in Brazil along with his brother, Alceu, and has also done consultancy work for Mercedes-Benz subsidiary AMG. Both his surviving sons compete in go-kart events.
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Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is an Italian American former racecar driver, and one of the most successful Americans in the history of auto racing. He is one of only two drivers to win races in the four major motor racing categories: Formula One, IndyCar (USAC), World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR, the other being Dan Gurney. He also won races in midget cars, sprint cars and drag racing cars. During his career, Andretti won four IndyCar titles, the 1978 Formula One World Championship, and IROC VI (the 1978 - 1979 IROC). To date, he remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), the Daytona 500 (1967), and the Formula One World Championship, and, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, the only driver to have won a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500. No American has won a Formula One race since Andretti at the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix. Andretti had 109 career wins on major circuits. Andretti had a long career in racing. He was the only person to be named United States Driver of the Year in three decades (1967, 1978, and 1984). He was also one of only three drivers to win races on road courses, paved ovals, and dirt tracks in one season, a feat that he accomplished four times.
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Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE HonFREng (born 7 January 1985) is a British racing driver who races in Formula One for Mercedes AMG Petronas. Coming from a mixed background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is the first and only black driver to race in Formula One. A six-time Formula One World Champion, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport, and considered by some to be the greatest of all time. He won his first drivers' title with McLaren in 2008, before moving to Mercedes in 2013, with whom he has won a further five titles. One of the most successful drivers in the history of the sport, Hamilton's six World Championship titles is the second-most of all time, as is his tally of 105 race victories and 201 podium finishes. He currently holds the records for the all-time most career points (4829.5), the all-time most pole positions (104), the most grand slams in a season (3) and the most points in a season (413).
Hamilton has been credited with furthering Formula One's global following by appealing to a broader audience outside the sport, in part due to his high-profile lifestyle and other ventures, including his environmental activism and exploits in music and fashion. Hamilton has been targeted by racist abuse throughout his career and has been outspoken in his criticism of racial politics in Formula One as well as calling for greater diversity in the sport.
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Max Rufus Mosley (born 13 April 1940) is the former president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), a non-profit association that represents the interests of motoring organisations and car users worldwide. A former barrister and amateur racing driver, Mosley was a founder and co-owner of March Engineering, a successful racing car constructor and Formula One racing team. In the late 1970s, Mosley became the official legal adviser to the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA), the body that represents Formula One constructors. In this role he drew up the first version of the Concorde Agreement, which settled a long-standing dispute between FOCA and the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), the then governing body of Formula One. Mosley was elected president of FISA in 1991 and became president of the FIA, FISA's parent body, in 1993. Mosley has identified his major achievement as FIA President as the promotion of the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP or Encap), a European car safety performance assessment programme. He has also promoted increased safety and the use of green technologies in motor racing. In 2008, stories about his sex life appeared in the British press. Despite the controversy, Mosley retained his position. He stood down at the end of his term in 2009 and was replaced by his preferred successor, Jean Todt.
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