Giancarlo Fisichella’s career in video

F1 Fanatic guest writer Journeyer turns his historical eye to Ferrari’s new star Giancarlo Fisichella.

Giancarlo Fisichella finally had his dream come true: this weekend at Mona he will race for Ferrari.

Fisichella has taken a circuitous route to F1’s most famous outfit, changing teams eight times in 14 seasons. In this two-part series we’ll cover his career from karting, to F1 victories, and on to Ferrari.

1989: Fisichella’s karting days in Italy produced solid but unremarkable results. Here’s a rare clip of him racing, and colliding with, fellow future F1 driver Jos Verstappen.

1993: He moved up to Italian Formula 3 in 1992. He tried his hand at the Macau Grand Prix twice, but crashed out both times. This is a highlight reel of the 1993 race, including Fisichella’s crash that year.

1996: After dabbling in touring cars for a year, Fisi came back to single seaters in style – entering Formula 1. Of the current grid of established drivers, he wa the first to successfully enter the sport through Minardi. He only contested ten of the 16 races that season, as Minardi needed to bring in pay driver Giovanna Lavaggi. But the young Fisichella impressed with his performances.

Here he is qualifying in Montreal. He started 16th, but climbed to eighth by the finish.

1997: His run at Minardi was enough to get him a drive with Eddie Jordan. This would be Fisichella’s first of three stints with the Silverstone-based team. His teammate that year was the similarly promising Ralf Schumacher.

Many were surprised when Fisichella beat Ralf that season, thanks to some brilliant drives. Just two races after contending for the win in Hockenheim, here he is with a fantastic overtake on Jean Alesi to move up to second in the rain at Spa. And that’s where he finished, behind only Michael Schumacher.

His first weekend at Monza was well above expectations. He qualified third and finished fourth, ahead of both Schumachers, both Ferraris, and eventual World Champion Jacques Villenueve. Many were now marking Fisichella down as a star of the future.

1998: We know Fisichella has always had the desire to drive for Ferrari, but he also spent much of his career driving for other Italian teams. Other than his stint with Minardi, Fisichella also stayed at Benetton for four years. His first year there was more of the same from 1997. Here he is challenging Michael Schumacher for the win in Montreal. He couldn’t beat Schumacher’s pace, but had more than enough to secure second.

Fisichella’s first career pole poition came in dominant style at the A1-Ring. He was on pole by more than seven tenths, thanks to a wet qualifying session. Sadly, he and Alesi both fell back at the start, and later took each other out of the race.

1999: While this season started out well for Fisichella, with 13 points and a podium in the first six races, it went sour after that. He failed to score for the rest of the year as the Benetton became increasingly uncompetitive. The low point came when he spun out while leading at the Nurburgring.

2000: The season started well for Fisichella – he finished third in Interlagos after a race-long scrap with Heinz-Harald Frentzen. It got even better when he was promoted to second after David Coulthard’s disqualification.

It was another season of two halves for Fisichella. The first eight races went well, with five points-scoring finishes including three podiums (like this one at Montreal fending off Mika Hakkinen). But after that, it all went wrong. A string of four DNFs accompanied by finishes outside the points meant Fisichella slipped down the order and Benetton only just hung on to fourly in the constructors.

2001: Fisichella’s last year at Benetton was terrible. The car was uncompetitive for much of the season, and there was little they could do.

But there was a bright spot for them at Spa where Fisichella was on the same pace as the McLarens. He managed to finish third behind Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard.

Fisichella had run out of patience at Benetton, so decided to move on.

2002: As it turned out, Fisichella went to the slower team again. By the time he returned to Jordan, it was now beginning to decline. He found himself with new team mate Takuma Sato too often – they collided into each other twice that season. Watch for their first collision on lap two in Sepang from Juan Pablo Montoya’s onboard camera.

2003: This was supposed to be a terrible season for Fisichella with a second-class chassis and Ford engines. But somehow, someway, he found himself leading at Interlagos. Not only that, but shunts by Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso stopped the race – and he found himself the winner! That was one of only two points-scoring finishes he’d have all season.

2004: With Jordan in terminal decline, Fisichella began to look elsewhere. By now, he was looking for any way to get a Ferrari race seat. But with that unavailable, he settled for the next best thing – a race drive for Sauber with Ferrari engines and a Ferrari-based chassis. Most of the season went well for Fisichella, save for this huge shunt at Monaco after being blinded by engine smoke from Sato’s BAR-Honda.

Fisichella regularly used a heavy-fuel qualifying run to great effect, going for long first stints to get himself into the points. Here’s one such example in Monza, where he qualified 15th and finished eighth (despite getting passed by Schumacher along the way).

2005: One year at Sauber was enough to get Fisichella noticed again by his former team boss Flavio Briatore, who hired him to rejoin Renault (formerly known as Benetton). For the first time in his F1 career, Fisichella was driving a front-running car.

It started off brilliantly, qualifying on pole in Melbourne and leading from start to finish.

But after that, it started to get difficult. A string of retirements killed any hopes he had of winning the championship. What’s worse, Fisichella was now subjected to team orders in an effort to help team mate Alonso win the championship.

2006: Fisi was determined to prove that he was Alonso’s equal, and tried to go for the championship again the following year. He won early on in Sepang, again in dominant fashion. Martin Brundle talks us through Fisichella’s pole lap.

While Fisichella was able to score points more regularly (and beat Alonso more regularly too), it still wasn’t enough. He finished behind Alonso, the retiring Michael Schumacher and his team mate Felipe Massa in the championship. He was also a victim of bad luck – he was knocked out of Q2 at the Nurburgring after being blocked by Jacques Villeneuve.

2007: With Alonso off to McLaren, Fisichella was promoted to team leader at Renault, now alongside rookie Heikki Kovalainen. Fisichella was as racy as ever, and while the Renault was no longer the championship contender of old, Fisi was still able to pull off some cracking passes, like this one on Jenson Button’s Honda at Indianapolis.

But the second half of the season was rough, only scoring once in the last eight races. At Interlagos, Sakon Yamamoto ended Fischellai’s Renault run in a dramatic shunt. Aha, indeed…

2008: With Fisichella being replaced by test driver Nelson Piquet Jnr, he had to find a seat somewhere else. And for the third time in his career, he found a seat at the team now formerly known as Jordan. Fisichella became the team leader of Force India, but it was tough sailing, failing to score a single point all season. The closest he got was a top ten finish in Barcelona.

2009: The second season showed more promise. He came close to scoring points in many races, most notably Monaco. But in Spa, a new aero upgrade zoomed them to the front of the field, with Fisichella taking a fantastic pole position and using it to finish second in the race behind Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari. Here’s an onboard of Fisichella’s pole lap.

The future for Fisichella is Ferrari. At last, his dream of driving for Ferrari in F1 has come true, but if he wants to win, he will have to beat the man who beat him in Spa – his team mate Raikkonen. Will he pull it off? The Tifosi await with bated breath.