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Gary Paffett (born 24 March 1981 in Bromley) is a British racing driver, and a test driver for Formula One team McLaren. Paffett progressed through the ranks of karting and junior formulae in the UK, winning the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in 1999. He now lives in Haverhill, England and is married with two sons.
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1993 to 1999: Early Years
In 1993, Paffett joined the British Cadet Championships and earned himself a respectable third place. A year later he moved to British Junior TKM Championship and finished second overall. In 1995 he won the British Junior TKM Championship and also second place in the Junior ICA European Championship. Successes continued into 1996, winning the McLaren Mercedes Karting Champion of the Future award and also second in the British Junior ICA Championship. The next year he moved into single-seaters, winning the Formula Vauxhall Junior Winter Series,picking up the best newcomer's award in that series in the process. In 1998 he was Formula Vauxhall Junior Class B Champion with 13 fastest laps, 13 poles, 13 races, dominating every race of the season. He also set a track record which had never before been set by any "B" class car. He got promoted to the Formula Vauxhall Junior and won the championship with two track records, four wins, five fastest laps, three pole positions. At the season's end he was awarded the prestigious McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year award.
Formula 3
Moving up to Formula 3, he competed in the Scholarship class of the British F3 championship, becoming champion with 13 wins, 13 fastest laps, 13 pole positions. In 2001, moved overseas to the German F3 Championship racing with Keke Rosberg's race team, finishing 6th overall. Remaining in the series for 2002 he dominated the field winning the championship without ever losing the lead.
DTM
For 2003, Gary signed to drive for the new Brand Motorsport team in F3000, but the team withdrew from the series leaving Paffett and his team-mate Nicolas Minassian without drives. Mercedes contacted him and signed him to drive in the DTM with Rosberg's Mercedes AMG team in a year-old car, eventually finishing 11th overall. A year later, he was runner up with an up-to-date AMG-Mercedes C-Class and the HWA team taking four wins and one pole position. He was then champion the following year with five wins and four pole positions. In 2007, Gary returned to the DTM in a 2006 specification race car for the Persson Motorsport team alongside his McLaren F1 testing duties. At the second round at Oschersleben, Paffett became the first driver in the history of the series to win in a year old car. 1
Formula One
In December 2005 it was announced that he would not be returning to the DTM series to defend his title but instead would test full-time for McLaren-Mercedes during the 2006 season alongside Pedro de la Rosa. After the departure of Kimi Räikkönen to Ferrari, it was speculated that he may have been in contention for a 2007 race seat in the team alongside World Champion Fernando Alonso, however due to the arrival of GP2 Champion, and McLaren prodigy, Lewis Hamilton, Paffett was overlooked for the drive.
Further to this, Paffett was released from his McLaren contract in October 2006, to search for better opportunities. It was widely speculated that he was likely to sign as a test driver at Honda, but Christian Klien was signed instead.2 A few weeks later however, Paffett was re-signed by McLaren as the team's second test driver, alongside de la Rosa.3
He has publicly stated that he is looking for a Formula One race seat for 20084 and was linked with the abortive Prodrive F1 project for 2008.
Racing record
Complete Formula 3000 results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
| Year | Entrant | Chassis | Engine | Tyres | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | DC | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Brand | Lola B02/50 | Zytek-Judd KV | A | SMR 14 |
ESP |
AUT |
MON |
EUR |
FRA |
GBR |
GER |
HUN |
ITA |
NC | 0 |
As of February 2008 he is ranked number 1 by career race win percentage on driverdb.com with 44 wins from 103 races (42.72%) well ahead of the great Juan Manuel Fangio in second (84 races 33 wins 39.29%) and Michael Schumacher in third (306 races 112 wins 36.60%).
References
- ^ "The 10 Mercedes-Benz drivers", DTM (2007-03-29). Retrieved on 20 April 2007.
- ^ "Klien gets the Honda test job", Grandprix.com (2006-11-15). Retrieved on 15 November 2006.
- ^ "Lewis Hamilton joins Formula 1 World Champion Fernando Alonso at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes", mclaren.com (2006-11-24). Retrieved on 24 November 2006.
- ^ "F1 in the news". itv.com/f1 (2006-12-08). Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
External links
| Sporting positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Toshihiro Kaneishi |
German Formula Three Champion 2002 |
Succeeded by Joao Paulo de Oliveira |
| Preceded by Mattias Ekström |
German Touring Car Champion 2005 |
Succeeded by Bernd Schneider |
| Awards | ||
| Preceded by Jenson Button |
McLaren Autosport BRDC Award 1999 |
Succeeded by Anthony Davidson |
|
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Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 13 November 2008, at 23:32.
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