Sébastien Buemi: Young Swiss F1 Driver

Name:

Sébastien Buemi

Born:

October 31, 1988 in Aigle, Switzerland

Team:

Toro Rosso

Height:

5'8"

Weight:

136 lbs.

Hobbies:

Music, Tennis, Football, Cycling

Previous F1 Teams:

• 2009 Toro Rosso

  Victories:

  0

  Background:

  Like virtually all Formula 1 drivers, Sébastien began racing as a child in go-karts. His experience, however, came in a country where car racing was illegal: Switzerland. Beumi won several national Swiss karting title and finally won the European Junior karting title in 2002. He started karting at the age of five in 1994.

  His Career Thus Far:

  Sébastien moved to car racing at the age of 15, in 2004. He was praised by the Swiss press as the country's great hope as a racer. He finished third in his first season in the German Formula BMW series, and then finished second in the same series the following season. That year, 2005, he also became a Red Bull junior driver, part of the program that would eventually lift him to Formula 1 for the Toro Rosso team.

  In 2006, Sébastien joined the Formula 3 Euro Series and finished only 12th. He repeated in the same series the following year, finishing second.

  In 2008 he joined GP2 and raced in both the European and the Asian series. At the beginning of the year he finished second in the Asian series, which was won by his nemesis, the French-Swiss driver Romain Grosjean, who had also beaten him earlier in his career. In the European series he finished only sixth. He also test drove for Red Bull, as he had in 2007.

  Buemi's F1 Challenge:

  Sébastien has the dubious distinction of being the only driver currently in Formula 1 to never have won a car racing championship in his life in the lower categories before making it to Formula 1. He succeeded in going that far largely thanks to the impression he made on the F1 teams he tested for, combined with the fact that these teams were owned by Red Bull, the company nurturing Buemi's career. But he will have more to prove than most rookies. As the youngest driver in the series in 2009, perhaps he can rely on insouciance in addition to talent, if not to experience, to live up to his employer's expectations of him.