Luca Badoer (born 25 January 1971) is an Italian former racing driver. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Luca Badoer started racing karts in 1985, taking two wins and in the following year he competed in the 100cc category, becoming the karting champion of Venice. He was the national champion in 1987 and in the next season won the Italian Championship in the 100cc international class.
1989 saw him move to single-seater racing and he raced a Dallara for the Trivellato team in the Italian F3 Championship. This was followed by a team change, to MRD, in 1990 and he took a victory in the final race of the year and finished 10th in the Championship.
Then came a Dallara 391, with the Supercars team, but despite winning four races in a row he was disqualified at Mugello after a tyre technicality so finished 4th overall.
He signed for Crypton Engineering to race in the 1992 F3000 Championship and would take four races on his way to become Champion.
This led him to Formula 1 in 1993 with BMS Scuderia Italia though his early season was blighted by various problems. After finishing 15th in Canada, the team seemed to gain reliability and he finished 13th at Spa, followed by his best result at Imola, where he had been running sixth, and took seventh at the flag. The team then announced they were combining with Minardi for 1994, with Luca being their test driver, 1995 would see him in a race seat with the team and his best results were eighth places in Canada and Hungary and a ninth in Japan.
In 1996 he joined Andrea Montermini at Forti Corse. In Argentina he luckily escaped unharmed after his car was flipped upside down, and later finished 10th at Imola, but the team folded after that year’s British GP.
Luca’s F1 days seemed to be over and he moved to the FIA GT series in 1997, partnering Mimmo Schiattarella in a Lotus Elise GT1 for GBF Engineering but he was then offered the role of test driver at Ferrari, which would be a role he held for over 10 years.
Alongside his testing role, he raced for Minardi in 1999 and he was running in fifth place at at Melbourne until he was forced to retire due to gearbox problems. A broken hand sustained in a testing accident set him back though when he returned, at Imola, despite still having problems with his hand he finished eighth. That season’s European GP saw him endure what must have been his most despairing moment in F1. He was running in fourth place, and his strongest points finish, but his gearbox failed 13 laps from the finish and I’m sure like myself, other fans watching will remember the sight of him kneeling, and weeping, alongside his broken down car. Ironically, his not finishing promoted his Minardi team mate, Marc Gene, to sixth place.
He then focused on his test driver role for Ferrari, covering thousands of test kilometres for them, and is credited with making a vital contribution to their first F1 Drivers’ Championship win for 21 years in 2000.
In 2009, despite not racing for almost 10 years, he drove for Ferrari at Valencia, replacing Felipe Massa, who had been injured in practice for the Hungarian GP. He raced again for the team in the Belgian GP and after avoiding the first lap accidents, finished in 14th place, last of those drivers to finish the full race distance. However, following this race Ferrari placed Giancarlo Fisichella in the race seat.
Luca retired from his Ferrari test driver role at the end of 2010 and his son Brando currently competes in the Italian ACI Karting Championship.
