Scheckter, Thomas

Thomas is the youngest of two sons of a South African, Jody Scheckter, from his first marriage. His older brother's name is Toby .

Jody and his brother Yang since childhood were engaged in motorsport and, in the end, got to participate in Formula 1 . Ian limited this, and Jody won several races in the framework of the World Cup, and in the 1979 season he won the individual championship title. At the end of his racing career, Jody encouraged his sons in motor racing in every possible way.

Thomas first sat behind the wheel of a map at the age of 11 at one of the South African kartodromes. Relatively quickly, the young rider was able not only to fight on equal terms with his peers, but also to achieve a concrete result, soon becoming the champion of South Africa in one of the categories.

In 1996, Scheckter Jr. first tried his hand at formula-type races, taking part in the races of the national championship, first in the Formula V class, and then Formula Ford . In the latter, Thomas soon won several victories, earning his father’s consent to move to the UK and participate in local motorsport series. There, the South African was quick enough to start fighting with the leaders of the peloton and already in the first year he won several races in the local Formula Renault and Formula Vauxhall Junior .

In 1999, Scheckter participates in the Euro Formula Opel series , where he manages to immediately become a champion, at the same time breaking the championship record for the number of races won per season. As a bonus to the title, the organizers pay him participation in the final stage of the Nissan European Series . Thomas justifies his confidence by taking the second and first places in the races on the Ricardo Tormo circuit (apart from him that season only two pilots were able to perform such a stable single stage, one of them - Fernando Alonso - will soon become a two-time world champion in Formula 1 ) Despite such an impressive debut in the Schecker series in 2000, he participates in less status races in the Formula 3 class: the British championship becomes the base for him, where having won two victories, the South African becomes the vice champion (ahead is only the recent Formula Renault rival Antonio Pizzonia ) Thomas also participates in all the prestigious starts of this category, and in the second half of the year he finds funding for participation in the Italian and international championships in the Formula 3000 class (and here he succeeds in several successful races that brought a couple of podium finishes).

Finding financing for the full season in the International Formula 3000 fails and Scheckter returns to the European series Nissan , having signed a contract with the Vergani Racing team. All year, the South African fought on equal terms with the Frenchman Frank Montagni , but at the end of the season he was forced to give in, having suffered an accident twice in the last three races. In parallel, management arranges Thomas as a test pilot for the Jaguar F1 team. Here, however, the South African did not stay long - after the bloated media incident in one of the nightclubs, the leadership of the British stable preferred to dismiss the South African. ^[one]

The closure of the only real way to Formula 1 led the race driver’s management to try their hand at the North American series: with the support of Red Bull, Schecker gets on the team of Eddie Cheever in the Indy Racing League . The South African's natural speed, which charmed many, did not in fact lead to anything good: Thomas too often lost concentration at the decisive stages of the race and got into optional accidents. For some time they looked at his gatherings through the fingers and in 2003 Scheckter was even able to be in the cockpit of one of the Chip Ganassi Racing combat vehicles. One of the strongest “champcars” teams of that time did everything possible to stabilize Thomas’s results, but the loss at the end of the debut year in the confrontation with Scott Dixon was so great that Chip chose not to renew his contract.

The next few years in the series, the South African spent first in Panther Racing (with him slipping from the status of the current champion to the middle peasant championship), and then in Vision Racing . And here and there, Thomas sometimes showed his speed, but because of constant accidents, he did not realize his already less and less chances of victory and decent results in the individual competition. Before the 2008 season, he lost his pilot's place on the full schedule and for the next four years appeared at the start from case to case, either replacing rivals who had dropped out for medical reasons, or collecting a modest sponsorship budget for himself.

During his indicative career, the South African also participated in other series: in 2005, he played for the South African team in the A1 Grand Prix , and a couple of years later he started in the Vision Racing crew at 24 hours of Daytona .

PivotTable

Formula Racing

Nissan World Series

Bold start from the pole position. Italics - the fastest lap in the race.

IndyCar

Indy 500 Results

Champcar Race Summary Statistics

• Profile (English) on Driver Database
• Profile (English) on the Racing Reference website
• Profile (German) on Speedsport magazine website
• Profile (German) on Grand Am