Giedo van der Garde

TBA | Giedo van der Garde | Sauber F1 Team

Date of Birth: 25/04/1985 | Nationality: Dutch | Twitter: @GVanderGarde

Career:

During a lengthy junior career Van der Garde spent several seasons in Formula Three, Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2.

He won the FR3.5 title in 2008 before moving into GP2 for 2009. He won three races and while he remained a frontrunner during two years with Barwa Addax, he was unable to add to his win tally.

In 2012 he switched to Caterham and eventually returned to the top step of the podium as he claimed wins in Spain and Singapore.

Van der Garde's Formula 1 connections date back several years as he was initially part of McLaren and Renault young driver programmes before joining Super Aguri at the end of 2006 as their test driver.

However, mere weeks later he was announced as Spyker's test and reserve driver and he remained in that role through the team's transition into 2008, before testing for Renault at the end of the season.

He was repeatedly linked with several teams before joining Caterham in 2012, when he participated in six free practice sessions for the team.

Van der Garde stepped up to a race seat for 2013 and finished 15 of the 19 races, with a best of 14th place in Hungary. He showed respectable pace compared to team-mate Charles Pic but excelled on a couple of occasions due to inspired tyre choices in qualifying. He made it through to Q2 in Monaco and set the third fastest time in Q1 at Spa after a late switch to slicks on a drying circuit. He had the option to remain with Caterham for 2014 but decided to switch to Sauber as the team's test and reserve driver.