Jarno Trulli
Having started more than 250 grands prix, Jarno Trulli is very much in the latter stages of his Formula 1 career.
Last Updated: 17/02/12 10:52am
Having joined a select group of drivers to have started more than 250 grands prix, Jarno Trulli is in the latter stages of his Formula 1 career and now finds himself looking for a job after surprisingly being dropped by Caterham.
A highly-regarded karting starlet in his youth, the Italian started his F1 career with Minardi in 1997 before switching to the more competitive Prost team midway through the season following Olivier Panis' accident in Canada.
His impact was immediate: during his third race at the French team he finished fourth at Hockenheim and then, in his final appearance before making way for the returning Panis, he led for over 30 laps in Austria before a blown engine denied him an astonishing against-the-odds win.
The performances earned him a permanent seat alongside Panis for the following year but 1998 and 1999 proved frustrating for the young Italian as the French outfit slipped down the grid, although he did again come close to a victory at the Nurburging in the latter year when he finished second to Stewart's Johnny Herbert. A switch to Jordan followed and he would spend two years with the Honda-engined outfit, although consistently strong qualifying performances rarely went rewarded.
In 2002 he left for Renault and paired with future champions Jenson Button in 2002 and Fernando Alonso in 2003 he would often lead the way in qualifying only to fall back in race conditions. One weekend that trend didn't hold true though was Monaco 2004 when he brilliantly took pole and then held off a hard-charging Button to earn his maiden F1 win. Yet his Renault sojourn would soon turn sour amid an increasingly frosty relationship with Flavio Briatore and he was duly dropped before season's end.
He promptly resurfaced at big-spending Toyota and would spend the next five seasons trying, but ultimately failing, to bring the Japanese manufacturer an elusive F1 victory. That's not to say he didn't get close: at the start of 2005 Trulli notched up three podium finishes (including two P2s bagged in Malaysia and Bahrain) early on and it seemed only a matter of time before he starting winning.
From there the team's campaign petered out and Toyota actually fell back down the grid in 2006-2007. By 2009 they were back in the hunt initially thanks mainly to being one of the few teams to exploit the double diffuser concept.
However, despite taking pole ahead of team-mate Timo Glock in Bahrain, Trulli faded to third in the race. It proved to be Toyota's final real chance to finish on the top step on the podium as they pulled the rug from under their F1 team at the end of the year.
Trulli's vast experience and sheer natural talent for driving were always likely to be in demand elsewhere, however, and he was duly snapped up by Tony Fernandes for his new Lotus Racing project in 2010. Having spent the best part of a decade driving for well-funded manufacturer teams, the switch to a start-up operation was probably a culture shock and reliability issues meant he failed to cross the finishing line in five of the first eight races, including a DNS in Australia.
He stayed on for 2011 as the squad switched to the Team Lotus name but he was dogged by power steering problems in the first part of the campaign which he said meant he was unable to extract the maximum performance from the car and seriously challenge Heikki Kovalainen.
But there was a nast surprise in store for Trulli just four weeks before the start of the 2012 season when Caterham opted to make a late driver change, bringing in Vitaly Petrov to replace him.