Paul Tracy's brief history of Formula 1

Paul Tracy - born on this day 56 years ago - enjoyed a successful career in CART and IndyCar from 1991 to 2011, but the Canadian also once put his foot in Formula 1's door, albeit very briefly.

Back in 1994, Tracy tested with the Benetton Formula 1 team at Estoril. He set a faster time than both of the team's regular drivers, JJ Lehto and Jos Verstappen, had managed at that year's Portuguese Grand Prix.

In fact, he was only 0.7s off the pole time for that race which had been set by Ferrari's Gerhard Berger.

For whatever reason, Tracy's Formula 1 aspirations went no further. But in 2013, Autosport magazine named him one of the 50 greatest drivers ever to have raced in F1.

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.