Belated Birthday Wishes to Max Chilton!

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We were so busy yesterday reminiscing about Aryton Senna's maiden Grand Prix win in Portugual in 1985, that we forgot to wish Maximilian Alexander Chilton a very happy 27th birthday!

Born on April 21, 1991 in Reigate, Surrey, Max raced in Formula 1 for two seasons with Marussia F1 between 2013 and 2014. Sadly, his time in Grand Prix racing came to an end when the team went into administration.

Chilton had originally made his way up through the ranks of British Formula 3, hitting GP2 in 2010. In both championships he was most closely associated with the Carlin race team. He was fourth in the 2012 championship before being called up to race full-time in Formula 1.

When his stint in F1 came to an end, Max reunited with Carlin to race stateside in the Indy Lights series. That led to a two-year spell in the senior Verizon IndyCar Series with Chip Ganassi Racing. He finished the 2017 Indianapolis 500 in an impressive fourth place.

This year Carlin decided to step up its game by founding a brand new IndyCar team. And naturally, their driver of choice for their new venture was the by-now well-experienced Max Chilton. Alongside him this season is Charlie Kimball, another Ganassi graduate.

Just three races into 2018, the team is understandably still bedding in and finding its feet. Max spent his birthday on track at Barber Motorsports Park in practice and qualifying for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.

He'll be starting from 13th place on the grid for today's race. It's the last event before the IndyCar Series heads to Indianapolis in May - first for the road course race on May 12, and then the Indy 500 itself on May 27.

©MaxChilton

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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.