Happy birthday, Fisico!

The effervescent Giancarlo Fisichella turns 44 today, and while he never won a world championship the Italian driver nonetheless seems to have woven his way into the very fabric of modern Formula One with stints at Minardi, Jordan, Benetton, Sauber, Renault, Force India, Ferrari in a career spanning 14 seasons and 231 races.

He made his début at the 1996 Australian Grand Prix with Minardi and the following season moved to Jordan where he picked up his first podium position with third place in Canada. Back-to-back runners-up spots came in Monaco and Canada in 1997 with Benetton, and his run of form in Montreal continued with two more podiums there in the following seasons.

He had to wait until 2003 before he clinched his first race win, which came in Brazil when he was back with Jordan. There would be two more race victories in Australia and Malaysia with Renault, but the closest he got to winning the title was fourth place in the drivers championship in 2006 - the year his team Fernando Alonso took the crown for a second time.

In his final season Fisichella notched up an impressive second place at Spa with Force India, which earned him a call-up to Ferrari for the remaining races of 2009 in place of the injured Felipe Massa. After achieving his dream of competing for the Scuderia, Fisichella retired from Formula One but went on to compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship and was the winner of the GTE Pro category in the 2012 and 2014 Le Mans 24 Hour races, and was runner-up in last year's event.

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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.