Alexander Wurz

Alexander Wurz stood on the podium in his third Formula 1 race. An Austrian born in 1974, he arrived midway through 1997 to stand in at Benetton for Gerhard Berger, who was ill, and at Silverstone, the third of the three races he ran that year, he finished third.

Benetton gave him the full-time seat for 1998 and it was his best season: eighth in the championship with 17 points. Then the car went backwards and he went with it, and at the end of 2000 he was left without a drive. What followed was a very unusual career: five years as McLaren test driver, from 2001 to 2005, putting in miles for others.

In that time he raced only once, and he made it count. At Imola in 2005 he stood in for the injured Juan Pablo Montoya and finished third. He was a race driver again in 2007 with Williams, where he was third in Canada, in a race full of safety cars, and retired at the end of the year.

Three podiums with three different teams and ten years between the first and the last. Outside Formula 1 he won the Le Mans 24 Hours twice, in 1996 and 2009.