Drivers

Scott Speed

Speed grew up visiting race tracks following his father Mike, who raced. Scott was racing karts from the age of 10 and was a topline US kart racer for most of his teenage years, winning seven national titles in different series. In 2001 he won the chance to attend the Jim Russell Racing School at Sears Point and won a scholarship to race in Formula Russell at the track and he duly won. In 2002 he moved on to Formula Barber Dodge National Championship and that year also took in some Formula Mazda races. At the end of the year he was picked to take part in the Red Bull Driver Search and emerged the winner, which took him to Britain in 2003 to race for Alan Docking in Formula 3. It was too much too soon and Speed struggled, not helped by the fact that he was suffering from chronic ulcerative colitis, which meant that he was forced to miss a number of races. In 2004 he switched to Formula Renault and won the German and European titles for the Motopark Academy team with Red Bull backing and at the end of the year was given an IRL test run by Red Bull Cheever Racing. In 2005 he took his Red Bull sponsorship to iSport International in GP2 and showed well on occasion, finishing third in the championship, despite not winning a race. Red Bull then took him into F1 with Scuderia Toro Rosso and in 2006 he did a decent job alongside Tonio Liuzzi. He finished in the points in Australia but used abusive language in a discussion with the stewards and was given a penalty which dropped him out of his eighth place.