Planet-F1

Scott Speed

Wednesday 14th February 2007

Scott began racing with karts and over the next nine years he won many titles in the United States.

However, in 2001 he stepped up to single-seaters and the following season was crowned the Formula Mazda champion.

That same year, the Californian also caught the eye of those running the Red Bull Drivers Search programme and with the Austrian energy drink company's backing, he entered the British F1 Championship in 2003.

A year later Scott was off to the Formula Renault German series, before heading to the new GP2 Series in 2005. He finished third overall.

The American also tested for Red Bull Racing that year, standing in as their Friday test driver for three grand prix weekends.

His performances earned Scott a racedrive with RBR's junior team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, for 2006.

Speed was tenacious from the onset of the season, and in fact finished in the top eight in his third grand prix, the Australian GP. However, the American lost the point he'd earned after the race stewards penalized him for passing David Coulthard under yellow flags.

Speed was also fined for his outburst during the stewards' hearing. Not exactly his brightest moment in Formula One.

However, the American soon put the incident behind him and although he tried hard for the remainder of the season, points just didn't come as STR struggled for pace.

In 2007 the team will swap from a restricted V10 Cosworth engine to a fully-fledged Ferrari unit, which is expected to boost STR up the grid.

And although it took some deliberation from STR, they finally announced in late February that Scott would be able to take advantage of the improvements as he would remain with STR in 2007.

Speed's 2007 season, though, can only be described as disappointing as reliability and crashed dominated his campaign. In fact out of the ten races he competed in, the American only finished three - although he did manage ninth place at the Monaco GP.

It was the European GP, race 10 in the Championship, that eventually brought his STR career to an end. After the race, in which both Toro Rosso drivers spun off in the wet conditions on the same lap and just moments after each other, he was allegedly involved in a physical altercation with his team boss Franz Tost. Days later the American also launched a verbal attack on the team, saying they wanted to get rid of both himself and Liuzzi.

And that's exactly what happened.

On 31st July 2007 Speed was released from his Toro Rosso and replaced by Sebastian Vettel, bringing to an end his stay in F1.