Emerson Fittipaldi

Emerson Fittipaldi (born 12 December 1946) is a Brazilian former automobile racing driver who won both the Formula One World Championship and the Indianapolis 500 twice each and the CART championship once.

Both his parents had raced production cars shortly after the Second World War and Wilson Sr was also responsible for the first Mil Milhas race in 1956, in São Paulo, having been inspired by the 1949 Italian Mille Miglia.

Emerson, along with his brother Wilson, became motorsports enthusiasts as young children.

At age 14, Fittipaldi was racing motorcycles, and at 16, hydroplanes.

While racing one day, his brother Wilson blew over at 70 mi/h and landed upside down.

Wilson was uninjured in the accident, but it prompted both Fittipaldi brothers to stop competing in boat racing and focus solely on racing land vehicles.

In 1967, Fittipaldi won the 6 Hours of Interlagos in a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia at the age of 20, and a year later the 12 Hours of Porto Alegre.

The pair moved to racing Formula Vees, and built up a company with their parents.

In his second season in single-seaters, Fittipaldi won the Brazilian Formula Vee title at age 21.

Based on the success of the Cosworth DFV engine and Lotus 49/49B cars in 1968, Team Lotus was enjoying the reputation as one of the top F1 teams with the inflow of sponsorship money, and Colin Chapman used the third seat on the team for championship races as the testing ground for younger drivers.

This was in contrast to the team's tradition to use non-championship F1 events for the purpose.

He left for Europe in 1969, with the ambition to convince team owners of his talent in three months.

After some podiums and his first victories in Formula Ford, Fittipaldi was first trained and then subsequently engaged by the Jim Russell Driving School Formula Three team.

He won nine F3 races on the Jim Russell Lotus 59 in the MCD Lombard Championship to become the 1969 champion.

For, Fittipaldi moved up to F2 by joining the Lotus semi-works Team Bardahl campaigning Lotus 59B.

With six finishes in the points and four on the podium, he ended the eight-race season in third place behind Clay Regazzoni and Derek Bell.

While this result was very impressive for the newcomer to the series, the spotlight was on Fittipaldi that year because of his activities in Formula One instead.

Moving up from Formula Two, Fittipaldi made his race debut for Team Lotus as a third driver at the 1970 British Grand Prix.

After Jochen Rindt was killed at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, the Brazilian became Lotus's lead driver in only his fifth Grand Prix.

The third seat was given to Alex Soler-Roig in early 1970, and then to Fittipaldi starting with the British GP in July, with Jochen Rindt and John Miles as the regular seat holders.

Fittipaldi scored a fourth place as the No. 3 driver at the next German GP where the No. 1 Jochen Rindt won, and the No. 2 John Miles retired.

Team Lotus plans for the season drastically changed when Jochen Rindt was killed at Monza in September and became the only driver to win the championship posthumously.

John Miles also left the team, and Fittipaldi was promoted to be the Lotus No. 1 driver on his fifth F1 race at the United States GP with Reine Wisell and Pete Lovely as the teammates.

Fittipaldi proved up to the task and won this first post-Rindt race for Lotus.

In his first full year as Lotus's lead driver in 1971, Fittipaldi finished sixth in the Drivers' Championship as the team further developed the previous season's Lotus 72.

He enjoyed considerable success with Lotus, winning the World Drivers' Championship in 1972 at the age of 25.

At the time, he was the youngest ever F1 world champion, and he held the record for 33 years.

Armed with what was arguably the greatest Formula one design of all time, the Lotus 72D, Fittipaldi proved dominant in 1972 as he won five of 11 races and claimed the F1 Drivers' Championship.

At 25, he was then the youngest champion in F1 history.

He later moved to McLaren for 1974, winning the title once again, and helping McLaren win their first Constructors' Championship.

He surprised the paddock by moving to his brother's Fittipaldi Automotive team prior to the 1976 season, being replaced by James Hunt.

Success eluded him during his final years in Formula One, with the Fittipaldi cars not competitive enough to fight for victories.

Fittipaldi took two more podium finishes, before retiring in 1980.

Following his Formula One career, Fittipaldi moved to the American CART series, achieving numerous successes, including the 1989 CART title and two wins at the Indianapolis 500 in 1989 and 1993.

Since his retirement from Indy Car racing in 1996, Fittipaldi races only occasionally.

In 2008, he became one of only three people in history to have a Corvette production car named in his honor.

At age 67, he entered the 2014 6 Hours of São Paulo.

Emerson Fittipaldi was born in São Paulo, Brazil.

He is the younger son of prominent Italian-Brazilian motorsports journalist and radio commentator Wilson Fittipaldi Sr and his wife Józefa "Juzy" Wojciechowska, an immigrant from Saint Petersburg of Polish and Russian descent.

He was named after American author and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson.