Gabriele Tarquini

This made him the oldest ever world champion in an FIA series, breaking Juan Manuel Fangio's record of being FIA Formula One World Drivers' Champion at the age of 46 years and 41 days in 1957.

Gabriele Tarquini (born 2 March 1962) is an Italian former racing driver.

Tarquini began karting in 1976.

By 1985 he was driving in Formula 3000, spending three seasons with underfunded outfits.

He participated in 78 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on May 3, 1987.

He scored a single championship point, and holds the record for the most failed attempts to qualify.

His best result was 2nd at Imola in 1987, by which time he had already made his Grand Prix debut in a one-off drive for Osella at the 1987 San Marino Grand Prix.

He joined Coloni's Grand Prix team for 1988, having driven for them in F3000 in 1986.

The season saw a prequalifying system being put in place as there were 31 entrants for a maximum 30 places in qualifying proper.

As such, the slowest of the new entrants for the season (Coloni, Rial, Dallara and EuroBrun) would be eliminated from proceedings after the Friday morning session regardless of their overall position - Tarquini failed to prequalify several times despite often being faster than some of the exempt entrants (such as the Osella and Zakspeed cars).

He drew good notices for his performance overall, however - his 8th place at the Canadian Grand Prix would stand as the team's best ever result and his eight starts the most ever garnered by a Coloni driver.

Tarquini signed to drive for the FIRST team (again a former employer in F3000) and drove for them at the Formula One Indoor Trophy, but when their car failed crash tests he started 1989 without a ride.

Following Philippe Streiff's career-ending pre-season testing crash, Tarquini joined Joachim Winkelhock in the AGS team from the second round of the series.

There he finished a fine 8th on the road, being promoted to 6th after the exclusion of Thierry Boutsen and Alex Caffi.

The series then moved to faster tracks where the AGS was less competitive and the results of others meant Tarquini's entry (exempt for the first half of the season thanks to Streiff's efforts in 1988) would have to prequalify for the second half of the season.

The expanding entry list meant prequalifying was very different from 1988, consisting of an hour-long free-for-all session on Friday morning between the less successful cars.

Featuring the Larrousse cars of Michele Alboreto and Philippe Alliot, Roberto Moreno's Coloni, the Osellas of Nicola Larini and Piercarlo Ghinzani and the Onyx cars of Stefan Johansson and Bertrand Gachot among others with only the four fastest going through both Tarquini and new teammate Yannick Dalmas struggled and Tarquini would not qualify again that year.

AGS attempted to move to larger premises for 1990 but a lack of resources and the late arrival of the JH25 left Tarquini and Dalmas again struggling to get past prequalifying, Tarquini only making it into four races (finishing just once - 13th in the Hungarian Grand Prix), his early 1989 form long forgotten by most.

The team were under even more severe financial constraints for 1991, though they would initially at least avoid prequalifying.

Tarquini made it through into three races, finishing a worthy 8th in the season opener at Phoenix but financial constraints meant after Monaco the AGS didn't make the grid again.

Late in the season the cash-strapped team sold his contract to Gabriele Rumi's ambitious Fondmetal outfit in time for the Spanish Grand Prix, soon forming a good relationship with the team.

He was signed for a full year in 1992, showing some good speed in the neat but underdeveloped Fondmetal GR02 chassis.

With the creation of D2 series in 1993, Tarquini passed to Alfa Romeo becoming their top driver and finishing third in Italian Superturismo behind Ravaglia and Giovanardi.

The following year Tarquini moved to the British Touring Car Championship, winning the title at his first attempt in an Alfa Romeo featuring controversial aerodynamic enhancements.

He has subsequently raced successfully in Touring Cars, winning the BTCC in 1994, the ETCC in 2003 the WTCC in 2009 and the WTCR in 2018.

Despite being firmly involved in his successful touring cars career and 33 years old, Tarquini was signed up by Tyrrell for the 1995 season as their test driver thanks to the presence of Fondmetal as a sponsor.

He replaced Ukyo Katayama for the European round as the Japanese driver was injured from his start line accident in the previous race.

In 1995 Alfa Corse decided to move him back to Italian Superturismo Championship but after 2 victories, 4 third place and 6 DNF, Tarquini left the series and joined to Prodrive to help Alfa Romeo to achieve better results in BTCC.

On 22 November 2009 he won the 2009 FIA World Touring Car Championship title at the age of 47 years and 266 days.

He was then one of the stars of the weekend in Monaco, threatening to qualify in the top 6 before ending up 13th on the grid.

In the race he advanced to a strong 4th before being sidelined by an electrical problem.

At the following Mexican Grand Prix he finished 6th, though the team's joy was tempered after Williams and Scuderia Italia successfully appealed against their Imola disqualification and Tarquini lost his point.

More bad luck followed at Phoenix where Tarquini was holding 6th despite technical problems before Boutsen passed him on the final lap.

At the wet Canadian Grand Prix Tarquini again ran well until being shoved off the track by René Arnoux (who eventually went on to finish 5th).

However, his car only finished once (14th at Silverstone, hindered by clutch problems) and despite some fine qualifying efforts (including outqualifying Ivan Capelli's Ferrari in Belgium) the team struggled to find funding, folding after the following Italian Grand Prix and leaving Tarquini out of a drive.

Out of practice with single seaters (having done very little actual testing due to the team's financial constraints) he finished 14th, six laps down on winner Michael Schumacher.

It was his final Grand Prix, and to date, the last occasion a reigning BTCC Champion has competed in Formula One.

Tarquini failed to pre-qualify on a record 25 occasions (out of a total of 40 failures to qualify), mainly because he was a regular in the pre-qualifying era, usually in cars which were so slow as to struggle to qualify.

Despite this record many consider him to have been a talented driver stuck with uncompetitive machinery (much like contemporary Roberto Moreno).

Tarquini backed up this record by winning the 2018 FIA World Touring Car Cup at the age of 56 years and 259 days.