Bas
Leinders

Bas Leinders was born in Bree, Belgium, on 16 July 1975. He began in karting and won the very first race he entered. At fourteen he became European kart champion, in 1991 he won the Belgian title, and in 1992 he drove as a works driver for Tony Kart. In single-seaters he was Benelux Formula Ford champion in 1994 and British and European Formula Ford champion in 1995. In 1996 he took the European Formula Opel title with Van Amersfoort Racing, winning eight races.

In German Formula Three he raced for VAR and finished second in his first race weekend, behind Nick Heidfeld. In his second year, 1998, he won the championship. McLaren's junior team invited him to partner Heidfeld in the final race of the Formula 3000 season. His best results in that series came in 2001, with two second places. In 2002 and 2003 he finished third in the World Series by Nissan both times, and he went on to test for Jordan.

In 2004 Leinders was Friday test and reserve driver for Minardi, taking part in Friday practice on 17 occasions. He never started a Formula One race. His performances with Minardi earned him the Golden Helmet. From 2005 he raced in the FIA GT Championship for Belgian Racing in a Gillet Vertigo. In 2011 he became team principal of Marc VDS Racing, which was also his final year as a full-time driver. In 2014 he contested the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series in the Elite 1 class and finished 14th in the standings with two top-five results. After the team's win in the 2015 24 Hours of Spa, he parted ways with Marc VDS. From 2016 he was sporting manager of McLaren's GT factory programme and team manager of Garage 59, and in 2018 he joined Optimum Motorsport. He has also worked as a colour analyst on Formula One broadcasts for Telenet's Play Sports.

Source: Wikipedia, “Bas Leinders”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.