Björn
Wirdheim

Björn Wirdheim was born in Växjö on 4 April 1980, and his father, Örnulf Wirdheim, was also a racing driver. He started karting at the age of ten and won the Southern Swedish Karting Championship. He moved into single-seaters in 1996 and took the Swedish Formula Ford 1600 Junior title in 1997, winning 17 races. In 1998 and 1999 he raced in the Formula Palmer Audi series and finished on the podium twice. He then competed in German Formula Three from 2000. In 2001 he won at the Nürburgring and the A1-Ring and took three pole positions, one of them at the Macau Grand Prix.

In 2002 he stepped up to International Formula 3000 with Arden International. He finished fourth overall, was named Rookie of the Year and helped Arden win the teams' title. He stayed with Arden in 2003 and became champion, the first Swede to win the title in the series' 19-year history, and he beat Justin Wilson's record for points in a season. At Monaco he lost a win he seemed to have in hand when he eased off just short of the finish line and was passed by Nicolas Kiesa.

At the end of 2003 Wirdheim had the opportunity to test for Jordan and BAR. In 2004 he was third driver at Jaguar, in charge of the Friday tests at Grand Prix weekends. He never started a race in the Formula One World Championship.

In 2005 he drove for HVM Racing in the Champ Car World Series but parted company with the team after eleven races. In Japan's Formula Nippon he drove for Team Dandelion, finishing sixth in 2006 and staying with the team in 2007. He also raced in Super GT from 2006 and was runner-up in the GT300 class in 2013 and 2014. In 2015 he won the European Le Mans Series title. In 2016 he also contested the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship for Flash Engineering. In 2018 he worked as a Formula One commentator for Viasat and won the 1966 to 1972 class at the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco in a March 711.

Source: Wikipedia, “Björn Wirdheim”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.