Christijan
Albers

Christijan Albers was born in Eindhoven on 16 April 1979. His father, André, was a rallycross driver. Albers started in karting and won the Dutch national championship in 1997. That same year he took the Formula Ford 1800 titles in both the Netherlands and Belgium. He stepped up to German Formula Three in 1998 and won the championship in 1999 with six victories. In 2000 he raced in Formula 3000 as team-mate to Mark Webber but did not score a point.

From 2001 Albers competed in the DTM with Mercedes-Benz, moving to the works AMG team in 2003. That year he won four races and finished as runner-up, challenging Bernd Schneider for the title until the final round. In 2004 he finished third overall.

Alongside the DTM, Albers worked as a test and reserve driver for Minardi, who gave him a race seat for 2005. At the 2005 United States Grand Prix he finished fifth for his first championship points, in a race where only six cars took the start. He ended the season 19th in the championship. In 2006 he drove for Midland, the team that had grown out of Jordan, as its first official driver, and finished 22nd in the standings. At the San Marino Grand Prix his car rolled several times after a collision with Yuji Ide, and Albers was unhurt. In 2007 he raced for Spyker and lost his seat after the British Grand Prix. He made nine starts that year and finished 25th in the championship. In total he started 46 races without reaching the podium.

Albers returned to the DTM in 2008 with the Audi team Futurecom TME. That year he also finished second in the American Le Mans Series finale at Laguna Seca, sharing an Audi R10 TDI from Audi Sport North America with Emanuele Pirro. In 2009 he moved to the Le Mans Series with a customer Audi team run by Colin Kolles. In July 2014 he became team principal of Caterham in Formula One. In 2022 he became part of the Formula One analyst team at the broadcaster Viaplay.

Source: Wikipedia, “Christijan Albers”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.