Jules
Bianchi

Jules Bianchi was born in Nice on 3 August 1989. His great-uncle Lucien Bianchi was a Formula One driver and won the 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans. Jules took up karting at around the age of three. He won the French Formula Renault 2.0 title in 2007, the Masters of Formula 3 at Zolder in 2008, and the Formula 3 Euro Series with ART in 2009. In GP2 he finished third in both 2010 and 2011, and in 2012 he was runner-up to Robin Frijns in Formula Renault 3.5. A member of the Ferrari Driver Academy from 2009, he was Ferrari's test and reserve driver in 2011 and a reserve driver for Force India in 2012.

He joined Marussia in 2013 and made his debut alongside Max Chilton at the Australian Grand Prix, finishing 15th. He took 13th in Malaysia and ended the season 19th in the standings. He stayed with the team for 2014 and, after starting 21st at the Monaco Grand Prix, scored his first championship points and the team's first. He ended that year 17th in the standings. In total he started 34 races.

At the Japanese Grand Prix on 5 October 2014, Bianchi had a serious accident at Suzuka in wet conditions, colliding with a recovery vehicle. He died in Nice on 17 July 2015, aged 25. The FIA has not issued the number 17 since. After investigating the accident, it changed vehicle recovery procedures in 2015, and from 2018 it made the halo mandatory in all its single-seater championships.

Source: Wikipedia, “Jules Bianchi”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.