Stoffel
Vandoorne

Stoffel Vandoorne, a Belgian, started karting at the age of six. Lack of funding limited him to three or four races a year at first, yet he was already Belgian KF2 champion by sixteen and runner-up in the CIK-FIA World Cup in that category in 2009. He moved into single-seaters in 2010 and won the F4 Eurocup 1.6 at his first attempt. The Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 title followed in 2012, and in 2013 he finished second to Kevin Magnussen in Formula Renault 3.5. In GP2 he was runner-up to Jolyon Palmer with ART as a rookie in 2014, then won the championship in 2015. In 2016 he raced in Japan's Super Formula for Dandelion Racing and finished fourth.

He joined McLaren's young driver programme in 2013. He made his Formula One debut at the 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix, standing in for the injured Fernando Alonso, and finished tenth to score a championship point straight away. In 2017 he was a full-time driver alongside Alonso, started 19 of the 20 rounds he was entered for and finished 16th in the championship, with top-ten results in Hungary, Malaysia and Singapore. He contested all 21 races in 2018 and was 16th again. He left McLaren at the end of 2018. In total he made 41 starts without a podium. He then worked as a simulator and reserve driver for McLaren and Mercedes and as a reserve driver for Racing Point, and in 2023 became reserve and simulator driver at Aston Martin.

Vandoorne entered Formula E in 2018-19, first with HWA and then with Mercedes. He was runner-up in 2019-20 and won the world championship with Mercedes in 2021-22. Spells with DS Penske and Maserati followed. In the World Endurance Championship he finished second in the LMP2 class with Jota in 2021. He made his debut in Peugeot's Hypercar programme in 2023 and was a full-time driver there in 2024.

Source: Wikipedia, “Stoffel Vandoorne”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.