Luca Badoer (born 25 January 1971 in Montebelluna, Italy) was a Formula One driver who raced for the BMS Scuderia Italia , Minardi and Forti Corse teams. Prior to Formula One he was regarded as a comingman from Italy. He graduated through the honored route of karting, in which he was Italian champion. He beat Alex Zanardi in the final round of the 1990 Italian Formula 3 Championship. In 1991 he won four races in a row, but was disqualified after a technicality concerning his tires. For 1992 he was offered a ride in Team Crypton for the F3000 Championship, in which he emerged as champion. His start in Formula One was mined by Scuderia Italia's Lola-Ferraris in 1993, as he vied for the final place on the grid. That fiasco almost ended his career, but he regained ground driving for Minardi in 1995. In the underfunded team his best results were eighth places in Canada and Hungary and ninth in Japan. In 1996 he switched to Forti Corse , where he achieved even less, returning to Minardi in 1999 after a two year retirement from Formula One, during which he had been official test driver for Ferrari. When Michael Schumacher broke his leg in an accident in Silverstone in July 1999, he thought it would be his great chance to demonstrate his excellence, but the team chose to run Mika Salo instead. By 2000 he had been awarded the dubious recognition of being the driver who had competed in the most Grands Prix (48) without achieving a single point; making it even harder on him by a gearbox failure when he was in sight of the chequered flag and a fourth place at the European GP in Nurburgring in 1999. In 2000, unable to find a fulltime Formula One drive, he made the decision of being Ferrari test driver for what was left of his career. He remains the number one test driver at Ferrari, annually completing thousands of kilometres at the Maranello and Fiorano test circuits.

Complete Formula One results