Nick, often called "Quick Nick" is one of the
German drivers in the
Formula 1. The
2001 season is only his second
F1 season, but after a pretty bad season for
Alain Prost's team 2000, he changed to the
Swiss team
Sauber-Petronas, where he forms a great duo with with the two years younger
Kimi Raikkönen. With Nick in 7th and Kimi in 8th place of the World Championship they earned together 19 points (five races before the end of the season this is a new
record for
Peter Sauber's team).
Facts
Born: 10th May 1977
Birthplace: Mönchengladbach
Residence: Monaco
Height: 1.64 m
Weight: 59 kg
Languages: German, English, French
F1 Career:
2000: 0 points
2001: 13 points (after 16 races)
2001 races within the points:
3th place in Brazil
4th place in Australia
5th place in USA
6th place in Spain, France, Great Britain, Hungary
Biography
Nick Heidfeld was born on 10th May 1977 in Mönchengladbach, but now he lives in Monaco (like many other F1 drivers). He started racing 1984 and his first successes were in the Formel Ford ( a Formula racing class for young drivers). 1994 he was German Champion in the "Formel Ford 1600" class and 1995 he was promoted to "Formel Ford 1800" where he became International German Champion (this means the series is based in Germany, but foreign drivers are allowed). 1996 and 1997 he started in the International German Formula 3 championship (Formula 3 is normally the second step in the Formula career of a driver, the number of hps approximatly doubles with each promotion into a new series: Formel Ford: 100hp, Formula 3: 200hp, Formula 3000: 400 hp, Formula 1: 800 hp) in his first he was third in the final standings, but in his second year he won the series. In this year he also became a so called Mercedes Junior which allowed him to test the McLaren Mercedes F1 car. 1998 he switched into the Formula 3000 championship, he became vice-champion in his premiere year and won the championship the next year. Then in 2000 his F1 career started as a driver for Gauloises Prost Peugeot. After having such a terrific career and as he had been faster than Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard during his time as a test driver for McLaren, everyone expected him to be a big hit in the F1 scene. But he did not make a single point in his first season not only because he made to many errors, but mainly because of the bad car the Prost had been (his team mate was Jean Alesi, the most experienced driver today, and he was rarely better than Quick Nick).brp>
Nick surely is a very talented driver who can win races if the car is good enough, but I doubt that he is good enough to win the championship, as Michael Schumacher, one of the best drivers of all time, will drive until 2004 and there are several other great young drivers nowadays in the F1: Ralf Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jenson Button and especially his team mate Kimi Raikkönen. So the difficulty is not only to become a great driver, but to get one of the rare good cars in the F1.