Cristiano Da Matta

Cristiano da Matta is a racing driver Brazilian born the September 19th 1973 with Belo Horizonte, with the Brésil.

Biography

After many titles in Karting, it gains the Brazilian championships of Formule Ford and Formule 3. After a passage in British F3 and F3000, it leaves to the the United States in 1997, in the championship Indy Lights, which it gains the following year. It arrives in the championship CART in 1999, where it is affirmed gradually like one of the strong men of the discipline, until obtaining the championship in 2002 at the wheel of a Lola-Toyota of the stable Newman-Haas Racing.

Very haloed its domination on the CART, it is engaged in 2003 by the stable Toyota in Formule 1. Taking into account the material of which it lays out, Da Matta carries out a first very suitable season. It registers 10 points with the championship and posts a performance level very close to sound tried out coéquiper Olivier Panis. But season 2004 proves more difficult, with only three points marked in Monaco, and of progress of the Toyota stable which are made wait. Suffering from relations increasingly tended with its employer, Christiano da Matta is made dismiss the semi-season shortly after.

In 2005, Da Matta turns over in Champ Because, within the stable PKV Racing. A victory early in the season with Portland lets think one moment that the Brazilian pilot is able to find his level of 2002, but the continuation of its season is rather poor. Not retained by the PKV Racing for 2006, it finds refuge in the small stable Dale Coyne Racing, where a series of good performances enables him at the end of some races to find a wheel of point, in the team RuSport.

But its return in form is brutally stopped on August 3rd, 2006 at a meeting of tests deprived on the layout of Elkhart Lake: after having run up against full whip a stag which had been introduced into the enclosure of the circuit, it leaves the track violently, and, unconscious, must be héliporté in urgency at the hospital of Neenah in Wisconsin. After having undergone an surgical operation aiming at reducing a hématome under-dural (cranial traumatism), it is maintained by the doctors in an artificial coma of which it leaves gradually only at the end of the month August 2006.

Career

1990-1992: Karting
1993: Championship of Brazil of Formula Ford, Champion
1994: Championship of Brazil of Formula 3, Champion
1995: Championship of Great Britain de Formule 3, 8th
1996: International championship of Formula 3000, 8th
1997: Indy Lights, better beginning from the year
1998: Indy Lights, Champion
1999: CART at Arciero-Wells, 18th
2000: CART at Arciero-Wells, 10th
2001: CART at Newman-Haas, 5th
2002: CART at Newman-Haas, Champion
2003: Formula 1 at Toyota, 13th
2004: Formula 1 at Toyota, 16th
2005: Field Because at PKV, 11th
2006: Field Because at Flagstone Coyne then RuSport, 8th after Toronto

External bond

Official site of Cristiano da Matta

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