Neel Jani

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Neel Jani (2017)

Neel Jani (born December 8, 1983 in Rorschach ) is an Indian - Swiss racing driver . From 2003 to 2006 he was employed as a test driver in the top motorsport class, Formula 1 . He has been driving the 24 Hours of Le Mans every year since 2009 and achieved first place in 2016 after the Toyota that had been leading until a few minutes earlier failed due to a technical defect . Jani won together with Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas , the FIA World Endurance Championship 2016 .

Career

Jani's career started in 1998 with karting , which he did for two years before entering automobile racing in 2000. As part of the Swiss championship, he drove in the newly launched Lista A junior formula . With eight wins in twelve races, he became the superior champion. At the end of this season he competed in the French Formula Renault, where he gave another taste of his talent with four championship points. In 2001 he drove for the Italian team DG Racing in the Formula Renault 2000 in Italy and in the Eurocup, but was not happy, which led him to switch to the Swiss team Jenzer Motorsport . Here he was able to really develop in 2002 and reached the runner-up European championship. He then switched to the Formula Renault V6 with Jenzer in 2003 , where he again became Vice European Champion.

He stayed in the Formula Renault V6 until 2004, but switched to the DAMS team and, with a lot of bad luck, only finished fourth in the end. In Dubai, he also competed in a race for the FIA GT championship on a DAMS Lamborghini . In 2005 he started in the GP2 series for the Spanish Racing Engineering team and finished sixth in the overall standings with two wins.

Jani was a Formula 1 test driver at Sauber Petronas in 2003 and 2004 . Sponsored by Red Bull , the Swiss competed in a few test drives for his own Red Bull Racing team , or RBR for short , and was actually scheduled to be a test driver for 2006. After Robert Doornbos was signed as a test driver at RBR, Jani became a test and reserve driver for Red Bull's second Formula 1 team, Scuderia Toro Rosso .

Jani also represented Switzerland in the A1GP series in the 2005/06 season , achieved a win and many other podium finishes that brought the Swiss team to second place. Since the F1 test program for 2007 was drastically reduced and from now on there were no more third drivers at GP events, Jani switched to the American Champ Car series at Red Bull's request . After a season at the Champ Cars, which he finished under contract with the PKV-Racing -Rennstall , which was not exactly the favorite team at the time , with 3 podiums in 9th place overall, he switched back to the A1GP series and won in the 2007 / 08 with 4 wins and 11 podium finishes sensationally the world championship title for Switzerland. The following season was only marginally worse; In the end the team had to be content with the runner-up after 4 race wins. Jani also took part in the Le Mans 24-hour race in 2009 and ended up 12th in the LMP1 class.

From 2010 to 2012 Jani drove for the Rebellion Racing team in the endurance championship (until 2011 Le Mans Series , from 2012 FIA endurance world championship ).

On June 24, 2013, Porsche announced that it would be adding Neel Jani to its group of works drivers. There he was supported by Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas in the test work and from the 2014 season he was behind the wheel of one of the two LMP1 vehicles. Jani's multi-year contract with Porsche began on July 1st. In addition to the races with the Porsche 919, he drove for Rebellion Racing in the American Le Mans Series in 2013 and 2017.

Jani received a regular cockpit at Dragon Racing in the FIA Formula E Championship for the 2017/18 season . After the team proved not to be competitive at the season opener in Hong Kong , Jani left the team before the second event. At the end of the season he finished 25th overall.

statistics

GP2 series

season Team name Start number run Victories Podium Pole positions Points Championships
2005 Super nova 14th 21st 2 2 1 48 0
2006 Arden International 4th 4th 0 0 0 0 0

Champ Car World Series

season Team name Start number run Victories Podium Pole positions Points World championships
2007 PKV Racing 21st 14th 0 3 0 231 0

A1GP

season Team name Victories Podium Pole positions Fastest laps Points World championships
2005/06 A1 Team Switzerland 1 11 2 1 121 0
2006/07 A1 Team Switzerland 1 1 1 0 25
(of 50)
0
2007/08 A1 Team Switzerland 4th 11 6th 5 168 1
2008/09 A1 Team Switzerland 4th 7th 1 2 95 (99) 0

Individual results in the FIA ​​Formula E Championship

year team 1 2 3 4th 5 6th 7th 8th 9 10 11 12 Points rank
2017/18 Dragon Racing Hong KongHong Kong HKG MoroccoMorocco MAR ChileChile SAN MexicoMexico MEX UruguayUruguay PUN ItalyItaly ROME FranceFrance PAR GermanyGermany BER SwitzerlandSwitzerland ZUR United StatesUnited States NYC 0 25th
18th 18th

( Legend )

Le Mans results

year team vehicle Teammate Teammate placement Failure reason
2009 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Speedy Racing Team Lola B08 / 60 ItalyItaly Andrea Belicchi FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 14
2010 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B10 / 60 United StatesUnited States Marco Andretti FranceFrance Nicolas Prost failure malfunction
2011 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B10 / 60 NetherlandsNetherlands Jeroen Bleekemolen FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 6
2012 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B12 / 60 GermanyGermany Nick Heidfeld FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 4
2013 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B12 / 60 GermanyGermany Nick Heidfeld FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 39
2014 GermanyGermany Porsche team Porsche 919 Hybrid FranceFrance Romain Dumas GermanyGermany Marc Lieb Rank 11
2015 GermanyGermany Porsche team Porsche 919 Hybrid FranceFrance Romain Dumas GermanyGermany Marc Lieb Rank 5
2016 GermanyGermany Porsche team Porsche 919 Hybrid FranceFrance Romain Dumas GermanyGermany Marc Lieb Overall victory
2017 GermanyGermany Porsche LMP team Porsche 919 Hybrid United KingdomUnited Kingdom Nick Tandy GermanyGermany André Lotterer failure no oil pressure
2018 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Rebellion R13 BrazilBrazil Bruno Senna GermanyGermany André Lotterer Rank 4
2019 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Rebellion R13 BrazilBrazil Bruno Senna GermanyGermany André Lotterer Rank 4

Sebring results

year team vehicle Teammate Teammate placement Failure reason
2011 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B10 / 60 NetherlandsNetherlands Jeroen Bleekemolen FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 7
2012 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B12 / 60 GermanyGermany Nick Heidfeld FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 30
2013 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Lola B12 / 60 GermanyGermany Nick Heidfeld FranceFrance Nicolas Prost Rank 3
2017 SwitzerlandSwitzerland Rebellion Racing Oreca 07 GermanyGermany Nick Heidfeld SwitzerlandSwitzerland Sébastien Buemi failure alternator

Web links

Commons : Neel Jani  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jani: "The title must be the goal" motorsport-total.com
  2. Porsche confirms Jani as a works driver