#Vitantonio Liuzzi

[lewisarchive]

Sir Lewis Hamilton at the Amber Fashion Show (2009-2010)

[chasingseb]

[iceman7raikkonen]

[coimbrabertone]

Star Wars and Motorsports - A Surprisingly Intertwined History.

I actually had this blogpost planned out for a rainy day - I thought about maybe doing it for May 4th, 2025 as a Star Wars Day thingie - however, today, James Earl Jones passed away at the age of 93. I knew him as Darth Vader and Mufasa, but he played a lot of roles and provided a lot of iconic voices, others may know him from the Sandlot, Coming to America, or dozens of other roles over the years.

Rest in peace.

In his honor, I'd like to do my little part, so...a discussion of the long and intertwined history of Star Wars and motorsports.

The first relates to Darth Vader himself, as a dark and imposing figure, was associated with Dale Earnhardt in NASCAR. Yup, known as the Intimidator and as the Man in Black already for his iconic black and gray GM Goodwrench #3 Chevy, Dale Earnhardt was also nicknamed the Darth Vader of motorsports a few times in the 1980s and 1990s.

The black helmet and sunglasses played into that.

Somewhat more substantively, there is also the world of Star Wars sponsorships in racing, with Pepsi and Lucasfilm teaming up to sponsor Jeff Gordon at the 1999 CarQuest Auto Parts 400 Busch Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, promoting Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Gordon would suffer a mechanical failure...which is probably for the best because it had Jar-Jar on the left rear quarter panel.

Fast forward to the 2002 Coke 600, also at Charlotte, and Lucasfilm tried again, this time teaming up with Cheerios to sponsor John Andretti in the #43 car in the Cup series. This was the big leagues, and with them backing a midpack car, fifteenth was actually a respectable finish.

For Revenge of the Sith in 2005, the marketing campaign was back in force. First things first, there were four NASCARs that year, starting with both Yates Racing cars at the 2005 Subway Fresh 500 at Phoenix. Elliott Sadler drove the M&Ms #38 with a Dark Chocolate themed Dark Side paint scheme, while his teammate Dale Jarrett had a UPS/Milk Chocolate M&Ms Light Side car. The Dark Side car had Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper on it. The Light Side car had Anakin Skywalker, the green M&M with Princess Leia hair, and a C3PO M&M.

Pretty odd character choices for Revenge of the Sith but eh, it's all for fun. Anyway, Sadler finished 11th and Jarrett finished 23rd, so I guess the Dark Side won...which I suppose is appropriate, given the movie they're tying into.

So, at the very next race, Star Wars tried again. Teaming up with Jeff Gordon and Pepsi again, this time it was in the Cup Series, sponsoring the Hendrick Motorsports #24 at the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. This car, with Yoda on the hood, would go on to win the race in dominant fashion, leading 139 laps.

Jeff Gordon would also pose with Darth Vader and some stormtroopers ahead of the race, which seems like a conflict of interest given the Yoda car.

Fallen to the Dark Side, Jeff Gordon has.

Finally, Hendrick Motorsports got another Star Wars car, with Episode III sponsoring Kyle Busch's #5 at the amazingly named Chevy American Revolution 400 at Richmond. This Kellogg's car was Mustafar themed with a lava theme on a black base. It has Darth Vader and Mace Windu on it, which...neither is exactly a great fit for Mustafar, what with Windu being dead and Vader only gaining the iconic armor and red lightsaber because of the events of Mustafar.

Kyle finished fourth, another good result for Star Wars.

This wasn't all though, because at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix in Formula One, Star Wars teamed up with Red Bull Racing to sponsor a car. Much like the Kyle Busch car, it was their regular livery with some orange-yellow Star Wars lettering and a lava/fire theme along the bottom.

Drivers David Coulthard and Vitantonio Liuzzi also got a Star Wars photo op to go with it, this time taking pictures with Darth Vader, two stormtroopers, Chewbacca, C3PO, and also George Lucas himself.

A few years later, at the 2008 Peak Antifreeze Indy Grand Prix at Sonoma, the third to last round of the 2008 Indycar Series, Lucasfilm and Blockbuster (lol) teamed up to sponsor Marco Andretti's #26 car. He would finish fourteenth on that occasion.

This was actually the second collaboration between Marco Andretti, Blockbuster, and Lucasfilm that year, as he actually drove an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull car at the 2008 Indianapolis 500, finishing third.

More recently, at the 2023 NASCAR Championship Race at Phoenix, Star Wars and Columbia Sportswear teamed up to sponsor the 23XI cars. Bubba Wallace in the #23 ran an X-Wing car and even had Mark Hamill appear in the unveiling commercial, while Tyler Reddick in the #45 ran a TIE Fighter car.

Bubba Wallace finished 10th, and Tyler Reddick finished 22nd.

Two Light Side versus Dark Side races at Phoenix, the Dark Side drew first blood but then the Light Side won most recently. We're gonna need a tiebreaker.

So, that's what I got in terms of Star Wars sponsorships, but that's always been Star Wars going into motorsports. How about motorsports going into Star Wars?

Well, believe it or not, there is an example.

Podracing.

Yup, and not just in the "hey look, it's racing!" way, nope. At the 1998 Miller Lite 200 at Mid-Ohio, George Lucas and his crew recorded the sounds of the CART race to use as part of the sound mix for the podracing scenes in Episode I.

In fact - and unfortunately, I haven't seen the film so I can't confirm - I've seen the claim that the podracing sequence in Episode I mirrors the Monza race from the classic Formula One movie Grand Prix, which George Lucas is actually credited on as an assistant camera operator - which would lend some credence to the theory.

So yeah, I know I've kept this blog motorsports focused but I am a big Star Wars fan and have been for most of my life. To hear about James Earl Jones passing it's...it's just like...wow. It's unthinkable in a way. Obviously, he was getting older and all that, and there was that story a few years ago about him selling his voice rights to Disney, but like...to think that Darth Vader's voice actor is dead? That's crazy to me.

It's one of the biggest losses in recent media history, I think.

There will never be another voice quite that famous.

[herohimbowhore]

Red Bull and its everchanging driver lineup will forever be interesting to me. The Red Bull ecosystem/family/industrial complex, whatever it is that you want to call it, is something that knows no stability whatsoever.

Very rarely is there stability in the driver lineup for both Red Bull-affiliated teams.

Recency bias may have us thinking that this revolving door of Red Bull drivers has only occurred since 2016 or 2018. Because the Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber lineup was stable, as was the Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen lineup. Not to mention that Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly were teammates for two seasons! And let's not forget the days of David Coulthard and Mark Webber.

Despite those examples of stable lineups, there is always instability occurring at one of the teams, if not both.

Looking through the years, I compiled a list of every driver who's driven for Red Bull or Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri. So, every new driver, every single race change, mid-season swap. If there was a change, then it is listed.

In bold are the drivers currently driving for either Red Bull or AlphaTauri with the most recent first GP start. Lines 28 and 30 with Kyvat and Gasly mark the period in which Toro Rosso became AlphaTauri. The duration counts how many days are between the first GP and the last GP.

Some fun facts that I learned while making this:

Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi were supposed to trade off every four races in 2005. However, after Liuzzi's four races, Klien finished off the season.

Robert Doornbos is the only Red Bull/Toro Rosso driver to not have a full time drive within the Red Bull industrial complex.

Daniil Kyvat was replaced for the second time in less than two years during his 2016-2017 run. He was replaced by Pierre Gasly for Malaysia and Japan in 2017 due to underwhelming results, then returned for the US GP when Gasly was competing in a Super Formula race. In the end, despite Toro Rosso saying that Gasly was not a permanent replacement and Kyvat was still a part of the Red Bull family, he did not finish out the season and would not return until 2019, making it his third time leaving and coming back to Toro Rosso. (And funnily enough, his 2019 return was to replace Gasly.)

Drivers who have driven for the longest in the Red Bull industrial complex:

Max Verstappen: 3170 days and counting (also has the longest run with only one team - 2757 days and counting)

Sebastian Vettel: 2520 days

Mark Webber: 2443 days

Daniel Ricciardo: 2379 days

Daniil Kyvat: 1793 days

Drivers who have driven the least total days:

Robert Doornbos: 21 days

Liam Lawson: 42 days

Nyck De Vries: 126 days

Brendon Hartley: 399 days

Alex Albon: 469 days

The table, while helpful, doesn't fully allow us to visualize just how unstable the driver lineups are. So, I made a timeline:

(please ignore that driver names aren't in the same places between pictures. the website I was using only allowed 18 events at a time, so there was some shuffling around.)

The driver changes on the top portion in each picture is Red Bull and on the bottom portion, it is Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri.

Maybe this is normal? You know, F1` is a sport that changes all the time. Every year we've had sprint races, it has been different. So, maybe driver changes so often are just the norm?

While there is no direct comparison (as is the case for almost everything in Formula 1), two other current teams on the grid had their first races in the 21st century -- Mercedes and Haas.

Mercedes might have one of the most stable driver lineups. Since 2010, they have only had five drivers. With the exception of George Russell filling in for Lewis Hamilton in 2020 for one race, all drivers raced every race they were supposed to.

Haas, similar to Mercedes, finished driver contracts and didn't make mid-season changes. The only exception was Pietro Fittipaldi completing the 2020 season after Romain Grosjean's crash.

Again, it's not a direct comparison, but there is a very visible difference.

Mercedes has had a stable lineup because they had their world champion driver and a teammate who could be there to pick up the points. Red Bull technically has the same with Max and Sergio now and did have the same with Sebastian and Mark.

But there's a key difference between the Red Bull industrial complex and teams like Mercedes and Haas. Red Bull, for as long as it has been in Formula One, has had a neverending list of drivers waiting in the wings. The Red Bull juniors are like a hydra - you cut off one head and two grow back. One Red Bull junior leaves, there's at least a handful to replace him.

Haas can't develop junior drivers and Mercedes tends to focus their attention on just one or two juniors. They don't have a list of drivers that they can pick and choose to replace a driver. They also don't have a junior team from which they can shuffle things around.

I doubt that Red Bull will ever have the same long-standing driver lineups like other teams, but I am curious to see if the reduced junior drivers will allow for some stability in AlphaTauri (or Racing Bulls I guess).

[backmarkerr]

reading about Kimi's 2007 WDC win and i'm absolutely fascinated but not surprised by him ditching Ferrari's party to go to Red Bull's instead

When Kimi Räikkönen won the 2007 F1 championship, Ferrari held a private celebration on October 21 in São Paulo. Heikki Kulta was the only Finnish journalist to be invited to the party. Now Kulta tells in his book how the championship party went. He writes that team-mate Felipe Massa tried to teach Räikkönen the basics of samba at the party, but with very poor results. [...] According to Kulta, Räikkönen wanted to go elsewhere before midnight. In addition to Kulta, Räikkönen’s race engineer Chris Dyer joined. They ended up at the closing party of the F1 season hosted by the Redbull team. “From five in the morning, the place started to close. I found Kimi in the middle of a cloud of smoke on the corner table where he and Vitantonio Liuzzi talked loudly. I was waiting for my time and I rushed that now we should leave when the place is closed,” Kulta writes.

[x]

oh my god he was talking to seb's teammate........

[umseb]

"Only one Karting World Championship is organised, with the aim of increasing further the value of this title. It is exclusively reserved for Formula Super A, and 21 Teams with two Drivers each are entered. The competition consists in a series of five events, which are held in Canada, in Belgium, in France, in Italy and, after the cancellation of the Japanese round, in Germany. This last round, held on the Kerpen circuit, sees the participation of Michael Schumacher (DEU), who finishes second. The title is grasped by Vitantonio Liuzzi (ITA). Carlo Van Dam (NLD) quite clearly dominates the European Formula A Championship. Sebastian Vettel (DEU) carries off the European Juniors’ Championship and the Monaco Kart Cup." - 2001

[bea-snow]

Some of you are too young to remember but Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi had to share the Red Bull in 2005. Helmut Marko thought it was a good idea to push drivers to prove themselves constantly...

oh, you want to replace nyck de vries with daniel ricciardo after the summer break to see how daniel compares to yuki? why stop there? the indycar season ends in time to throw alex palou into that car for singapore. but if you really want to be thorough, super formula ends in october, so liam lawson should be free to drive the last three races! make it the sisterhood of the travelling alpha tauri car. whoever does best gets to keep it for next year (before inevitably getting fired mid season again)

[williamsmybeloved]

ok but Seb and Felipe said it the best😭😭also heikki because those finish roots do something

[f1-2008-season]

New day new team composition, welcome to our third team composition analysis

Today: Force India

1st drive - #20 Adrian Sutil

The Austrian driver who moved to Spyker, now renamed Force India, will retain his place for this season. Seeing as the team isn't set to really improve and that Sutil is still fresh meat, many expect mediocrity from both him and the machine.

2nd drive - #21 Giancarlo Fisichella

Not much can be said about the ex Renault driver that hasn't been already said. Fisico is regarded as a mildly successful driver, although quite unlucky. Each move either made his former team better, or his current team worse. Will his third stint at the once-named-Jordan team prove any better?

Reserve and test drive(s): Vitantonio Liuzzi

[talksaboutracing]

All that piercings talk, so here have Lewis and Tonio pre-piercings - World Karting Championships, Mariembourg, Belgium, 22-23 September 2001

[ilovejevsjeans]

Korea 2011 - Dan failed to set a quali time due to an electrical problem and started P24. Despite this he would finish P19 and two places ahead of Liuzzi.

10 years of Dan

10 years of Dan:2011

[changing-my-username]

Liuzzi penalizing Max for an incident at the same corner where he took out several cars on lap 1 in 2011.

[sebfreak]

Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India) and Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)

[coffee-and-vroomvroom]

[umseb]

rubens barrichello, lewis hamilton, vitantonio liuzzi, sebastian vettel, and michael schumacher during their press conference, china - april 14, 2011 📷 james moy / motorsport images