Heinz-Harald Frentzen

Born in Mönchengladbach, Frentzen was one of the top stars of the international motorsport scene for well over a decade. He earned his first merits in karting between 1980 and 1985, for example as German junior champion in 1981. Via the rungs of Formula Ford 2000, Formula Opel Lotus and Formula 3, he joined Michael Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger in 1990 as a promising young talent in the Sauber-Mercedes team, which contested the Group C sports car world championship with the Mercedes-Benz C 11. Frentzen only started at the Donington Park round and took second place in the C11 alongside Jochen Mass after a convincing performance.

After only one year in prototype racing, Frentzen turned his attention back to Formula 1 and completed a season in the International Formula 3000 Championship in 1991 for the Dutch team Vortex Racing, which, however, produced hardly any countable results. For lack of other alternatives, the driver from Mönchengladbach competed in the Japanese Formula 3000 Championship in 1992 and 1993 with mixed results.

Then he received an offer from the Sauber-Mercedes team to take part in the 1994 world championship as Karl Wendlinger's team-mate in the new C 13 Formula 1 racing car. Frentzen did not hesitate for long and made a remarkable debut in the premier class with seven championship points in a season marked by many background quarrels.

After two more years at Sauber, he moved to Williams in 1997 and then to Jordan in 1999. In the last third of the 2001 season, he drove for the team of former world champion Alain Prost. Entries for Arrows and a race for his old team Sauber followed in 2002, giving him one last full season in 2003.

In his 157-race Formula 1 career, Frentzen scored a total of 174 world championship points. Highlights include three Grand Prix victories – at Imola in 1997, Magny-Cours and Monza in 1999 – as well as second and third places in the 1997 and 1999 Drivers' World Championships respectively.

The further career of the Mönchengladbach native was rather unspectacular. A DTM engagement with Opel and Audi in the years 2004 to 2006 ended with places in the front midfield. After a one-year break from racing, Frentzen returned to the action and competed in individual endurance races in the GT category, among other things.

Despite officially announcing his retirement from motorsport in 2010, he competed once again in the ADAC GT Masters in the following two years and in 2014. In the last of these years, he drove a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 together with youngster Luca Stolz.