- published: 28 Jul 2011
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Carlos Sainz Cenamor (born April 12, 1962 in Madrid, Spain) is a Spanish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship drivers' title with Toyota in 1990 and 1992, and finished runner-up four times. Constructors' world champions to have benefited from Sainz are Subaru (1995), Toyota (1999) and Citroën (2003, 2004 and 2005).
Nicknamed El Matador, Sainz holds the WRC record for most career starts. He was also the first driver not from Scandinavia or Finland to win the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland, and finished the Swedish Rally second four times and third twice, in this case without ever breaking the trend. Besides WRC successes, he has won the Dakar Rally (2010), the Race of Champions (1997) and the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship (1990). His co-drivers were Antonio Boto, Luís Moya and Marc Martí.
His son, Carlos Sainz, Jr., born in September 1994, won the 2009 Junior Monaco Kart Cup and began a professional formula racing career.
Sainz began rallying in 1980, and won the Spanish Rally Championship with a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth in 1987 and 1988. He first appeared in the World Rally Championship with Ford during the 1987 season, finishing seventh at the Tour de Corse and eighth at the RAC Rally. The following season, he finished fifth twice; at the Tour de Corse and at the Rallye Sanremo. Sainz then left Ford to join the Toyota Team Europe, the Japanese marque's rallying arm operating in Cologne, Germany.
Fernando Alonso Díaz (born 29 July 1981) is a Spanish Formula One racing driver and a two-time World Champion, who is currently racing for Ferrari.
On 25 September 2005, he won the Formula One World Driver's Championship title at the age of 24 years and 58 days, at the time making him the youngest Formula One World Drivers' Champion. After retaining the title the following year, Alonso also became the youngest double Champion at the time. Nicknamed El Nano, a typical pseudonym for Fernando in Asturias, his place of birth, Alonso acts as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
Fernando Alonso was born in Oviedo, Asturias in northern Spain. His mother worked in a department store and his father was employed as a mechanic in an explosives factory near Oviedo. Alonso has an older sister, Lorena. Alonso's father José Luis, an amateur kart racer, wanted to pass on his passion to his children. He built a kart, originally meant for eight-year-old Lorena, but unlike her three-year-old brother, she showed no interest in the sport.
Colin Steele McRae, MBE (5 August 1968 – 15 September 2007) was a Scottish rally driver born in Lanark.
The son of five-time British Rally Champion Jimmy McRae and brother of rally driver Alister McRae, Colin McRae was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion and, in 1995, became the first British person and the youngest to win the World Rally Championship Drivers' title. He still holds that record.
McRae's outstanding performance on the Subaru World Rally Team enabled the team to win the World Rally Championship Constructors' title three times in succession in 1995, 1996 and 1997. After a four-year spell with the Ford Motor Co. team, which saw McRae win nine events, he moved to Citroën World Rally Team in 2003 where, despite not winning an event, he helped them win the first of their three consecutive manufacturers' titles. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport in 1996.
McRae died in 2007 when the helicopter he was piloting crashed near his home. The accident also claimed the lives of his son and two family friends. In November 2008 he was posthumously inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.