Christian Fittipaldi (born 18 January 1971) is a Brazilian former racing driver who has competed in various forms of motorsport including Formula One, Champ Car, and NASCAR. He was a highly rated young racing driver in the early 1990s, and participated in 43 Formula One Grands Prix for Minardi and Footwork between and .
Fittipaldi was fifth in the CART series in both 1996 and 2002, earning two wins and a second place in the 1995 Indianapolis 500. He has also had success racing sports prototypes, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona of 2004, 2014 and 2018, the 12 Hours of Sebring of 2015, the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen of 2013, 2016 and 2017, and has captured two IMSA SportsCar Championships with Action Express Racing during the 2014 and 2015 seasons.
A member of the Fittipaldi family, he is the son of former Formula One driver and team owner Wilson Fittipaldi, the nephew of two-time Formula One World Champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Emerson Fittipaldi, and the cousin of racing driver Emerson Fittipaldi Jr..
Early years
Fittipaldi was born in São Paulo. He is named after Christian Heins, a Brazilian racing driver who was killed in a wreck during the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans. Fittipaldi was second in the Brazilian Formula Ford in 1988. After finishing third in the South American Formula 3 in 1989, in 1990 he won the title in the Formula 3 Sudamericana and the fourth place in the British Formula 3.
In 1991, the Brazilian was installed in Europe to compete in the Formula 3000, where he captured two wins and seven podiums in ten races to obtain the championship against Alessandro Zanardi. Later, he was third in the Macau Grand Prix of Formula 3.
Formula One
His jump into Formula 1 happened in 1992 with Minardi, one of the most modest teams of the grid at the time; he scored a single point in 1992. Christian is the first Formula One driver to be born in the 1970s. Next year, he managed to score a total of five points in the Drivers' Championship, but the team decided to do away with him with two races to go in the season. The following season, he competed in the Footwork team and earned two fourth places, adding to a total of six points in the championship (as those finishes were his only points-paying results that year). At the end of the 1994 season Fittipaldi decided to try his luck in the racing competitions in the United States.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modeling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Fittipaldi was ranked the 11th best Formula One driver of all time.
CART
Competing mainly in CART, Fittipaldi was a slow starter, noted for his consistency rather than his outright pace, although by the time he won his first CART event at Road America in 1999, he was a championship contender due to his consistent finishing, among which was a second place in the 1995 Indianapolis 500, which earned him Rookie of the Year honors in the race. However, just as Fittipaldi's American career looked to be taking off, he broke his leg for the first time (out of the two total he suffered while racing in CART) at the Surfer's Paradise race in 1997. Although he was able to return both times and win two races, he never won a CART championship.
NASCAR
With his Champ Car career on hold, Fittipaldi shifted his focus to NASCAR. He made three appearances in the Busch Series during the 2001 and 2002 seasons. Although he was not impressive in those races, he was signed to Petty Enterprises near late-2002 and made his Winston Cup debut at Phoenix after he caught the eye of Richard Petty. In 2003, he made his first (and only) Daytona 500 start in a one-race deal with Andy Petree and then made a handful of appearances for Petty in ARCA. In the summer of that year, Fittipaldi became the driver of the illustrious #43 car after John Andretti (cousin of Christian's former CART teammate Michael Andretti) was let go. He struggled and was reassigned shortly after the start of autumn, but remained with the team, driving the #44 car.
Sports cars racing
In parallel to his activity in Formula 1, was winner of the 1993 24 Hours of Spa and 1994 Brazilian 1000 Miles.
Fittipaldi debuted at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2003 with the Bell team, resulting sixth with a Doran-Chevrolet of the class Daytona Prototype. It was one of the pilots that won the 2004 24 Hours of Daytona, in this case with a Doran-Pontiac. Then participated in four other rounds from the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series with Bell, earning seventh in Virginia.