User:Articute/Jacques Depala

Jacques Bastien Depala is a French racing driver who is currently competing in Formula One for Alfa Romeo, having previously raced for Williams F1. Jacques is characterized by many as one of the greatest rookies to ever drive in Formula One. He was born in Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and had himself move up the junior kart leagues in his region. After a long extensive youth career in the Ferrari youth program, he was signed to Williams after Ferrari rejected him from a seat that year. His lifestyle is very vague and he keeps to himself often rejecting interviews with reporters after a good race.

Karting
Depala started karting at the age of 7, with his dad mainly supporting his "hobby". He began racing in the Monaco Kart cup and placed very high among the standings although never making it as a champion. He was placed on a few podiums and got a few wins and just lost in 2009 to Carlos Sainz. Depala was signed to DAMS after a pretty successful year in karting, he got a total of 12 podiums and 3 race wins in Formula BMW. DAMS later said of him that he was "destined" to be a great driver and they would encourage him to go in F1.

Formula 2
In 2015, it was announced Jacques Depala would be in Ferrari Driver Academy  and would be racing in the  2015 GP2 Series  for DAMS. He would finish the 2015 season off with 63 total points and three podiums just barely beating fellow Frenchman Charles Pic. He raced in the 2016 GP2 Series again for DAMS. That year he kicked off with 6 podiums without a single win however he did gain 159 points tying Sergey Sirotkin and beating French driver Norman Nato by a small margin. The GP2 series was renamed to the Formula 2 Championship the following year and it was Depala's last year in it as well. His season was cut short that year after only scoring 101 points to be brought into test driving for Ferrari.

Formula 1
After doing test drives for Ferrari in Monza, the executives were wondering why his lap times were faster than most F1 drivers considering his racing career. The astonished executives said, "We are still shocked at how he was a second faster than the Renault drivers of that year." Ferrari retained him for the rest of 2017 as a test driver and cutting his 2017 Formula 2 season short. When the end of the year came, Ferarri executives decided to drop him. Jacques Depala then started doing test drives for Alfa Romeo and ended up being the first driver replacing Marcus Ericsson. When Alfa Romeo was asked why they had signed him, they gave no comment. However there is some speculation, that he did outqualify all of the Alfa Romeo drivers for the French Grand Prix while he was there test driving for Alfa Romeo.

In 2018, it was Depala's first season for Alfa Romeo.

Complete Formula One results
(key)