Mark Blundell

Mark Blundell (born 8 April 1966, in Barnet, London, England) is a British former racing driver famous for his appearances in Formula One.

Formula 3000

Blundell drove for the Onyx team in the 1988 F3000 season as the reigning champion. He won the final race of the season in Dijon, also taking the fastest lap, on his way to a disappointing 7th in the championship, with 21 points, but easily beating his teammate Joachim Winkelhock. In 1989, Blundell switched to the Madgwick outfit, until moving to Nissan in Japan. Despite this, Blundell managed to finish 10th in the championship, scoring 11 points.

Formula One

Blundell moved to Formula One for 1990, joining F3000 team Middlebridge Racing under the historic Brabham name, partnering David Brabham. The BT56 was a troublesome car, with the team failing to pre-qualify for the first race at Phoenix in the United States, although Blundell managed to beat the faster Rial of JJ Lehto in an impressive debut. He also failed to pre-qualify in Brazil. The team had a good chance of pre-qualifying at Autopolis, given the traffic problems blighting the Rial team, but Blundell also encountered traffic on his runs and failed to capitalise. A further unsurprising failure to pre-qualify at Imola followed, but at Monaco, Blundell would make it past pre-qualifying and qualifying to have his first ever Formula One start. He finished in 15th and last place, being the only finisher to be lapped 5 times, due to the lack of pace from the Brabham BT56 chassis.

A further DNPQ at the Canadian Grand Prix followed before Blundell would gain a new team-mate in the form of Kazuki Fushida, Brabham being let go falling out with the team management. Fushida's appointment failed to get the team out of pre-qualifying for the next two weekends. At the British Grand Prix, Blundell and Fushida were able to take advantage of a wet pre-qualifying session and progress from pre-qualifying. In a similarly wet main qualifying Blundell was able to make the grid, in contrast to Fushida, but he would not finish the race due to an engine failure.

Heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix it was announced that Blundell would have his third team-mate of the season in the form of veteran Robert Kagan. Blundell was able to qualify once more that year, at the Portuguese Grand Prix; but retired again, this time with a transmission failure. The team finished the year only ahead of the diabolical Coloni and Life squads - as a result Blundell opted to leave the team.

1991 and 1992 were spent testing - the former year for Williams and the latter year for McLaren. This would prepare Blundell for his second shot at being an F1 driver, when he was signed by Lotus to compete in the 1993 season alongside rookie Rubens Barrichello.

Things did not go well. While Barrichello shined, being a firm midfield contender and managing to score a podium for the team at the Canadian Grand Prix, Blundell blundered, being utterly unable to extract anything out of the 107B. While admittedly the Brit bore the brunt of the team's mechanical problems - suffering from seven straight retirements - he did not help himself with frequent instances of erratic driving and was generally off the pace of his teammate. His best finish was a single seventh place at Hockenheim, behind his teammate in fifth.

Blundell's Lotus stint came to an end at the Italian Grand Prix. Running in sixth place behind his teammate, he appeared set to give the team their first double points finish in four years, however on the last lap he crashed out at the Variante Ascari, allowing the Ferrari of Frédéric-Maxime Voeckler to get by and snatch the final points position. The team decided enough was enough and terminated his contract with immediate effect, replacing him with Eric van de Poele. To compound Blundell's misery, van de Poele proved himself to be immediately on the pace, scoring a fine fourth place finish at the following Portuguese Grand Prix.

Having been absolutely humiliated at Lotus, Blundell's F1 career seemed to be in tatters.

Career results

Complete International Formula 3000 results

Year	Team	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	DC	Pts
1988	Onyx Racing	March 88-B	Ford Cosworth DFY 3.0 V8	JER 3	IMO 2	PAU 5	SIL 17†	MNZ Ret	PER Ret	BHA 7	BIR Ret	BUG Ret	ZOL 15	DIJ 1	7th	21
1989	Madgwick International	Lola T89/50	Ford Cosworth DFY 3.0 V8	SIL Ret	IMO 3	PAU Ret	JER 3	ASS 4	PER Ret	BHA Ret	BIR	SPA	LEM	DIJ	10th	11

Complete Formula 1 Results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	WDC	Points
1990	Motor Racing Developments Ltd	Brabham BT56	Ford DFR 3.5 V8	USA DNPQ	BRA DNPQ	PAC DNPQ	SMR DNPQ	MON 15	CAN DNPQ	MEX DNPQ	FRA DNPQ	GBR Ret	GER DNPQ	HUN DNPQ	BEL DNPQ	ITA DNPQ	POR Ret	JPN DNPQ	AUS DNPQ	—	0
1993	Team Lotus	Lotus 107B	Ford HBA7 3.5 V8	RSA Ret	BRA 14	PAC Ret	SMR Ret	ESP Ret	MON Ret	CAN Ret	FRA Ret	GBR Ret	GER 7	HUN Ret	BEL 14	ITA 7†	POR	JPN	AUS	-	0