🇿🇦 Jody Scheckter

Jody Scheckter was an elite professional racing driver who competed in Formula 1 from 1972 to 1980, making 112 starts across nine seasons. He drove primarily for Tyrrell, the team that fielded him for 45 of those races and which also employed Jackie Stewart, an elite professional of the era. Scheckter won the 1979 Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship with Ferrari, the pinnacle of his career and a title that made him the only African driver to win a Formula 1 world championship.[1]

Across his nine seasons Scheckter took 10 wins and 33 podium finishes in a field that mixed amateur and semi-professional entrants with graded professionals. He finished second in the championship twice, in 1974 and 1978, and was a regular opponent for two multiple Formula 1 champions: Emerson Fittipaldi, who won in 1972 and 1974, and Carlos Reutemann, with whom he was closely matched over their years in the same grid. Scheckter outfinished Reutemann on 26 occasions and also beat Nelson Piquet five times, though Piquet, who would go on to win three world championships beginning in 1981, was at the start of his career during their overlap. His final season in 1980 yielded a 13th-place championship finish from 13 rounds before his retirement from the sport.[2]