🇿🇦 Tomas Scheckter

Tomas Scheckter is a South African professional single-seater driver whose career was spent almost entirely in IndyCar, where he raced from 2002 to 2011 for Panther Racing. He competed in International Formula 3000 early in his career in 2000 and 2001, taking one podium from four starts, and made three appearances in Formula 3 Macau the same year. His rating of 5,254 places him in the established professional band.[1]

In IndyCar, Scheckter started 119 times over ten seasons and took two wins and six podiums. The vast majority of his racing came on oval tracks, where he made 106 of his 119 starts; his time on road and street courses was limited. He finished 23rd in the championship standings in 2011, his final season. His early career in the international single-seater ladder yielded limited advancement, but he found his most sustained racing and greatest success in the American open-wheel series.[2]

The IndyCar field during his tenure included some of the strongest drivers of that era. Scheckter regularly raced against Helio Castroneves, the 2006 IndyCar champion and later a multiple-time major sportscar winner, and Tony Kanaan, the 2004 IndyCar champion, finishing behind both as a matter of course. He finished ahead of Mike Conway, now an established professional and multi-time WEC champion, in 12 of their 73 meetings across IndyCar. Against elite company from other series, he beat Mark Webber once; Webber went on to race in Formula 1 and win the 2016 WEC LMP1 championship.