I GUESS MY MCLAREN FORMULA 1 CAREER IS A CLASSIC CASE OF RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME

A hard-earned grand prix career may have ended in tears, but there's much more to this Belgian star than being just another F1 nearly-man. From single-seater success to tackling Le Mans, he's enjoying a racing revival

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For as long as Motor Sport has been in existence - 101 years and counting - there have always been drivers whose natural talent and work ethic made them eminently well suited to grand prix racing but who, for a variety of reasons, some of them unworthy, enjoyed careers less glittering than they should have been. Stoffel Vandoorne is an example of exactly that kind of F1 nearly-man. Still only 33, always fast, as fit as any racing driver has ever been, and as clever as several lorry-loads of monkeys, he has won races in karts, of course, then in no fewer than six single-seater categories - Formula 4 Eurocup 1.6, Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 3.5, GP2, Super Formula and Formula E - which is a pretty tasty tally. Yet in F1 he never had a chance to shine, as you are about to find out.

But first let's hear about how he got started in racing in the first place: “It was a coincidence really. My father [Patrick] was an architect, and he wasn't really a fan of racing, but he was asked to design a restaurant for a kart track in Kortrijk [Belgium], where I was born and raised. I was five years old, and my dad sometimes took me with him when he went to the track to discuss the project. And one day the track owner asked me, 'Do you want to have a go in one of the karts, son?'

“I'm not sure if my dad and the track owner realised that I was talented straight away, but they certainly saw that I was keen. Obsessed, in fact. I absolutely loved it. Straight away I had the bug and I wanted a kart of my own. In the end the track owner must have recognised my talent, because he gave me a kart, my dad marked out a track on our tennis court at home, and I practised on that track as much as I possibly could.