Pedro Paulo Diniz

Pedro Diniz's father was a racer in his day, and now runs a huge chain of supermarkets in Brazil, so young Pedro was well placed to have a stab at racing.

He completed a year in the Sud-Am F3 series before heading to Europe in 1991, where he secured a seat in the crack West Surrey Racing team. A season spent alongside the very quick Rubens Barrichello and Jordi Gené highlighted his shortcomings, but a move to Edenbridge Racing in 1992 showed he had learned much.

For 1993, Diniz jumped up to compete in F3000 with Forti Corse, but was out of his depth. Staying on for 1994, however, he conjured up one fourth-place finish at Estoril, but the Brazilian's performances, while showing some promise, still failed to convince.

Eyebrows were therefore raised when his name appeared on the 1995 F1 entry list, paired with fellow countryman Roberto Moreno at Forti. In the event, Diniz proved to be neat and tidy, and even equally matched with his experienced colleague. However, the car was clearly uncompetitive and, with a massive personal sponsorship budget, Diniz lost no time in obtaining a drive for 1996 at Ligier, where his goal was to secure a championship point, which he achieved on two occasions.

For 1997, Diniz - still accompanied by his wedge of cash - was tempted away by Tom Walkinshaw to join his newly reconstructed Arrows team as number two to Damon Hill. Again, he silenced the doubters with a number of more-than-respectable performances. He even managed to out-qualify and out-race the reigning world champion at Spa, of all places, and took a career-best fifth place in the Luxembourg Grand Prix.

For 1998, and with Hill departed for Jordan, the Brazilian found himself paired with Mika Salo and again had his moments, interestingly scoring points at the two classic circuits of Monaco and Spa.

It was patently obvious to Diniz that, in order to climb further up the grid, he needed a better car than Arrows had thus far provided, so he was on the move once more. Brushing aside threats of litigation for breach of contract, Pedro prepared to test himself against Jean Alesi at Sauber. Amazingly, he outscored his team leader by three points to two, which proved nothing more than that, on this occasion, modest consistency paid more dividends than blinkered audacity.

When Alesi jumped ship for 2000, Diniz was joined at Sauber by F1 super-sub Mika Salo. Now armed with higher-spec Ferrari engines, both cars were on or around the pace in testing, and could have sprung a surprise or two as the year wore on had it not been for a string of problems and lacklustre displays. Neither Diniz nor Salo were allowed to start in Brazil after the Finn suffered a massive practice accident following rear wing failure, and the closest that Pedro got to scoring thereafter was seventh place at the Nurburgring.

Whether persuaded by this comparative failure or not, the Brazilian took the surprising decision to step out of the driving seat for 2001, opting instead to buy into the Prost team and spend time learning the management ropes.

After falling out with team boss, Alain Prost, however, Pedro disappeared from the F1 paddock and, when the team was declared bankrupt at the start of 2002, all ties with F1 ceased. Since then, he has returned to his native Brazil, where he is involved with racing at a lower level, albeit still out of the driving seat.