Adrian Sutil got his chance at the pinnacle of the sport thanks to his relationship with Colin Kolles, his mentor and, more significantly, the boss of the Midland/Spyker F1 team. However, he more than proved that he earned a longer tenure on ability.
Sutil began his career, like most, in go-karts, first getting behind the wheel at the tender age of just 14, before moving up to the Swiss Formula Ford 1800 championship in 2002. He dominated the series, winning all ten races, en-route to taking his first title. He also took five wins in the Austrian Formula Masters Championship during the same year.
Bolstered by his success in '02, he graduated to the German Formula BMW Championship in 2003, and while he took no wins and ended the year sixth in the standings, he did enough to secure a place in the Formula 3 Euro Series for the following year with HBR.
Although Sutil scored only twice in 2004 and ended the season 17th in the standings, he continued to learn and did enough to make an impression on then HBR team boss, Colin Kolles.
For the final two races he switched to ASM F3 and during 2005 he remained with the squad, partnered by future F1 rival and McLaren youngster, Lewis Hamilton.
While Hamilton dominated the F3 Euro Series in '05 though, taking the title and 15 wins, Sutil had to settle for 'best of the rest' and ended the year second overall, with two wins to his credit, despite opting to skip the last two events in favour of representing Germany in the A1 Grand Prix series. He didn't enjoy much success in A1 GP though and his best results, from his three outings - in Portugal, Australia and Dubai - were two twelfth places.
2006 was his big chance and at the start of the year he was confirmed as one of the official test drivers for Midland MF1 - now the Spyker team. Sutil took in three Friday practice sessions, at the Nurburgring, Magny-Cours and Suzuka, and posted some pretty promising times in the 'third car'. Indeed he was seventh overall at the French Grand Prix, over a second up on the next best Toyota powered-M16. He also posted the tenth best time in Friday practice at the European GP.
All the while he was combining his commitments in F1 with a programme in the Japanese F3 Championship, which he incidentally won with the TOM's Toyota team. He also shined at the prestigious Macau F3 event, finishing third overall, despite sticking with the TOM's Dallara-Toyota package, which was inferior to the Mercedes and Mugen engines used by most of the other competitors.
While most expected him to remain in a testing capacity in 2007 and perhaps supplement this with a campaign in GP2 or the World Series by Renault, Kolles had other ideas. Towards the end of December, Sutil was confirmed alongside Christijan Albers, stepping into the race seat previously occupied by Tiago Monteiro.
Whether he deserved the chance was debatable, but Spyker proved an ideal platform from which to display any talent that he might have, and Sutil grasped the opportunity with both hands.
Although he did not score until the end of the season - and then in controversial fashion after Tonio Liuzzi was adjudged to have passed him under yellow flags in Japan, where their places were subsequently reversed after a protest - Sutil had shown that he had the speed necessary to hustle better car-driver comnbinations, notably in the wet at Monaco, where he topped Saturday morning practice on merit, and Spa, where he made use of the softer tyre option to run on the fringes of the top ten, harrying David Coulthard's patently better Red Bull-Renault.
Although the good performances were interspersed by the occasional off as Sutil tried a little too hard, his performances not only warranted the option of a second year at Spyker - or Force India, as it becomes following Vijay Mallya's buy-in - but also attracted the attention of rival teams, notably Williams, Toyota and McLaren.
In the end though he signed another deal with the Silverstone-based outfit and will line-up alongside Giancarlo Fisichella.
