» Sullivan to join German GP stewards panel

Former F1 driver, CART champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Danny Sullivan will be joining the Germand Grand Prix stewards’ panel, as part of the FIA’s new initiative to bring about greater transparency in the decision-making of on-track incidents.

A former lumberjack and New York cab driver, Sullivan competed in a single F1 season in 1983 with Tyrrell, achieving his sole points’ finish at Monaco, where he finished fifth.

With no further F1 opportunities available in 1984, Sullivan returned to the United States and contested the CART championship, most famously winning the 1985 Indy 500 after twice passing Mario Andretti for the race lead.

He would go on to win the CART championship in 1988, and regularly competed in the series into the mid-1990s until he retired after a pelvis-breaking accident at the Michigan round in 1995.

Sullivan was an active figure in the Red Bull Driver Search program that existed to launch an American driver into the F1 scene – the scheme’s sole graduate of note was Scott Speed, who competed unsuccessfully with Toro Rosso in 2006-7.

Sullivan’s appointment to the stewards’ panel sees him join an illustrious list of former drivers who have each overseen previous rounds, including Alain Prost, Tom Kristensen, Johnny Herbert, Alexander Wurz, Derek Warwick, Damon Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Nigel Mansell.

[Original image via The Cahier Archive]