Rhys Davies

Rhys Davies (born 11th August 1978 in Goulburn, NSW) is an Australian racing driver who is a multiple Formula One World Champion (at the time of his first he was the youngest at 22 years and 58 days until Daniel Melrose won in 2005) and current F1RWRS driver.

Early Racing Career


Born in Goulburn, Davies first got involved in motorsports at the fairly late age of 16, when he turned up for a track day at Wakefield Park. ATCC driver John Zimmer spotted Davies there and signed him to drive for his Australian Formula Ford team, ZimSport. Davies was immediately successful, finishing second in the 1994 season. ZimSport moved up to Australian Formula 3, and took Davies with them, where he won the 1995 and 1996 championships. In 1997, he was hired to take part in the International Formula 3000 championship with Draco Engineering, and finished a respectable 10th place. He managed to gain the attention of the Benetton F1 team, and became their test driver for 1998.

1999
In 1999, he replaced Alexander Wurz as full time driver. He made his debut at the 1999 Australian Grand Prix, his home race, and finished 12th, while teammate Giancarlo Fisichella finished in 4th place. In the wet at Interlagos Davies would finish 7th, but problems at Imola saw him take 16th. At Monaco, Davies started from last on the grid, but took advantage of a first corner incident between Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard that involved most of the field to be third on the run up the hill. He passed Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher for the lead and held it to take his victory. However, after the race he and the team fell out after claims that Fisichella was always getting first choice on strategy, and when Davies was offered a spot at Williams to replace Ralf, he took the chance, and finished 7th at his first for the team at Silverstone. After Silverstone he scored points on three occasions and took two pole positions before he absolutely dominated the last 3 races on the season which gave the Australian third place in the championship and clear rookie of the year honours.

2000
BMW joined the Williams team for the 2000 and Davies entered the season as one of the championship favourites after his late season upturn last season. However the opening round in Australia proved to be a disappointment as he finished 7th and outside of the points. A second place finish and a win in the next two races in Brazil and San Marino put his championship tilt back on track. After a second poor race at the British Grand Prix where the team erred massively with the Australian's strategy he finished on the podium in the next 5 races including two more wins in Europe and Monaco, his second win at the principality in two years, which took him all the way to the top of the championship standings. A lean streak from Austria to Belgium where he only scored 4 points in 4 races threatened to deny Davies the championship and hand it over to teammate Ralf Schumacher but he responded magnificently by utterly dominating the last 4 races of the season which secured him his first world championship. At the time he was the youngest ever winner of Motorsport's greatest prize. He also set 12 fastest laps, the second most in a season, behind Chris Dagnall's 1991 effort.

2001
Becoming increasingly frustrated with the treatment he got from the Williams team Davies left for the McLaren team in 2001 replacing Scotsman David Coulthard. His championship defence got off to an average start with only 8 points from the opening 4 races despite a podium in Malaysia aswell as becoming the first Australian ever to score points at his home Grand Prix. A solid 2nd place at the Spanish Grand Prix followed by never say die drive at Austria to third place kick started his season campaign and by mid season he was leading solidly ahead of teammate Mika Hakkinen. Several poor performances from the defending champion however after France meant that by Hungary he had Hakkinen, Ralf Schumacher and the two Ferraris of Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher breathing down his neck to try and wrestle the crown from the Australian but a win a Belgium, the 14th of his career, plus a second place finish at Indianapolis meant that he was back in the box seat for his second world championship. A podium finish at the season ending Japanese Grand Prix won Davies his second title but by no means was it a flawless season for the Australian.

2002
Many were now starting to compare Davies to Juan Manuel Fangio, if only for his tendency to switch teams time and time again but he had the results to back it up. As so it proved as Davies was signed on alongside Michael Schumacher at Ferrari for the 2002 season. The team was tipped to be strong contenders for the title, however relations between Schumacher and Davies were not good, because they argued over who deserved number 1 status within the team. Davies started the year by becoming the first Australian to score a podium at the Australian GP, starting from pole, and finishing 5th at Sepang. After Monaco, Davies had recorded two wins (one at Imola, delighting the Italian fans, and his fourth straight at Monaco) and 29 points, while Schumacher had 14 points and no wins. By this point, the situation at Ferrari had deteriorated rapidly, and Davies made a shock decision to leave the team and drive for Renault, alongside Jarno Trulli. The team, who Davies had debuted for as Benetton, had only scored 7 points, 4 of those from Trulli's podium at the A1-Ring. Davies' arrival boosted the spirits of the team, and Trulli repeated the feat in Canada, although Davies recorded his second career DNF (his first was at Austria two races before, although he was classified 15th). After that though, he would score in every race except for the US Grand Prix, where he finished 10th. This included podiums at the European, British, German, Hungarian and Japanese Grands Prix, and a win at the Italian Grand Prix, which caused riots amongst the tifosi. Trulli wouldn't score as many points, but he finished third at Italy, and won the following race in the USA. Davies' consistency over the final half of the season saw him sneak up the standings, with his win at Monza putting him into the lead. He held it after Indy, and 3rd at Suzuka gave him his third consecutive title, edging out Ralf Schumacher (once again) and McLaren driver Kimi Raikkonen.

2003
Davies continued with Renault for 2003, but the car was a disappointment for him. He scored points almost everytime he finished (with the exception of a 12th at Silverstone), but only won three races, in Malaysia, Europe and Italy. All three were in the pouring rain, and Davies' only other podium and his best dry races was at Hockenheim. The Renault was a much more unreliable car than he was used to, with mechanical failures costing him victory at Monaco and podiums in Hungary, Spain and Japan. In the end, Davies had no hope of defending his title, only finishing 6th, but beating teammate Fernando Alonso.

2004
Davies left Renault for Toyota early in the off-season. Davies had a difficult year that he described as "strangely infuriating". Despite several good results, his Toyota was no match for Ferrari, and any chance he (or anyone else) had for a top 2 was for the Ferraris to have problems. The only time Davies matched their pace was at Monaco, where he followed Badoer and Schumacher all race, capitalising when they both crashed at La Rascasse. He had several other good races, such as San Marino, where he crashed during qualifying and fought through the field to 8th, and Hungary, his only front row start of the season.

F1RWRS Career
For 2012, Davies followed the footsteps of many of his fellow F1 drivers including Sammy Jones, Phoenix McAllister and Melrose into the F1RWRS where he was signed for the Holden Racing Team alongside another former F1 star in Frank Zimmer