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Making the jump from racing wunderkid to Formula 1 world champion is something very few drivers ever manage to do.
Max Verstappen is one example, as is Lewis Hamilton, but more often than not, the best drivers in the junior ranks rarely live up to expectations.
One team that has produced a fair share of champions over the years is Williams.
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Jenson Button came through Williams’ ranks; they backed Damon Hill on his journey to Formula 1, and Jacques Villeneuve made his switch from racing in North America with Frank Williams’ team.
Not every driver that Williams have put their faith in has gone on to dominate the sport.
The story of Brazilian driver Antonio Pizzonia won’t be familiar to many newer fans of Formula 1, but the hype surrounding him never came to fruition.
Who is former Jaguar and Williams F1 driver Antonio Pizzonia?
Pizzonia was born in Manaus, Brazil, on 11 September 1980, the same year his fellow countryman Nelson Piquet lost the championship to Williams driver Alan Jones.
A successful junior career racing in the Formula Vauxhall series in the UK led to promotions into the Formula Renault category and eventually British Formula Three.
The Brazilian won the British F3 title in 2000 alongside test driver duties for Benetton, with Flavio Briatore taking an interest in Pizzonia, according to Crash.
Two decent but uninspiring seasons in International Formula 3000 followed before he was signed by Jaguar for the 2003 campaign.
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Unfortunately, 12 races into his F1 career, Pizzonia still hadn’t scored a point and was dropped for Justin Wilson, and it looked like his F1 dream was over.
“There were a lot of things going on at Jaguar,” Pizzonia said about his time with the team in an interview in 2004.
“I don’t really want to go back to that – for me it’s part of the past – but it was very frustrating for me. Right from the very start, things went completely wrong with the team – things just seemed to happen that didn’t help much, and I think the team didn’t help me much either.”
Manor team principal John Booth once said, via Motorsport, “Handled properly, Pizzonia could have been a world champion,” but his career nearly ended with a best finish of P9 before Williams stepped in once again.
How Williams gave Antonio Pizzonia a second chance in Formula 1
Pizzonia was expected to return to test driver duties for the 2004 season, before Ralf Schumacher was injured in an awful crash at the United States Grand Prix.
The Brazilian was offered four chances to prove himself once again, and seventh-place finishes in Germany, Hungary and Italy meant he was finally off the mark.
Speaking about Pizzonia, via AtlasF1, Frank Williams said: “All we knew was that when he’s driving a Williams BMW, he’s very competitive – whether it’s testing or racing, his application is exactly the same.”
Williams technical director Sam Michael added: “If you go right back to the end of 2001, when we first tested him, it was pretty clear that he was talented right away, so we gave him the test drive for 2002, and there were no fewer than five or six times where he was exceptional compared to Juan Pablo [Montoya] and Ralf [Schumacher] in terms of talent.
“Even Ralf himself had followed him on a few laps and said, ‘Look, this guy is really good, he knows how to drive a car and knows the right lines, you can see from the car that he’s good,’ and that’s quite rare for one driver to say that about another driver.”
Even Juan Pablo Montoya was impressed with Pizzonia and said during the brief time they were teammates: “Antonio was very hard. He was quite impressive, especially his pace.
“He needs a bit more experience, but his pace was flying in the races; it was very, very fast.”
Pizzonia was offered one last F1 lifeline in 2005 by Williams when he replaced Nick Heidfeld for the final five races of the campaign following a motorcycle accident.
He scored his final two points at Monza, and inspired the iconic radio message from Patrick Head: “Whatever it is that you do, do it better.”
Pizzonia spent the next two decades racing in Brazil, and while he never lived up to his world champion potential, he at least made it onto the grid.
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