Sebastian Vettel was in the fortunate situation of being backed by Red Bull and on loan to the BMW Sauber team - the end result; races with both teams in 2007.

The young German driver started his career in karting before moving to Formula BMW in 2003 taking Rookie honours and followed that up by winning 18 of the 20 events on the way to the title the following year.

Moving up to European F3 in 2005, he was again the best of the Rookies and finished fifth overall. On top of his F3 programme in 2006, Vettel took over the BMW Sauber Friday testing duties at the Turkish Grand Prix.

Making one big impression on his F1 race-weekend debut, Vettel topped the Friday timesheets in his BMW Sauber F1.06 and was retained by the team as official test and reserve driver for the 2007 season.

On the brink of Formula One, Vettel stayed race sharp by competing in the World Series by Renault. The Canadian Grand Prix saw regular BMW Sauber driver Robert Kubica suffer a heavy accident and as a result, was unable to take part in the US Grand Prix a week later.

Vettel therefore made his race debut and after qualifying a solid seventh, Vettel finished the race in eighth position and in doing so, the then 19 year-old, became the youngest driver in history to score a world championship point.

Meanwhile, the Red Bull co-owned Toro Rosso Ferrari team was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Scott Speed. With his Red Bull backing, Vettel was an obvious call-up for the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards and he made quite an impression…

His fifth race with the team saw German running an incredible third in appalling conditions in Japan. Sadly for Vettel and the team, contact with Mark Webber whilst behind the safety car ended his day. While it was a howler of an error, Vettel redeemed himself with a stunning drive to fourth position in the rain-hit Chinese Grand Prix a few weeks later.

Undoubtedly a star of the future, Vettel teams up with Sebastian Bourdais in 2008 at Toro Rosso.