Jules Bianchi, born August 3 1989, died July 17 2015
Jules Bianchi, who has died aged 25, was the youngest member of a dynasty of French racing drivers, and one of the most promising stars of the international Formula One circuit.
He sustained severe head injuries in October last year after his Marussia car hit a recovery tractor at high speed during the Japanese Grand Prix. The tractor was clearing the wreckage of the German driver Adrian Sutil's Sauber car as track conditions at Suzuka worsened in torrential rain, and the accident - the most serious since Ayrton Senna's death at Imola in 1994 - prompted other drivers to call for a safety car to accompany recovery tractors in future.
Bianchi had remained in a coma in intensive care since the crash, which was subsequently blamed, in part, on his failure to slow down sufficiently under double yellow flags to avoid losing control and prevent his head-on collision with the recovery tractor at a speed of around 125mph.
After joining the Anglo-Russian Marussia Formula One team, based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and finishing 13th in the Malaysian Grand Prix of 2013, Bianchi scored his first F1 points by finishing ninth in last year's Monaco Grand Prix. Motor racing journalists judged it an impressive showing by a relatively unknown young driver. In all, he competed in 34 Grand Prix races.
His pedigree as a potential future Formula One champion was impeccable. His grandfather, Mauro Bianchi, was three times a world champion in the GT category, and his great-uncle, Lucien Bianchi, competed in 17 Grand Prix during the 1960s and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1968, before being killed in a crash a year later, at the age of 34.
