Jaime Alguersuari

Jaime Alguersuari is a former racing driver from Spain who retired from motorsports to become a professional DJ. He ended a career after spending time with Virgin Racing in the inaugural season of the FIA Formula E Championship (2014-2015).

Alguersuari recorded 46 starts in the Formula One World Championship between 2009 and 2011, driving for Scuderia Toro Rosso. Earlier in a career, he was the British Formula 3 champion in 2008.

Jaime Alguersuari

Beginning of the formula racing career

Jaime Victor Alguersuari Escudero was born on March 23, 1990, in Barcelona. His father is Jaime Alguersuari Sr, a former motorcyclist, so it wasn’t a surprise when Jaime Jr decided to follow the footsteps of his father. Jaime Jr began to race karts at the age of eight and seven years later he switched to single-seaters.

In 2005, Alguersuari made a debut in formula racing, driving in Italian Formula 1600 Junior Series. After winning the title in Italian Formula Renault Winter Series early in 2006 with Cram Competition, he stayed with the team for the main championship and finished 10th overall. In parallel with his duties in Italian Formula Renault, Jaime that year also raced in Eurocup Formula Renault and finished 12th in the standings, with one podium place in his books.

Jaime Alguersuari

Next year, Alguersuari continued to race in both series but this time as a driver of Epsilon Red Bull Team. In the Italian Formula Renault, he won 3 out fo 14 races and had other four podiums before finishing the season as a runner-up, losing to Mika Maki. The results in Eurocup also improved and talented Spaniard moved up to the 5th place, behind Brendon Hartley, Jon Lancaster, Charles Pic, and Stefano Coletti.

Jaime won 2008 British Formula 3 Championship title

In 2008, Alguersuari proved his raw talent by winning the title in the British Formula 3. He signed with the highly regarded Carlin Motorsport and on the way to the throne he won 5 out of 22 races, scored a total of 12 podiums and finished the season ahead of some well-known names like Sergio Perez, Brendon Hartley, Oliver Turvey, Marcus Ericsson, Max Chilton, etc.

Jaime Alguersuari, 2008 British Formula 3 champion

He stayed with Carlin Motorsport in 2009 but switched to Formula Renault 3.5 Series. Jaime regularly scored points in the first half of the year, while in the second half he managed to score a maiden win, at Algarve in Portugal. Alguersuari finished 6th in the standings, which was a good result but that season was marked with something else.

Unexpected debut in Formula 1

In the second half of 2009, young Spanish driver acted as a reserve driver for the Formula 1 teams Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso. Sebastien Bourdais was released from Toro Rosso after the German Grand Prix and Alguersuari unexpectedly got an opportunity to make an F1 debut at Hungaroring. At the age of 19 and 125 days, he became the youngest driver in Formula 1, a record that would later be broken by Max Verstappen.

Alguersuari before F1 debut in Hungary, 2009

The debut wasn’t glorious. Jaime finished 15th after starting from the last position. He continued to race with Toro Rosso until the end of 2009 but recorded only two finishes out of Top 10 and five retirements.

Two full seasons with Toro Rosso F1 team

Alguersuari stayed with Toro Rosso for another two years, showing a lot of potential. In the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix, Jaime scored his maiden points after finishing 9th. Soon after he scored another point by finishing 10th in the Spanish Grand Prix. By the end of the campaign, Alguersuari scored once more, in the season-closing race in Abu Dhabi where he was 10th. With 5 points on his account, Jaime finished 19th in the Drivers’ Championship.

Jaime Alguersuari, Scuderia Toro Rosso, 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix

The season of 2011 was a step forward. After a slow start of the year, Jaime’s results improved and he was among the points scorers in seven races. His best result was the 7th place, scored in Italy and later in Korea. At the end of the season, Spanish driver was 14th overall with 26 points. Surprisingly, Toro Rosso decided not to retain his services for the following year.

However, he stayed in Formula 1 for another two years, acting as Pirelli test driver. Since he was very disappointed, in 2013, he announced that he doesn't want to race in Formula 1 anymore.

Looking for the new opportunity

In 2014, Alguersuari signed with the renowned Rowe Racing team to race in ADAC GT Masters. Driving a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 alongside Nico Bastian, Jaime failed to impress and scored only 29 points out of 12 races, which was enough only for the 29th place in the final classification.

Alguersuari with girlfriend, 2014 ADAC GT masters

However, the same year he became a member of the Formula E Drivers’ Club which allowed him to race for any team in the newly-formed championship. Alguersuari raced for Virgin Racing team in nine ePrix events and amassed a total of 30 points, with the 4th position in Buenos Aires ePrix as the best result. After missing the last two races in June of 2015 due to health issues, he finished 13th in the Drivers’ Championship.

Early retirement and beginning of DJ career

In October of 2015, Alguersuari announced retirement, stating that he lost motivation and passion. While he was still an active driver, Jaime was relatively popular DJ in Spain. His stage name was Squire and he played at clubs including Amnesia at Ibiza. Alguersuari also has his own recording studio in Barcelona.

Alguersuari left motorsport to become DJ

Photo: Squire, soymotor.com, wikipedia.org, f1fanatic.co.uk, talkingaboutf1.com, adac-motorsport.de, motor1.com