Early Life
Both his father and paternal grandfather are also named Rubens, and Barrichello shares his father's birthday: 23 May. Therefore, Rubens Barrichello was known as Rubinho (Portuguese for "little Rubens"), which has become his nickname.
Barrichello won five karting titles in Brazil before going to Europe to race in the Formula Vauxhall Lotus series in 1990. In his first year, he won the championship, a feat he replicated the following year in the British Formula 3 Championship, beating David Coulthard. He very nearly joined Formula One, the highest category of single seater racing, at just 19 years of age. Instead he competed in Formula 3000 in 1992. He finished third in the championship, and joined the Jordan Formula One team for the 1993 Formula One season. During this time, and also early in his Formula One career, Barrichello lived in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.
As a young, aspiring driver, Barrichello looked up to the late Ayrton Senna, and when he joined Formula One, Senna in return considered him his protégé.
Read more about this topic: Rubens Barrichello
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed childrens adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)