Transatlantic trailblazers: The men who swapped F1 for the USA

Rubens Barrichello is about to become the latest Formula 1 driver to attempt to reinvent himself in the world of US open-wheelers when he makes his IndyCar Series debut at St Petersburg this weekend.

AUTOSPORT decided to trawl through the archives to find the top 20 drivers from history that have made the same move, albeit with varying degrees of success.

1. Emerson Fittipaldi

The vast majority of professional drivers would dream of achieving either half of Emerson Fittipaldi's career. An 11-season stint in F1 between 1970-80 left him with two world championships (1972 and '74), and runner-up on two other occasions, and he still found time to start his own team and occasionally fail to qualify. A four-year sabbatical followed his retirement from F1, after which he decided to switch to Champ Car at the age of 38. Once he settled in, he became a force - the first of his 22 wins came at Michigan in 1985 and he lifted the title four years later in a Patrick Racing-run Penske. Along the way, he also managed to win the Indianapolis 500 in '89 and '93. The second Indy win came at the expense of Nigel Mansell, from whom he took the lead on lap 185, although he managed to trigger an uproar afterwards when he eschewed the traditional victory milk in favour of orange juice (he had an interest in some orange groves in Brazil). His Champ Car career ended at 49 years of age when he was injured in a crash at Michigan in '96.

2. Alex Zanardi

Neither of Zanardi's F1 careers amounted to much - from 1991-94 he drove for Jordan, Minardi and Lotus but never completed a full season, and his '99 return with Williams yielded a lot of DNFs but no points. In the US, however, he was magic. His glory years in Champ Car with Chip Ganassi Racing only spanned three seasons - 1996, '97 and '98 - but those three years yielded two titles, 15 victories and some extraordinary clips for the highlight reels. Following his disastrous season with Williams he returned to the US with Mo Nunn Racing, but was still working to recapture his earlier success when he suffered the injuries at the Lausitzring that ended his single-seater career.

3. Mario Andretti

Technically Andretti might not actually qualify for this list, considering that he went from the US to F1 and then back to the US, but even if you pretend that the first phase of his US open-wheel career never happened (bear in mind that we're deleting three Indycar titles and an Indy 500 win from the record here) we still have a guy who won the Formula 1 World Championship and then went back to the United States, claimed a Champ Car crown aged 44, and took his final win in 1993 when he was 53 years old. Madness.

4. Nigel Mansell

It seems entirely in keeping with the public perception of Mansell's character that his decision to move from F1 to Champ Car - as the reigning world champion, no less - was borne out of a massive spat with the Williams team. Horrified at the news that his former Ferrari team-mate Alain Prost had been signed for 1993 and facing what looked like a losing battle with Ayrton Senna for the other seat, Mansell decided to go off and win the Champ Car title with Newman/Haas Racing as a staggeringly overqualified rookie instead. Reliability plagued his second season in '94, prompting a very short-lived return to grand prix racing a year later.

5. Eddie Cheever

One of the rare Americans to target F1 from the beginning (well, he did grow up in Rome, after all), Cheever went on to have a grand prix career that spanned well over a decade and included stints at Hesketh, Osella, Tyrrell, Ligier, Renault, Alfa Romeo, Lola and Arrows. In all, his 132 starts from 1978-89 yielded nine podiums, and his tenure in the US was similarly distinguished. His debut came in the form of a cameo at the 1986 Champ Car season finale, but his career in the States really began when he signed with Ganassi for the 1990 season. Cheever remained in Champ Car until 1996, when he switched to the newly-formed Indy Racing League, and set up his own team a year later. He finished third in the championship three times, but the highlight was his victory at the Indy 500 in '98.

6. Justin Wilson

Wilson's F1 career was confined to the 2003 season, most of which was spent trying to make a Minardi do things that it didn't want to. Jaguar offered a glimmer of hope by picking him up late in the year to replace the under-performing Antonio Pizzonia, but despite finishing in the points at the United States Grand Prix, he was let go at season's end to make space for Christian Klien. He found a home in Champ Car with Conquest in 2004, but it was the move to RuSPORT the following year that allowed him to flourish. His three seasons with the team ended with him finishing second in the championship twice, and third on the other occasion. ChampCar's merger with the IRL for 2008 (which created the IndyCar Series) delivered him to Newman/Haas, with which he took his first series win, and he added a second the following year for Dale Coyne's team. After a couple of seasons with Dreyer & Reinbold - the most recent of which was truncated by a back injury - he returns to Dale Coyne Racing for the 2012 season.

7. Roberto Guerrero

The Colombian's F1 career amounted to 21 fairly forgettable races with Ensign and Theodore in the early 1980s, but once he got to the US he began to shine. His first Champ Car season ended with him picking up Rookie-of-the-Year honours for both the championship and the Indy 500, yet despite the early promise he only managed two wins, both in 1987. What he lacked in quantity he made up for in quality - he drove through from the back of the 22-car field to take his maiden win at Phoenix. A huge testing accident at Indianapolis later that same year left him in a coma for nearly three weeks, yet ironically it was the Brickyard where he was at his best. He never won the 500, but became famous for the number of times he came agonisingly close. The nearest miss was in '87, when he was leading with 18 laps to go, only for his car to stall during the final pitstop.

8. Michele Alboreto

Were it not for the poor reliability of the Ferrari 156/85, the Italian might have joined the ranks of F1 world champions to have attempted a second career in the US. As it was he crossed the pond with a solid CV, having been runner-up to Prost for the 1985 championship and taking five grand prix victories. Alboreto's career in the IRL was short - he only started five races with Team Scandia between 1996 and 1997 - but he still managed a podium at New Hampshire and two other top-five finishes.

9. Roberto Moreno

Viewed from a distance, Moreno's career looks like an experiment in instability, and it's a miracle that he managed to achieve as much as he did. Even during 1991 - his best season in F1 - he missed two races, got dropped by Benetton in favour of Michael Schumacher, and was thrown lifelines by Jordan and Minardi. His US career was equally scattergun and included one-off appearances as early as 1984, but his glory years were the two seasons with Patrick Racing in 2000 and '01. Victory at Cleveland in '00 contributed towards his finishing third in the championship (he was one of five drivers to head to the season finale with a realistic hope of becoming champion), and while his following season was less consistent, he still managed a win at Vancouver. His most recent appearance was with Minardi/HVM at Long Beach in 2007.

10. Mauricio Gugelmin

The Brazilian found his way over to Europe and into F1 in the wake of Senna's success, but despite strong results in junior formulae he struggled to match his compatriot and close friend's achievements at the top level. That said, he never had the equipment to do so, and results such as his third place in Brazil in 1989 at the wheel of a March showed what he might have been capable of. He remained in F1 for five years before switching to the US. Three races with Dick Simon Racing at the end of '93 and a season with Ganassi in '94 paved the way for a long stint with PacWest. Some years were better than others, but his strongest season came in 1997, when he capitalised upon the team's new Mercedes/Firestone engine and tyre package to pick up his first win and finish fourth in the championship. He retired at the end of '01.

11. Teo Fabi

Fabi's five seasons in Formula 1 with Toleman, Brabham and Benetton offered him few opportunities to fight for a win (and when his best chance came, in Austria in 1986, the car broke down while he was leading). He didn't so much move from F1 to the US as dovetail the two - in '82 he was in F1 with Toleman, in '83 it was Champ Car with Forsyth (where he won four races and just missed out on the title), in '84 he raced on both sides of the pond with Brabham in F1 and Forsyth in the States, and then his focus remained on F1 until he switched back to the US full-time in '88. He continued to enjoy sporadic success and his final victory came with Porsche at Mid-Ohio in 1989, although he remained in the series until 1996.

12. Christian Fittipaldi

When you consider that Fittipaldi spent his brief F1 career driving for Minardi and Arrows, the fact that he managed to finish fourth on three occasions from 1992-94 seems just short of a miracle. It wasn't enough to keep him in the world championship though, and in '95 he started what would develop into a considerably more successful career in Champ Car. His initial races showed promise, but it was his second place at the 1995 Indy 500 with Walker Racing that put him on the map. A knack for scoring points and avoiding mistakes helped him to fifth in that year's standings. Two major accidents in the years that followed derailed his progress, and although he would go on to take two wins, he struggled for consistency and left the series at the end of 2002.

13. Stefan Johansson

Most of Johansson's F1 career was spent in cars that were either slow, unreliable or both - he could have won the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix had it not been for the frailties of that season's Ferrari; a car that also held bittersweet memories for another member of this list; Alboreto. After setting the unfortunate record of most number of podiums without a win - a distinction that he held until Nick Heidfeld came along - he moved to Champ Car in 1992. The Swede made an immediate impact, picking up Rookie-of-the-Year honours, but despite a number of strong results, victories once again eluded him. He retired from the series in '96 but returned as owner of the American Spirit Team Johansson squad in '03. It folded at the end of its first season, despite becoming a race winner.

14. Takuma Sato

For a long time in F1, 'Japanese' was assumed to equal 'crash-prone'. Then Sato came along. OK, he had his fair share of accidents, but as time went on it also became clear that he had a pretty decent turn of pace. Stints at Jordan and BAR yielded some solid results, but it was arguably his heroics with the tiny Super Aguri team that remade his reputation; particularly his pass on Fernando Alonso in Canada in 2007. Sato is about to start his third season in IndyCar and his results are steadily picking up, with three top-five finishes last year.

15. Mark Blundell

The Brit took some time to gain a foothold in F1, but he rewarded an opportunity with Ligier in 1993 with two podiums, including one in his first race with the team at Kyalami. He remained in the world championship for two more seasons - one with Tyrrell and one with McLaren as Mansell's replacement - before the rides dried up and prompted a move to the States. Blundell landed a deal with PacWest for '96, although things got off to an inauspicious start when he was injured in a crash at Rio in his second race and was forced to sit out the following three rounds. He hit his stride in '97, picking up three wins on his way to sixth in the championship, but from there, his American adventure slipped into decline. Another accident sidelined him for the middle chunk of the '99 season, and after one more frustrating year he pulled the curtains down on his Champ Car career.

16. Jan Lammers

Although part of the F1 scene for four years between 1979 and '82 (plus a brief comeback in late '92), it was elsewhere - in sportscars especially - that Lammers made his real mark. His time in Champ Car was even shorter and arguably more erratic than his spell in grand prix racing, but in the two part seasons that he flirted with American racing he managed a fifth with Forsythe at Laguna Seca in '85, and a handful of top 10 finishes with Curb in '86.

17. Eliseo Salazar

The only Chilean to have competed in F1 managed just three points in as many seasons during his F1 stints with March, Ensign, ATS and RAM from 1981-83. A solitary fourth place in his two years of Champ Car with Dick Simon Racing didn't promise much either, but a mid-1990s switch to the IRL gave far better returns. His high points came with AJ Foyt Enterprises in 2000-01, when he finished fourth and fifth in the championship respectively.

18. Alberto Ascari

Italian legend Ascari was the first driver of the world championship era to try his luck at the Indy 500 when he made the trip across the Atlantic for the 1952 race. (At that time, the race counted for points). He spun out at Turn Four and retired, but the fact that he went on to win all of the remaining world championship races that season - on the way to the first of his two world titles - probably helped lessen the pain. And although the Italian was killed in an accident in '55, his Indy experience paved the way for the likes of '65 Indy 500 winner Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart and Denny Hulme, who followed in his footsteps a few years later.

19. Derek Daly

Another driver whose F1 career was frequently hamstrung by the cars he was driving, although the Irishman did manage a couple of fourth places with Tyrrell in 1980. His best F1 season came in '82 when he was signed to run alongside Keke Rosberg at Williams, but at the end of the year he was released to make space for Jacques Laffite, and turned his attention to the US. A huge accident at Michigan in '84 left him with severe leg injuries, although he recovered and went on to take his only Champ Car podium finish - at Milwaukee in '87.

20. Johnny Herbert

The question of how good Johnny Herbert would have been had he not suffered horrendous leg injuries in a F3000 crash at Brands Hatch in 1988 will never be answered, but even with limited movement in his ankles he managed to string together a pretty respectable F1 career; winning three times in Benetton and Stewart machinery. IndyCar, however, will probably remain unfinished business for the Brit - his sole attempt at the Indy 500 in '02 with Duesenberg ended with a failure to qualify.