Khalil Beschir

Beschir driving in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 in 2007.

Khalil Beschir (born 18 June 1983) is a Lebanese racing driver.

Early years

Beschir was born in Bhersaf, Lebanon. As a child, watching Formula 1 and the likes of his hero, Michael Schumacher, on TV, Khalil soon developed his lifelong passion for motorsport and realised his ambition to become a racing driver. However, it was not an easy path to take; growing up in Lebanon there were no race circuits and motorsport was hardly even recognised, let alone there being any education or support structure in place. His parents were unable to finance his dream so he did everything he could to save enough money to make the trip to Europe where he enlisted at a racing school in France.

The experience only confirmed to Khalil that racing was what he wanted to do and so he spent the next 3 years collecting enough sponsorship to secure a series of tests in Formula Renault 1.6.

By 2004, Khalil had gathered enough funding to compete in a full race weekend at Zolder, Belgium and he made an impressive debut, finishing in the top 10 against some of Europe's best up and coming drivers of the time.

With money soon running out, Khalil decided to sell his road car and he got a job working for the team in Belgium as a mechanic in a bid to get more mileage in the car and to put together a budget for another race weekend.

Entering only his third race at Spa, a problem in qualifying forced Khalil to start from 42nd on the grid. An outstanding drive saw him battle his way through the field to finish 6th, taking fastest lap of the race in the process.

His performances soon caught the eye of popular F1 and IndyCar driver manager, Rick Gorne, who offered to manage Khalil and run him in the BAR-Honda Drivers' Program. Unfortunately Khalil was forced to turn down the opportunity due to being unable to finance his living expenses in tandem with the program.

Then the chance to represent his home country in the A1 Grand Prix series. In a shootout against 6 other drivers in Formula 3 cars, Khalil came out on top and was handed the race seat.

In preparation for his A1GP debut, Khalil competed in the Italian Formula 3 Championship, finishing just outside the top 10. He was also entered for selected races of Euro F3000 where he still managed a creditable 13th in the drivers' standings despite contesting less than half the season.

Khalil resides in Milton Keynes, UK.

A1 Grand Prix

In late 2005, Beschir began competing in the A1 Grand Prix series. In the inaugural A1GP feature race at Brands Hatch while he was 7th overall, his car rolled at Paddock Hill Bend after making contact with A1 Team Italy's Enrico Toccacelo. His best finish in the series was 8th at Durban in 2008 which made him the first driver to score for the team. Beschir was one of only 3 drivers from A1GP to win an award in 2006; he won the award for "Most Extensive Product Testing".

Despite being mared by instability and inexperience within the team, Khalil spent three seasons in A1GP and has since furthered his motorsport career by becoming a test and development driver for single-seater manufacturers and race teams.

F1 Pundit & Commentator

Khalil started his broadcasting career in 2010 by joining Abu Dhabi TV as their F1 & Motorsport Pundit during their term as holders of the exclusive TV rights for F1, GP2 and GP3 in all 24 Arab countries.

The broadcasting rights moved to Arab sports network, beIN Sports, in 2014 and they were quick to secure Khalil as F1 TV Pundit & Analysist with a multi-year contract.

Now also applying his vast and in-depth knowledge as a commentator, Khalil is the first F1 commentator in the region to have previous single-seater race experience. This allows him to offer viewers a true drivers' perspective into each and every session, and he has proved himself to be a very popular asset amongst the team with F1 and race fans.

Racing record

3000 Pro Series

Season	VAL	IMO	SPA	MUG	MIS	LAU	ADR	MON	Pts	Pos
2005		12	9	12	Ret	5			4	13th

A1 Grand Prix results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	DC	Points
2005–06	Lebanon	GBR SPR 22	GBR FEA Ret	GER SPR Ret	GER FEA 18	POR SPR	POR FEA	AUS SPR	AUS FEA	MYS SPR Ret	MYS FEA 17	UAE SPR	UAE FEA	RSA SPR	RSA FEA	IDN SPR	IDN FEA	MEX SPR	MEX FEA	USA SPR	USA FEA	CHN SPR	CHN FEA	23rd	0
2006–07		NED SPR	NED FEA	CZE SPR	CZE FEA	CHN SPR	CHN FEA	MYS SPR 17	MYS FEA 20	IDN SPR	IDN FEA	NZL SPR	NZL FEA	AUS SPR	AUS FEA	RSA SPR	RSA FEA	MEX SPR	MEX FEA	CHN SPR	CHN FEA	GBR SPR	GBR SPR	23rd	0
2007–08		NED SPR	NED FEA	CZE SPR 20	CZE FEA 21	MYS SPR	MYS FEA	CHN SPR	CHN FEA	NZL SPR	NZL FEA	AUS SPR	AUS FEA	RSA SPR 19	RSA FEA 08	MEX SPR	MEX FEA	CHN SPR	CHN FEA	GBR SPR 22	GBR SPR 18			22nd	3

External links

Official site
Career statistics at DriverDB

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.