Happy Birthday Jody Scheckter!

- Published on Jan 29th, 2010 by Riccardo Monza

Happy Birthday to Jody Scheckter, 1979 F1 World Champion, who's 60 today! Jody was born in East London (not quite Hackney or Whitechapel) but in East London, South Africa on 29th January 1950. After making his F1 debut for McLaren in 1972, Jody was later employed by Tyrrell, Wolf and Ferrari where he reached his ultimate championship goal. He was quick from the outset, and gradually matured his wild and brash behaviour on track, to become a well seasoned, wise and woolly-haired winner. Jody is part of the Scheckter family of racers -his brother Ian raced in F1 too, and both sons Tomas and Toby have scooped successes in other formulas.

Jody looks on top of the world and literally 10 feet tall in the photo here, taken in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1977. He should be pleased, for he'd just won the first race for the Walter Wolf Racing team in their very first outing, something that Brawn GP also achieved rather incredibly in 2009.

Nowadays, Jody can be found more often than not getting his boots muddy down on his farm -Laverstoke Park, in Hampshire, England. He's become something of an organic farming expert since leaving racing, and soon hopes to use part of his land to make rather fine sparkling wine, in fact he plans to call it... yep, you've guessed it -Schampagne!

So let's raise our glasses for a toast to Jody -Happy Birthday!