Before he joined Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2009, rising Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi had long been on Red Bull’s junior driver radar.  

Although highly competitive in the junior categories, he had no titles to his name and there were question marks about just how good he really was were starting to emerge.

But Buemi’s composed testing performances as reserve driver for Red Bull in 2008 were impressive, and, up against Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais in Toro Rosso’s 2009 line-up, Buemi scored points on his debut, then performed a giant-killing act on a driver who had won the US Champ Car title four times in a row. That – allied to a 2010 season in which he pipped talented new team-mate Jaime Alguersuari – has earned him the chance to stay with Toro Rosso for another season.