After three seasons of racing in Japan, Frentzen signed with Sauber in 1994, making his Formula One debut at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

After scoring several point finishes in his 1996 campaign, Frentzen joined Williams to replace reigning World Champion Damon Hill alongside Jacques Villeneuve.

Frentzen achieved his maiden victory at the San Marino Grand Prix, taking several podiums as he finished runner-up to Villeneuve after Schumacher's collision with him at the last race of the season saw his disqualification from the standings.

Frentzen achieved further wins at the French and Italian Grands Prix in 1999, finishing third in the World Drivers' Championship to Mika Häkkinen and Eddie Irvine.

After struggling for form in 2000, Frentzen was dropped by Jordan after the 2001 British Grand Prix, swapping with Jean Alesi to join Prost.

Frentzen's parents divorced when he was eight years old and his father subsequently married Mexican-born Arazelli while Angela returned to Spain.

The next step was the German Formula 3 Championship in 1989, where Frentzen competed against many future stars including Michael Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger.

Karl Wendlinger won the German Formula 3 Championship and Frentzen became joint runner-up with Schumacher (the two finishing on identical points totals).

In 1991, Frentzen continued to drive in International Formula 3000, moving to Vortex Motorsport and scored five points in that year's series.

Frentzen began the year strongly, qualifying fifth for his début in Brazil (albeit spinning off in the race) and scoring his first points with fifth in the Pacific Grand Prix.

He was then thrust into the role of de facto team leader after Wendlinger crashed during qualifying for the fourth round of the season in Monaco, leaving him with severe head injuries that ruled him out for the remainder of the year.

Frentzen had the measure of substitute team-mates Andrea de Cesaris and JJ Lehto, scoring points on three further occasions and finishing thirteenth in the World Drivers' Championship.

The team's decision to run a one-stop refuelling strategy caused his pace to suffer and he slipped back to sixth by the finish.

Sauber's performance was not sufficient to keep the partnership with Mercedes alive: the marque moved to McLaren, leaving the team to acquire a supply of Ford V8 engines for the 1995 season instead.

The Sauber C14 chassis was also uncompetitive at the start of the year, but Frentzen produced consistent performances to finish in the points on multiple occasions.

The performance of the car improved with development throughout the year, culminating in Frentzen taking the team's first podium finish at the Italian Grand Prix and qualifying a season's-best fifth in Portugal.

He also easily had the measure of his team-mates: first, the returning Wendlinger, who was then replaced by Williams test driver Jean-Christophe Boullion mid-season.

Despite eight front-row starts and seven podium finishes, Frentzen was generally out-performed by team-mate Jacques Villeneuve, out-qualifying the French-Canadian only four times during the season.

Consequently the team suffered a loss of performance compared to eventual title winners McLaren and Williams' 1997 title-rivals Ferrari.

Eight years later Eddie Jordan revealed that the termination of Frentzen's contract was a move to appease Honda and sign the Japanese driver Takuma Sato to race for the team.

[7] Frentzen subsequently took Alesi's place at the struggling Prost team, and managed to qualify fourth at Spa, before the outfit collapsed financially at the end of the season.

In 2012, Frentzen competed in the ADAC GT Masters season with a Callaway Competition Corvette Z06, and returned to the series in 2014 with a HTP Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3.

[12] After leaving Sauber at the end of 2003, BBC Sport described Frentzen as a driver who "never quite made the most of a brilliant natural talent".