You may never have realised that you wanted to but now you can build your own F1 driver from the face parts of drivers past and present. Full instructions are given below.

To get you started, see how much Jald Salesi bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Mario Andretti, while Ruba Fisichish looks not unlike Niki Lauda and Allael Barrichesi could actually be fashion bloke Jeff Banks.

These and other look-alikes created on this page can be seen in the "Build Your Own F1 Driver" Look-alike Gallery.

Using the dropdown menus above, you can build up a new F1 driver from the hair, eyes, nose and mouth parts of real F1 drivers. This gestalt entity will be given a name, likewise made up of the constituent parts of your selected drivers' names, so, for instance, a driver made up of Mika Salo's hair and nose, Giancarlo Fisichella's eyes and David Coulthard's mouth not only closely resembles a very tall, very blond university friend of the editors but also has a name and that name is Mikarlo Salard. To make life easy, you can use the "Generate a random driver" button, which just mixes up all the elements at random to create some freakish composite monster. Probably called "Jacques Villeneuve".

The four navigation buttons to the right of the driver's face can be used to cycle through all the drivers in order. The current driver's number is displayed in the top right-hand corner, together with the total number of possible driver combinations. The ">" button displays the next driver, the "<" button displays the previous driver and the "<<" and ">>" buttons display respectively the first and last drivers in the sequence. With even a few drivers from which to choose, the total number of combinations is very large, so unless you've got a spare week or two, you probably won't want to see them all.

To the right of each dropdown menu is a "hold" checkbox. If you tick any of these, the relevant part or parts of the face will not change when you click any of the navigation buttons or the "Generate a random driver" button. Using the "hold" checkboxes obviously reduces the total number of possible driver permutations. For example, if you have built bouffanted hardman Damald Aler and you decide that you'd like to see all the possible driver combinations with the same top half of the head, you would tick the "hair" and "eyes" checkboxes and then click on the "<<" button to go to the first driver with these features. Now, when you click the ">" button, you will cycle forwards through the drivers, keeping the hair and eyes fixed. Similarly, the "<" button will cycle backwards through the same drivers.

In addition, each time you create a driver, that driver's likely behaviour is shown in a footnote below the driver's picture. This footnote is generated from some arbitrary (and possibly fabricated) event in the life of each of the drivers who make up the driver you create. For instance, the behaviour of our old friend Mikarlo Salard is based on events from the lives of Mika Salo, Giancarlo Fisichella and David Coulthard. Mika Salo does in fact contribute two elements to Mikarlo Salard's face but each driver's behaviour appears only once in the footnote, irrespective of whether a driver contributes one, two, three or four elements to the overall image.

Under the heading "Your most recent drivers" is a list of the drivers you have most recently built. You can click on each driver's name to rebuild that driver. If you've ever spent any time clicking repeatedly on the "Generate a random driver" button and lost one you liked because you were a bit hasty with your clicking, you'll appreciate this feature.

If you find a combination that you find particularly amusing or that happens to remind you of someone you know, you can e-mail that picture using the "E-mail picture to a friend" button. You will be able to add some text of your own to the e-mail, so that the recipient will see the driver's picture and name, as well as your own name and your message. If you build a driver who reminds you of someone famous, send the picture to our sub-editor by clicking on the "E-mail picture to our sub-editor" button and you may get to see your creation in the Build Your Own F1 Driver Look-Alike Gallery. A list of the ten most commonly e-mailed drivers is on the right. Clicking on any of these names will assemble the driver, unless you have any of the "hold" checkboxes ticked.