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Perry Edward McCarthy (born 3 March 1961) is a British racing driver, who drove for the Andrea Moda team in Formula One in , though never making it into a race, before moving into Sportscar racing, including driving in the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times between 1996 and 2003.
McCarthy also portrayed The Stig in the first two series of the revamped version of BBC motoring show Top Gear.
In 1991, McCarthy was chosen to test for the Footwork Arrows Formula One team. Although he impressed the team, his break did not come until the eve of the 1992 Formula One season, when he was signed by the independent Andrea Moda team run by Andrea Sassetti who thought that entering Formula One would be a good way to advertise his shoe business. The team was uncompetitive, disorganized and poorly managed, and after a lengthy battle to gain a FIA Super Licence the season soon descended into farce. Because Sassetti was unable to release McCarthy for Enrico Bertaggia, who had left the team before and attempted to return with the promise of extra funding, McCarthy received unfair treatment from the owner, being frequently denied more than a handful of laps in which to prepare, which led to his failure to qualify for any Grand Prix, and sometimes his car was used as a spare car for teammate Roberto Moreno. His Grand Prix debut in Spain lasted eighteen metres down the pit lane in pre-qualifying before the engine failed. In the British Grand Prix, he was sent out with wet tyres on a dry track. For the Hungarian Grand Prix, he was only allowed to leave the pits 45 seconds before the end of the pre-qualifying session, which made it impossible for him to set a lap time even if he had a faster car. Finally, in the Belgian Grand Prix, Andrea Moda's final entry, McCarthy was sent out for the qualifying session with a broken steering part in his car, which had been extracted from teammate Roberto Moreno's car, which would have led to a violent crash at the Raidillon curve had McCarthy not managed to regain control of the car. The team was expelled from the championship close to the end of the season in controversial circumstances and McCarthy was left without a drive. In a July 2004 interview with The Times, McCarthy discussed how this period in his career had contributed to his being dubbed the world's unluckiest racing driver, saying "Dick Dastardly had more luck than me".
McCarthy did not race in Formula One after 1992, but tested for both Williams and Benetton Formula teams during the 1990s. He was denied a permanent role as test driver at Benetton because he was covering for their normal test driver, Alessandro Zanardi, who was unwell. He had little success at Williams because he did not see eye to eye with the engineers and the position was then given to David Coulthard.
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| 1988 ! nowrap | GA Motorsports | JER | VAL | PAU | SIL | MNZ | PER | Brands Hatch | BIR | !rowspan="2" NC !rowspan="2" | 0 | |
| 1989 ! nowrap | Cowman Racing | SIL | VAL | PAU | JER | PER | Brands Hatch | BIR | SPA | Bugatti Circuit | Dijon-Prenois | ! NC ! 0 |
| ! nowrap Andrea Moda Formula ! nowrap | Andrea Moda S921 ! nowrap | Judd V10 | RSA | MEX | BRA | ESP | SMR | MON | CAN | FRA DNA | GBR | GER | HUN | BEL | ITA | POR | JPN | AUS ! NC ! 0 |
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