F1 'verse
Tony Stark - Pit Crew Chief of Avengers Racing
Son of legendary F1 champion Howard Stark, Tony came into the 1992 season as a promising young rookie with multiple Formula 3 wins under his belt and the media still aflutter over Howard's death in a crash at Silverstone the year before. He performed well, consistently making at least the second round of qualifying, culminating in taking 3rd in the Drivers' Championship in the 1995 season.
He fully embraced the lifestyle and was as infamous for his exploits off the track as on, mostly involving excessive amounts of supermodels and alcohol. However even then he was known for taking an intense interest in the mechanical side of things. On more than one occasion he was caught on camera arguing with race engineers about the way the car was set up. And though this did earn him a reputation for not being the easiest to work with, his unusual level of involvement with the design meant that he was intimately familiar with the workings of the car, and the advantage this gave in racing was undeniable.
The best performance of his racing career thus far came in the 1998 season. He started the Monaco Grand Prix on pole position, 14 points clear in the Drivers' Championship. However it was during this race that - due to what was later discovered to be a mechanical issue with the throttle - his steering failed heading into Tabac, causing him to crash straight into the barrier at full speed. He had to be cut out of the cockpit and was not breathing when marshals removed his helmet; he was revived by medics on scene and airlifted to hospital.
He was in a coma for a week. After regaining consciousness he was confined to the hospital for a further three months, undergoing reconstructive surgery and intensive physiotherapy. However the most severe long-term effect turned out to be trauma-induced chronic pericarditis, which effectively destroyed his chances of ever racing again. It was mostly to stop himself from going crazy from boredom while stuck in hospital - and partly of a desire to work out what the hell had made his car fail on him - that he started studying the theory behind vehicle dynamics in more detail. Moving from driving into design seemed like a perfectly natural transition.
So it was that, still healing from the injuries that had ended his racing career, Tony found a new niche as a race engineer. It quickly became apparent that his true talent was in the pits. Within a year of his taking the post Avengers Racing held the new record for fastest tire change, and he had revealed a gift for putting an apparently crippled car back together out of spit and duct tape in the space of a pit stop.
These days he's the Pit Crew Chief and Head Engineer of Avengers Racing: famous for breathtakingly audacious designs which don't technically violate the rules, and raining abuse-laden advice on their drivers over team radio. He's happy with this unexpected place he's found for himself. Maybe he'll never live up to Howard's racing record, but this? This is better.