Formula One/Awesome

With 858 World Championship Grands Prix being held in over 60 years of Formula 1, many, many Crowning Moments Of Awesome arose. Here is the place for them

Please order them chronological and use the spoiler tag for current moments less than three Grands Prix ago.

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1950ies

• 1953 French Grand Prix: While we really only have eye-witnesses proclamining that, Juan Manuel Fangio and Mike Hawthorn having one of the first truly great battles in F1 history still very much counts as awesome.

1960ies

• 1961 Dutch Grand Prix: In this race, the entire field gets one for having no retirements at all. While only 15 cars actually stated the race, it was still very impressive. To give you a picture of just how awesome that is, the second time this happened was in 2005! That is 44 years later in an era where cars are designed with reliability in mind whereas in these days having your car not fall apart at the end of the Grand Prix was considered a sign of inferior design.

1970ies

• 1975 French Grand Prix: Niki Lauda suffered from the flu and still managed to take a great victory on the way to his first World Championship.

1980ies

• 1987 British Grand Prix: The race was being dominated by the Williams' of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet. Both fo which were challenging for the title. However shortly into the race Mansell suffered problems with a wheel due to a lost weight, which forced him into the pits, despite the race strategy having both cars run without a stop. Mansell emerged on fresh tyres with 28 laps to go, and 29 seconds behind Piquet. What happened was truely amazing, Mansell started destroying Piquets advantage, setting fastest lap after fastest lap while the crowd stsrted cheering him on. Despite worries he would run out of fuel he kept on using the turbo charge to keep going. Wih 2 laps to go he caught Piquet down the hangar straight, sold him a dummy and shot straight past him, with everyone from the crowd to Murray Walker erupting in cheer. Mansell was able to win the race, running out of fuel on the slowing down lap and getting engulfed by the fans.
• 1988 Italian Grand Prix: Gerhard Berger manages to break the stanglehold of McLaren on the championship to take the only non-McLaren win that year at the home track of Ferrari just after Enzo Ferrari had passed away.
  • Your mileage may vary on this, but perhaps Alain Prost's CMOA was in this race: Prost noticed in the early stages that he would have an engine failure later on and felt like he could do nothing about that. With that in mind he pushed completely, challenging his leading team mate and championship rival Ayrton Senna. As Prost predicted, Senna did not realise this odd behaviour of Prost and did let his desire to beat Prost get the best of him. After Prost had his predicted engine failure, Senna had used way too much fuel in the battle and had to tune his engine down to make it to the end. This allowed Berger to catch up and forced Senna to drive aggressively past backmarkers in the way which led to him having contact with Jean-Louis Schlesser and retiring. This display of genius by Prost limited the damage that failure did to his championship.

1990ies

• 1993 European Grand Prix: Regarded as one of Senna's greatest drives. The Williams cars lined 1st and 2nd, Senna dropped down to 5th at the start in wet conditions. However he started passing cars like the surface was completely dry and led by the first lap. Then began pulling away like it was no problem at all, despite the track constatly drying and getting wet again Senna pitted fewer times compared to other cars. This was made sweeter when Prost stalled in the pitlane, giving Senna even more of an advantage. The only blot in the copybook was when he went into the pitlane without needing too and simply drove though. Ironically this set him the fastest lap of the race due to the nature of the pits, by the time he won he had lapped every car on track apart from Hill, who was 1 minute 23 seconds behind!
• 1996 Monaco Grand Prix: On a day where virtually everything and everyone failed, Olivier Panis was there to take the win in what was pretty much a home race for him. He also scored the last win for the prestigeous Ligier team, and he showed that is was not only due to the retirements that he was a major player in this event with him being during one time by far the fastest car on the track even when Damon Hill was still very much in the race.
• 1998 Belgian Grand Prix: One of the wettest Formula One races to be held, with Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher taking Jordans first victory and 1-2 when most other cars retired. It was red flagged after an accident took out half the grid, the restart and subsequent race took out several cars with Michael Schumacher taking a commanding lead from Hill in an unfancied Jordan. However when Schumacher came up to lap David Coulthard he plowed straight into the back of him, taking both of them out, despite the conditions the two Jordans kept on going, despite pressure from Jean Alesi and both managed to cross the line intact. Made better by the fact Hill's car was set up for dry conditions as well.

2000ies

• 2004 French Grand Prix: Ferrari and their lead driver Michael Schumacher were pretty much controlling F1 at that point. The French Grand Prix seemed like a change of the guard for once with Renault and Fernando Alonso looking more than competitive. However, Schumacher and his strategists employed a very cunning plan in order to take the victory, involving Schumacher stopping four times, something that has not been done willingly before. This plan worked brilliantly due to Schumacher being able to truly use everything the car gave him.
• 2005 Japanese Grand Prix: A wet qualifying left Renault's Fernando Alonso and Mclaren's Kimi Raikonnen in 16th and 17th respectively. Although Alonso had already won the championship, the two drivers raced each other through the field to both finish on the podium. Along the way to finishing 3rd, Alonso overtook Michael Schumacher around the outside of the infamously fast 130R corner. However, Raikonnen passed Alonso's teammate Giancarlo Fisichella round the outside of the almost-as-fast turn 1 on the penultimate lap to win the race.
• 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix: Michael Schumacher's last (at that time) race weekend started horrible with a failure in qualifying leaving him 10th on the grid and an early puncture brining him on the verge of being lapped, some 110 seconds behind the race leader. Despite being on a full tank, Michael Schumacher once and for all solified his legend status by driving his heart out, overtaking more than a dozen drivers on track (culminating in one of the overtakes of the year against the great defense of Kimi Räikkönen) and finishing only 25 seconds behind the race winner.
• 2007 European Grand Prix: Markus Winkelhock had a mediocre debut weekend in the weak Spyker car. The German qualified dead-last, more than a second behind his team mate. However, a friend told Winkelhock around an hour before the race that it would most likely rain. Therefore he was the only car that dared to start the seemingly dry race on wet tires. As they hoped, rain came and it came in outrageous lashings, forcing everyone to pit. Those who were not able to do so struggled very much, allowing Winkelhock to pick up places, resulting in Markus Winkelhock overtaking the at that time to-be World Champion Kimi Räikkönen on track for the lead. Said lead grew to 33 seconds before the race was neutralised for just being too wet. With Winkelhock never having another race again, this is perhaps THE best definition of One-Scene Wonder ever seen in the world of sports.

2010ies

• 2010 Hungarian Grand Prix: Rubens Barrichello was forced to pick up positions from further down the field after his pit stop was out of synch with the rest of the field. It did not take long for Barrichello to close in on his former team mate, the returning Michael Schumacher. After the last corner, Barrichello was looking to take Schumacher on the inside. Still not having lost all of his viciousness, Schumacher pulled inside in order to squeeze his old partner out of the overtaking attempt. The faster Barrichello had none of that however and just squeezed through barely having more than a car width between Schumacher and the wall. While Barrichello was, for some rightfully so, furious afterwards, it did not make this moment any less impressive.
• 2011 Canadian Grand Prix: A very wet track caused chaos for Jenson Button. Inside ten laps, he had been to the pits twice; once as a precaution after being hit by his teammate Lewis Hamilton, then to serve a drive-through penalty. He fought his way from 18th to 10th before the race was stopped due to standing water. When the race resumed two hours later, Button's tangle with Fernando Alonso gave him a puncture, forcing him to pit for a fourth time. From the back of the grid after his pit stop, Button kept his head and picked up positions as others struggled to be 7th when the track was dry enough for slicks. Making the tyres work, Button was fourth before another safety car period. With only a handful of laps left, Button made his way past Michael Schumacher, Mark Webber and halfway through the last lap, championship leader Sebastian Vettel to win, four hours after the race had started.