Rubens Barrichello braked early into Turn 1 in 2002 and was collected by Ralf Schumacher's Williams, which launched off the back of the Ferrari and cartwheeled through the gravel. Eight cars were eliminated in the opening seconds, and Ralf climbed out unhurt.

Ralf Schumacher's first-lap flight

The 2020 season opener was called off just two hours before Friday practice, after a McLaren team member tested positive for coronavirus and the other nine teams voted not to proceed. It was the first Grand Prix lost to the pandemic and the start of a five-month gap before F1 resumed racing.

The race that never happened

Designer Hermann Tilke shaped the opening corners after the Chinese character 上 - meaning "ascend" - for China's first-ever Grand Prix in 2004, won from pole by Rubens Barrichello.

Built to spell a character

Championship leader Lewis Hamilton, in his rookie season, slid off at the pit entry on a worn set of intermediate tyres and beached his McLaren in the gravel trap, retiring on the spot. Kimi Räikkönen won the race and closed to within seven points, a gap that decided the title in Ferrari's favour a week later.

Hamilton's title slips away in the gravel

Oscar Piastri led a McLaren one-two, and then scrutineering gutted the rest of the order: Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly were disqualified for cars a kilogram under the 800 kg minimum, and Lewis Hamilton for a skid block worn past the legal limit. It was the first time both Ferraris had been disqualified from the same Grand Prix.

Three cars thrown out after the flag

Ayrton Senna drove straight into Alain Prost's Ferrari at the first corner in 1990, taking both out and handing Senna his second title - payback, he admitted years later, for pole position sitting on the dirty side of the grid in 1989.

Senna's title-deciding collision

Kimi Räikkönen started 17th after a pre-race engine change, then carved through the field and ran down long-time leader Giancarlo Fisichella, passing him for the win on the very last lap. It's still regarded as one of the greatest single drives in Formula 1 history.

Räikkönen's charge from 17th to victory

Torrential rain red-flagged the race after two laps and only 28 of the scheduled 53 were run before the three-hour clock ran out. The whole paddock, Max Verstappen included, assumed reduced points; the FIA then ruled that full points applied because the race had restarted, and he had won his second championship without knowing it.

A title clinched by a rule nobody had read properly

For Miami's first Grand Prix in 2022, winner Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were handed NFL-style helmets on the podium alongside the usual trophies - a nod to the circuit being built around Hard Rock Stadium.

NFL helmets on the podium

A red flag for a Leclerc crash cut short final qualifying and left Max Verstappen down in ninth. He sliced through the field on a long opening stint, then passed his own teammate Sergio Pérez for the lead with five laps to go - the first win from ninth on the grid in nearly forty years.

Verstappen wins from ninth on the grid

Lando Norris arrived in Miami with 15 podium finishes and no wins, a record for waiting that only four drivers had ever matched. A lap-27 safety car fell perfectly for him, he came out ahead of Max Verstappen and stayed there, and McLaren had its first victory since 2021.

Norris's first win, at the 110th attempt

Turn 14's exit wall was just a wall until 1999, when Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve - three World Champions - all speared into it during the same Grand Prix. It's been the Wall of Champions ever since.

The Wall of Champions

Torrential rain delayed the race by over two hours and produced a record six safety car periods. Jenson Button fell to last place, fought back through the field, and passed race leader Sebastian Vettel exiting the final corner of the final lap to win a race that took more than four hours to complete.

The longest race in F1 history

Sebastian Vettel crossed the line 1.3 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton, but a five-second penalty for running across the grass at Turn 3 and squeezing Hamilton towards the wall on the way back handed the win to Mercedes. Vettel refused to play along afterwards, moving the number-one board from Hamilton’s car to his own empty parking spot.

Vettel wins on track and loses in the stewards’ room

Four different drivers led in the closing three laps of 1982's race as rivals crashed, spun and ran out of fuel one after another. Riccardo Patrese, who had himself stalled at the hairpin, got his Brabham rolling again down a slope and crossed the line first - not realising he'd won until after the flag.

The maddest final laps in Monaco history

Charles Leclerc took a stunning pole position at his home race, only to crash late in qualifying. Ferrari initially cleared the car, but a driveshaft fault traced to that crash was found on the way to the grid, and Leclerc had to retire before the race even started.

Leclerc's home-race pole that never raced

Charles Leclerc converted pole into the home win that Monaco had spent five years denying him, becoming the first Monégasque to win the Monaco Grand Prix since Louis Chiron in 1931. A first-lap crash red-flagged the race and the restart froze everything: the top ten finished in exactly the order they had started.

Leclerc finally wins at home

Nigel Mansell pulled alongside Ayrton Senna's McLaren down the pit straight in the circuit's debut race in 1991, the two cars running inches apart with sparks flying at nearly 190mph - one of the most photographed moments in F1 history. Mansell went on to win the race.

Mansell and Senna, wheel to wheel at 190mph

On his very first race for Red Bull, 18-year-old Max Verstappen won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix to become Formula 1's youngest-ever race winner. Championship rivals Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had collided with each other at Turn 4 on the opening lap, and Verstappen held off Kimi Räikkönen's chasing Ferrari for the rest of the race.

Verstappen's debut win for Red Bull

A late safety car left Max Verstappen on hard tyres surrounded by cars on softs. He made contact with George Russell at Turn 5 while defending, was told to hand the place back and did - and still took a ten-second penalty that dropped him from fifth on the road to tenth. Oscar Piastri won ahead of teammate Lando Norris.

Verstappen's ten-second lesson at Turn 5

The old Österreichring's narrow grid caused pile-ups on both original start attempts in 1987, the second one collecting 12 cars. The race finally got going on a third attempt, nearly two hours later, with Nigel Mansell going on to win.

Three starts, two red flags

Charles Leclerc had led from lights to almost flag in 2019 when Max Verstappen dived down the inside at the final corner with two laps to go, the cars banging wheels as Leclerc ran wide and lost the place. Stewards investigated the contact but ruled it a racing incident, letting Verstappen keep the win.

Verstappen's last-gasp pass on Leclerc

Max Verstappen and Lando Norris had been fighting for the lead for several laps when they touched at Turn 3 with eight to go, both picking up punctures. Norris retired, Verstappen limped home fifth with a ten-second penalty for causing it, and George Russell inherited Mercedes' first win in nearly two years.

Verstappen and Norris take each other out

Silverstone hosted round one of Formula 1's first-ever World Championship season in May 1950, with King George VI and the Royal Family watching from the stands as Giuseppe Farina won for a dominant Alfa Romeo.

The first World Championship race

Title rivals Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen collided at Copse on the opening lap of the 2021 British Grand Prix, sending Verstappen's Red Bull hard into the barriers for a precautionary hospital check. Hamilton was handed a 10-second penalty for causing the collision but served it and recovered to win the race anyway, his eighth British Grand Prix victory.

Hamilton and Verstappen collide at Copse

Lewis Hamilton came through a race of on-off rain to win at Silverstone for the ninth time - more victories than any driver has taken at a single circuit. It was his first win since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, two and a half years earlier, and he told his team over the radio that he couldn't stop crying.

Hamilton's record ninth home win

David Coulthard clipped a drain cover in torrential rain moments after the 1998 start, triggering a chain-reaction crash that wrecked 13 of the 22 cars within seconds. Damon Hill won Jordan's first-ever Grand Prix once the hour-long clean-up was done.

The 13-car pile-up

Romain Grosjean triggered a first-lap pile-up into La Source, spearing airborne over the top of championship leader Fernando Alonso's Ferrari and missing his head by inches before crashing into the barriers; Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Pérez were also collected. Grosjean received a one-race ban, the first driver ban of the modern era, and Alonso's title challenge never recovered.

Grosjean's La Source pile-up

Three hours of rain delay ended in two laps behind the safety car, not one metre of green-flag running, and half points awarded on a classification that was really just the grid. At 6.9 km it is the shortest World Championship Grand Prix ever run - and it still counts as a win for Max Verstappen and a second place for George Russell's Williams.

The race that never actually raced

F1's first race behind the Iron Curtain drew a record 200,000 fans in 1986, who watched Nelson Piquet snatch victory from Ayrton Senna with a daring pass around the outside - a move still replayed as one of the great overtakes.

Piquet's outside pass on Senna

Jenson Button started 14th in pouring rain in his 113th career start and carved through the field. He inherited the lead when race-long leader Fernando Alonso's wheel came loose and detached, handing Button his first Grand Prix win and Honda its first as a constructor since 1967.

Button's maiden win from 14th on the grid

Valtteri Bottas locked up into Turn 1 in the wet and took out three cars; Lance Stroll wiped out Charles Leclerc alongside them. At the restart Lewis Hamilton was the only driver to line up on the grid, everyone else having dived for slicks, and Esteban Ocon led the rest of the way for his maiden Grand Prix win and Alpine's first.

Ocon wins after a one-car restart

James Hunt scored his and Hesketh's first Grand Prix win in 1975, gambling on slick tyres seven laps before Ferrari's Niki Lauda and just holding on to beat him by a single second - a giant-killing result for a team bankrolled by a flamboyant lord rather than a manufacturer.

Hunt's shock win for the playboy team

Defending champion James Hunt was launched airborne in 1977 after clipping wheels with Mario Andretti's Lotus at Tarzan, the two having run side by side for the lead since the start. Hunt marched straight to the Lotus pit afterwards to tell team boss Colin Chapman exactly what he thought of it.

Hunt and Andretti come to blows

A rear tyre exploded on Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari mid-lap in 1979. Rather than pit, he completed almost the entire lap on three wheels, sparks streaming from the bare rim, before the suspension finally gave out.

Villeneuve's three-wheeled lap

With the two locked in a championship battle, Alain Prost dived down the inside of leader Nelson Piquet at Tarzan in 1983, locked his brakes and speared into the Brabham, eliminating them both. Ferrari's René Arnoux inherited the win, and Piquet - not Prost - went on to take that year's title.

Prost and Piquet collide mid title fight

Niki Lauda started tenth but worked his way to the front, then held off a fast-closing teammate Alain Prost over the final laps to win by 0.232 seconds in 1985 - the 25th and last Grand Prix victory of his career.

Lauda's last win, by 0.232 seconds

Zandvoort's first Grand Prix in 36 years drew 195,000 fans in orange, and Max Verstappen gave them the full set: pole, the lead into Turn 1, a 20-second win over Lewis Hamilton and the championship lead back. No Dutch driver had ever won the Dutch Grand Prix before.

F1 comes back, and a Dutchman wins at last

Lando Norris was running second and set for a McLaren one-two when an oil leak sent smoke pouring from the back of his car and put him out on lap 65. Oscar Piastri took pole, the fastest lap and the win for the first grand chelem of his career, and rookie Isack Hadjar came home third for a first podium.

Norris's smoking McLaren, seven laps out

Peter Gethin won the 1971 Italian GP by just 0.01 seconds over Ronnie Peterson, with the top five separated by 0.61 seconds - still the tightest finish in F1 history, produced by a Monza layout with no chicanes to break up the slipstreaming battle.

F1's closest-ever finish

Fighting for the championship lead, Max Verstappen's Red Bull launched off Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes at the second chicane and landed on top of his cockpit, the rear tyre striking Hamilton's helmet. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said the halo device "definitely saved Lewis' life," and neither driver scored points.

Verstappen and Hamilton's halo collision

A first-lap crash brought out a red flag, and when the race restarted Lewis Hamilton was handed a stop-go penalty for entering a closed pit lane, dropping him out of contention. Pierre Gasly, a year after being dropped by Red Bull, held off Carlos Sainz to win for AlphaTauri - the team's first victory since 2008 and Gasly's only win to date.

Gasly's maiden win from a red-flag restart

Michael Schumacher won at Monza and used the press conference afterwards to announce he would retire from F1 at the end of the season, closing out his Ferrari career in front of the tifosi at the team's home race. He came out of retirement with Mercedes three years later.

Schumacher's home-race retirement announcement

Sebastian Vettel pulled alongside Lewis Hamilton under safety car in 2017 and steered into him, convinced Hamilton had brake-tested him - the data showed otherwise. Vettel took a 10-second penalty; Daniel Ricciardo inherited a chaotic win.

Vettel's safety-car flashpoint

Battling for track position without team orders, Daniel Ricciardo rear-ended teammate Max Verstappen on lap 40, eliminating both Red Bulls from a race the team had been expected to challenge for. Lewis Hamilton inherited a chaotic win, with Sergio Pérez taking a shock Force India podium.

Red Bull's teammates take each other out

Max Verstappen's left-rear tyre exploded on the main straight with five laps left while he was comfortably leading. The red flag set up a two-lap sprint to the flag with Lewis Hamilton handed the win on a plate - and Hamilton hit the wrong brake setting into Turn 1, sailed straight down the escape road and finished 15th. Sergio Pérez won his first race for Red Bull.

A blowout, then the wrong brake setting

A tropical downpour flooded the circuit so fast that the 2009 Malaysian GP was stopped for good after 31 of 56 laps and never restarted. Jenson Button won, but only half points were awarded since the full distance was never run.

Red-flagged by a monsoon

Lewis Hamilton was cruising to what looked like a certain win, well clear of the field with 16 laps left, when his power unit failed catastrophically with flames pouring from the exhaust. It handed Red Bull a Ricciardo-Verstappen one-two and badly dented Hamilton's title bid against teammate Nico Rosberg.

Hamilton's engine explodes while leading

Sepang's farewell went to Max Verstappen, who took the lead off pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton early and drove away with the second win of his career. Sebastian Vettel had started last after an engine failure in qualifying and recovered to fourth, then collided with Lance Stroll on the slow-down lap and had to hitch a lift back to the paddock on another driver's car.

The last Malaysian Grand Prix

A year after Fernando Alonso's surprise 2008 win here, it emerged that Renault had ordered teammate Nelson Piquet Jr to crash deliberately to bring out the safety car at just the right moment - one of motorsport's biggest fixing scandals.

The Crashgate scandal

Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Kimi Räikkönen collided at the first corner on the opening lap, eliminating all three from a race none of them finished. It was a huge points swing that season for Lewis Hamilton, who went on to win and extend his championship lead, and stewards found no single driver predominantly at fault.

Three cars wiped out at Turn 1

Carlos Sainz won from pole by driving the closing laps as a tactician, deliberately keeping Lando Norris within DRS range behind him so that Norris in turn had the tow to fend off the Mercedes pair. It was the only Grand Prix of the 2023 season Red Bull lost, ending Max Verstappen’s record run of ten straight wins and the team’s of fifteen.

The one race Red Bull didn't win

Circuit of the Americas hosted its first Grand Prix in 2012, and Lewis Hamilton spoiled it for the home crowd's title favourite - passing pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel with 14 laps left to win by well under a second.

Hamilton denies Vettel at COTA's debut

Kimi Räikkönen won the 2018 United States Grand Prix from second on the grid, his first win in over five years and 113 races going back to the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. It denied Lewis Hamilton the chance to clinch that year's title on home-crowd-adjacent soil, and turned out to be the final win of Räikkönen's career.

Räikkönen ends F1's longest winless run

Max Verstappen won, and then scrutineering found the skid blocks under Lewis Hamilton's second-placed Mercedes and Charles Leclerc's Ferrari worn beyond the legal limit. Both were disqualified, promoting Lando Norris to second on his 100th start; the sprint weekend's single practice session took much of the blame for teams misjudging ride height.

Two podium cars thrown out for a worn plank

Nigel Mansell went around the outside of Gerhard Berger through the flat-out, banked Peraltada corner in 1990 - one of the most fearless overtakes in F1 history, on a corner since replaced by the stadium chicane the lap now runs through.

Mansell's outside pass at the Peraltada

Sergio Pérez became the first Mexican driver to stand on the podium at his home Grand Prix, taking third place behind Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in front of more than 130,000 fans. He called it the biggest day of his career outside an actual win.

Pérez's first Mexican podium at home

Lewis Hamilton passed Timo Glock at the final corner of the final lap in the rain to snatch fifth place and the 2008 title by a single point, becoming Formula 1's youngest-ever World Champion at 23.

Hamilton's last-corner title

Sebastian Vettel spun to the back of the field on the opening lap of the rain-soaked 2012 season finale after contact at Turn 4, then fought back through the field to finish sixth. It was enough to beat Fernando Alonso to the championship by three points, in what is often called F1's last great old-school title decider.

Vettel's title-clinching recovery drive

Saturday's qualifying was washed out and rerun on Sunday morning, where five red flags left Max Verstappen 17th on the grid with an engine penalty on top. He picked his way through the field in standing water to win going away - the first winner from 17th or lower since Räikkönen at Suzuka in 2005 - and all but sealed a fourth straight title.

Verstappen wins from 17th in the rain

Nine minutes into first practice for the inaugural 2023 race, Carlos Sainz ran over a loose water-valve cover that tore through his Ferrari's floor. The damage wrote off his chassis, engine and battery, and the replacement parts triggered a grid penalty that dropped him to 11th before the race even started.

Wrecked by a drain cover

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were both disqualified after the 2024 race for illegal skid-block wear, promoting Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz into the points. It struck directly at that year's constructors' and drivers' championship fights in the season's final stretch.

McLaren's double disqualification hits the title fight

Max Verstappen was hit with a five-place grid penalty for the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix after failing to slow for waved yellow flags in qualifying, dropping him from a front-row time to seventh on the grid. Lewis Hamilton converted pole into victory, cutting Verstappen's championship lead to eight points with two rounds left in their title fight.

Verstappen's penalty hands Hamilton the win

The 2023 race was run in such extreme heat that Logan Sargeant retired with heat exhaustion, Esteban Ocon vomited inside his helmet but kept racing to seventh, and several more drivers needed the medical centre afterwards - widely called one of the most physically brutal Grands Prix ever run.

The race drivers called torture

Fernando Alonso arrived at the season finale as championship favourite but got trapped for nearly 40 laps behind Vitaly Petrov's backmarker Renault after an early, miscalculated pit stop. He finished seventh as Sebastian Vettel won the race and the title by four points, becoming F1's youngest-ever champion at the time.

Alonso loses the title stuck behind Petrov

Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton arrived level on points for a winner-takes-all 2021 finale. Verstappen passed Hamilton on the last lap to win his first title, after a late safety-car restart that the FIA's own review later found involved 'human error' in how it was handled.

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