F1 Fanatic

Many of the obvious ones have been taken, so I’ll go for some less obvious choices.

I’ll admit I didn’t see all of these but the last one live, but how about:

Damon Hill – Britain 1993

Was beating Prost handily, looked set to take his debut win at home… until the engine failed him. The fans were pretty much shocked, if I remember the video correctly.

Jean Alesi – Italy 1994 AND 1995

In both races, he had a brilliant start, got a bit of good luck on his side (MSC banned in 1994, and getting taken out along with Damon Hill in 1995). But in both cases, his car fails under him, and he was despondent. To make things worse for Alesi, he finished 2nd in the Benetton in 1996… behind MSC in the Ferrari.

Mika Hakkinen – Spain 2001

45-second lead gone up in a bunch of hydraulic smoke. No tears from Mika this time, but you knew it was really bad when Michael (who lost the lead and fell behind badly after a tyre problem) approached Mika after the race. He practically apologized for winning that race instead of Mika.

Giancarlo Fisichella – Brazil 2003

Sure, he got the win back a week later, but the night I watched that race, it was painful to see Fisi’s delight turn into sheer despair. Had the F1 community been what it is now back then, I’m sure the fans would’ve torched the stewards and forced them to see the mistake they made in the results (counting back by 3 laps instead of 2), getting the result right a lot sooner.

Italy 2008 – that poor STR member that was immortalized in a ‘can’t unsee it’ moment by falling down in the team’s pit when a bunch of them ran across the pit lane to join the pit wall for the finish.

Another one that deserves a mention I think is Michael Schumacher when his brother crashed in the US and it was obviously serious and he had to go past under the safety car, and then go on to win the race. That must have been hard knowing his brother had been rushed to hospital.

As already discussed, Massa’s had quite a few sympathy-inducing moments! Brazil 2008 is the obvious one. It will be hard for another race in my lifetime to eclipse that drama. It was my favourite driver up against my least favourite driver, at about 5am in the morning, and of course the theatrical circumstances.

Hungary and Singapore 2008 are other examples, and also, at Germany 2010. It would have been such a great story for him to win one year after his crash, and also a great confidence-boost.

Going back further, I think that Badoer at Europe 1999 was a great example. Of course it was disappointing for big-name drivers to have failures, such as Schumacher at Suzuka 2006, but for Badoer, having driven so well, it was really gut-wrenching, even more so considering he never got to score points again.

And then I had a great deal of sympathy for Badoer on his return to Ferrari in 2009, as the circumstances were so stacked against him.

Most weekends when Webber was driving for Williams.
And of course Massa ’08.
And note to self; if I want sympathy, always go for the crying option not the swearing one.