10 Incredible Stories From The World Of Formula 1

The 1981 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder was overshadowed by two serious incidents. In Friday practice an Osella mechanic fell off the pit wall and was fatally hit by Williams driver Carlos Reutemann. Mechanics and drivers protested about the safety standards prior to the race, but it went ahead. There was chaos on the grid with empty cars, stallers and Nelson Piquet missing his position meaning drivers were waiting a long time.

Riccardo Patrese waved his arms, signalling he couldn’t make the start after switching off his Arrows, and his mechanic Dave Luckett dived behind the car to restart it. However, just as he reached it, the lights came on and the race started. Sadly the second Arrows of Siegfried Stohr crashed into Patrese’s stationary car, hitting Luckett. He amazingly survived and still works in motorsport.

Explaining his injuries, he told Speedcafe.com:

“I was pretty beat up including a broken leg, arm and lost the end of the little finger. I had a few weeks in hospital in Belgium and then headed back to the UK.”

2. A wild trip

In biographer Tom Rubython’s book Shunt, he reveals that James Hunt, known more for his playboy lifestyle than his 1976 F1 title, slept with 33 British Airways hostesses during a two-week break in Tokyo, Japan. All while going out with girlfriend Jane Birbeck.

The 1982 German Grand Prix was won by Patrick Tambay for Ferrari, but it is most famous for the punch-up between Nelson Piquet and Eliseo Salazar, who was being lapped. Tempers flared after Piquet collided with Salazar at the Ostkurve chicane while leading the race and the Brabham driver took his anger out on the backmarker. You don’t see that very often in F1!

4. An expensive crash!

Drivers lose their front wings all the time, and it’s not seen to be a particularly big deal. Usually a team just fits a new one in the pits. But Christian Klien’s contact with the wall on lap one of the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix proved to be very costly indeed.

His Jaguar team was running with one-off sponsorship from the Ocean’s 12 film and as part of the deal, the two cars were fitted with stunning £150,000 diamonds, positioned on the tip of the nosecones. Sure, that sounds like a good idea, right? Well, Klien crashed his car on the first lap and retired but the diamond was never actually found.

We’ve all seen the clip and GIFs. Sebastien Buemi had a nasty surprise when his two front wheels flew off at the end of the Shanghai International Circuit back straight during practice in 2010. But just what happened?

Toro Rosso tried out a new, lighter pair of suspension uprights but while weight saving may have been on the agenda, the parts were clearly not strong enough to withstand the huge g-forces of the cars braking for the slow hairpin.

The right-front upright went first and that put such huge pressure on the other side that it broke within milliseconds. The wheels flew off down the road, with one even clearing the fence, but thanks to the tarmac and gravel run-off areas, Buemi was able to emerge unscathed.

Alberto Ascari, competing in his final F1 race, was racing his Lancia out of the tunnel during the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix when he lost control and crashed through the barrier. His car ended up in the sea and he had to swim to safety.

One of the most bizarre radio messages in the history of F1 has to be the one Mark Webber gave to his Red Bull team during the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji. Suffering from food poisoning, he actually was sick in his race helmet during the first Safety Car period. Yeah, a grim thought. Amazingly he managed to continue, only to be taken out later in the race by a now familiar name: Sebastian Vettel.

This is one amazing but also very stupid story. Jacques Villeneuve and Riccardo Zonta were team-mates at BAR in 1999. Villeneuve dared Zonta to try and take Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps flat-out. The Canadian tried first and completely destroyed his car, so it was hardly surprising that Zonta did exactly the same thing when the session resumed. That’s one expensive challenge.

The 1960s was a very dangerous time for F1 and one event at Spa-Francorchamps pushed a driver - Jackie Stewart - to campaign for huge improvements in safety. During the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix he was racing for BRM, where weather conditions were so atrocious that almost half of the field was wiped out on the opening lap.

Jo Bonnier went off and crashed through a farmhouse window, although he was not injured. Then Stewart slid off into a telephone pole and was left pitched upside down in a ditch, with fuel pouring over him. Marshals did not have tools to help him and he had to wait 25 minutes until his team-mate Graham Hill and driver Bob Bondurant freed him, after borrowing a spanner from a spectator’s car.

It’s crazy to think about the lack of safety at the time and the fact a driver had to sit covered in fuel, upside down for 25 minutes before he was helped out of the car. The accident sparked a huge push by Stewart to change F1 safety and this had a huge influence on the sport.

Erik Comas suffered a huge shunt during F1 practice for the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix. Several drivers passed his damaged car but Ayrton Senna was the one who stopped. He ran to switch the engine off and held Comas’ head in a stable position until medics arrived. Comas continued in F1 until the end of 1994 before switching to GT and touring car racing.