Formula 1 is the pinnacle of racing. No matter which racing series you watch, you cannot deny how incredible the spectacle of Grand Prix racing can be. The fastest cars in the world with some of the best drivers the world has ever seen, going at it at incredible race tracks.
Yes, some years are better than others. And the sport is not perfect. But F1 has thrilled for nearly 70 years and hopefully will do so for another 70.
Speaking of not perfect, some slightly shady things have gone on in sports history. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it is not keen to talk about a lot of them all too often.
This list contains some shady, crazy and also tragic events that have taken place in F1’s long history. Some of them it is hard to believe they actually took place. But, they all add to the history of this incredible sport.
21 Singapore “Crashgate”
In Singapore 2008, Renault hatched a plan to help Fernando Alonso win the race. His car had let him down in qualifying, so to ensure his good pace was used, they instructed teammate Nelson Piquet Jr to crash. This happened just after Alonso had made his first pit stop in the race. Alonso duly took the lead after the safety car and won the race. The scandal came out in 2009, with Alonso exonerated but the team embarrassed and handed a suspended sentence.
20 McLaren’s “Spygate”
McLaren had a nightmare in 2007. One of McLaren’s employees it turned out had been in possession of documents from Ferrari’s Nigel Stepney, and secrets had been passed between the two teams. McLaren was thus excluded from that year's constructors championship, at a time when they had been leading it. They have not won that championship since 1998.
19 2009 Breakaway threat
Teams were locked in a political battle over the future of F1 and the Formula One Teams Association. Around the summer, most teams declared they would split from F1 and form a breakaway series which would leave F1 with just a couple of teams of its own. Luckily, this did not happen and a resolution was reached.
18 Losing three new teams
Three new teams entered the sport in 2010. These were Lotus, Hispania, and Virgin Racing. But they were promised a revamped financial model, that never appeared. Lotus became Caterham in 2012 and succumbed at the end of 2014. Hispania, latterly HRT vanished after 2012. Virgin clung on as Marussia, fell into administration in 2014 but returned in 2015 as Manor. They lasted until the end of 2016 before they too, sadly vanished.
17 Lack of female driver
No female has raced in Formula 1 since the mid-1970s. The last woman to race in F1 was Lella Lombardi and she was the only woman to score points in F1, only scoring half a point. The closest the sport has got recently to a female driver was when Susie Wolff tested and made practice appearances for Williams in 2014 and ’15.
16 Uneven financial model
F1’s financial model is fundamentally flawed. It massively favors the teams at the top and thus opens up the chances that smaller teams will really struggle to just stay in the series. At the moment, only Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull are able to win races. The last team that was not them that won a race was Lotus, way back in Australia 2013. For 2021 F1 is radically changing its finance system to balance this out.
15 Ferrari’s “historic bonus”
Ferrari is the longest-running team in the history of the sport, having been a part of F1 since it began in 1950. That has entitled the team to a crazy historical bonus that they get each year, just for simply existing and being in the sport. It is an indicator of the power the team can potentially have in F1.
14 The Mercedes Juggernaut
Mercedes started the V6 Turbo-Hybrid era in 2014 on top, and have won every driver's and constructors titles since that year. Only Ferrari have put up realistic challenges in the last three years but they have always floundered at some point. The length of Mercedes run is unprecedented, and many fans hope that another team does indeed come out on top before too long.
13 A small number of engine manufactures
Formula 1 has ten teams, each with two cars. But with 20 cars on the grid, only four manufacturers actually supply the grid. Those are Mercedes, Renault, Ferrari, and Honda. This gives those manufacturers with a lot of customer teams more power over those that don’t, such as Honda and Renault. The sport does hope to attract more manufacturers in the not too distant future.
12 Double points in 2014
Double points were introduced in the wake of Sebastian Vettel’s dominant title win in 2013. The double points would be awarded at the last race of the season, to hopefully liven up the championship battle. So a win went from 25 points to 50 points. It was wildly unpopular and had no real bearing on the outcome of the championship. Thankfully, it was dropped for 2015 and doesn’t look set to return again.
11 Imola 1994
While we remember the lives of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, whom motorsport lost on that tragic weekend in 1994, the events of Imola that year will haunt many. They brought into question just how dangerous F1 can be it highlighted the need for the sport to really pursue safety harder than ever before.
10 Ferrari team orders scandal
In 2010, team orders were banned. Team orders are when a team can tell it’s drivers to swap positions or not hold a teammate up. In Germany that year, Ferrari gave a coded message to race leader Felipe Massa that said “Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood the message?” Weirdly, Massa then let teammate Fernando Alonso through. Ferrari then became embroiled in quite the scandal…
9 Unpopular races
This isn’t races that are boring, though at these venues they usually are. This is races at tracks nobody really likes or wants to go too. Abu Dhabi and Korea being two examples. Bahrain, which hosts perhaps some of the best racing of the year, is a bit dodgy given the human rights records in recent years. Abu Dhabi is usually a dreary race and fans wonder why it is allowed to be the season finale.
8 Knockout qualifying disaster
2016 saw a new qualifying format. It involved timing out cars in each session, knocking them out one by one if they were not quick enough to advance to the next session. But it left empty tracks with minutes left on the clock and everybody hated it. It was dumped after just two races, being one of F1’s most embarrassing moments of the decade.
7 Korean Grand Prix blunder
The Korean Grand Prix was held from 2010 to 2013, and a couple of the races there were pretty good. But, the track was in the middle of nowhere, had no support racing and never really sold that well. It was dropped after the 2013 season, ironically that year perhaps seeing the best race at the track.
6 2005 United States Grand Prix
This race saw just six cars start the race. After a violent crash for Ralf Schumacher earlier in the weekend, it transpired that the Michelin tires that most teams used would not cope with the banked corner used at Indianapolis on the F1 track there. Thus, after the formation lap, all those teams pulled into the pits. That left the six cars of Ferrari, Minardi, and Jordan on track, in perhaps one of the sports worst ever moments.
5 Former top teams struggling
McLaren and Williams are title winners and race winners. They have been around for many, many years. Yet recent years have seen them struggle massively. McLaren bounced back big time this year, with fourth in the championship and a podium finish in Brazil. Williams though has been the slowest team of the last two seasons. When former championship-winning teams are struggling so much, the sport really needs to look at itself, hard.
4 Jules Bianchi’s accident
Jules Bianchi’s accident in the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix and subsequent passing the following year highlighted the ever-continuing quest for safety. A horrific wet race saw the Frenchman skate off the road and into a digger. It was the first death Since Senna, and it shook the sport to its core.
3 McLaren “liegate”
2009 saw McLaren embroiled in more controversy. The team had lied to the stewards at the Australian Grand Prix. Jarno Trulli went off in third under the safety car and Lewis Hamilton took his place. That was fine, but Hamilton gave it back to the Toyota man. He didn’t need too, and the team acted as if they had not told Hamilton to do so. It came out in the next race. Team manager Dave Ryan was sacked, and Hamilton felt humiliated.
2 Vettel’s penalty in Canada 2019
Battling for the lead with Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel went off the track, re-joined and closed the door on Hamilton to stop him passing. The stewards then gave the German a five-second time penalty, costing him the win to Hamilton. It was wildly unpopular with fans, pundits and other drivers and it led to a big rethink of penalties by stewards for the rest of the year.