And so we reach the end of ten long, dubious years of Formula One. But just what were the stand out moments of the last decade as it has unfolded? Well, possibly not any of these, but let's try and justify them anyway.
The end of a decade always gives reviewers of news, sport, television, music, and whatever else you care to mention the chance to reel off an endless stream of articles about the best and worst events of the last 10 years for kicks. And we at PatroniseF1 don't pretend that we're any better than that, because naturally we're not. We could have gone to town and had "Six of the Best"s for the best drivers, the best races, the best seasons, the best World Motor Sport Council hearings, and then repeated the trick for the worst in each category.
But instead, to try and get this whole "review the decade" stuff out of the way, we'll limit it to one article. A look at six defining "moments" from the Noughties. They might be individual races or performances, famous F1 people who have shaped this last decade into the soggy dough ball that it was, or entire seasons that will remain in the memory long after the Noughties have been reduced to a tragic excuse for a theme night at inner city nightclubs across the land, where everyone turns up dressed in skinny jeans and Arabic scarves to listen to Lily Allen songs and laugh at how silly we all must have looked.
So think of this list as a non-exhaustive list of six major "things" that happened throughout the last decade, that between them help to paint a fairly solid picture of the decade we just endured. Think of this list, above all else, as a lazy effort to sum up ten long years of Formula One in six slightly lengthy bullet points. And if you feel that we've missed something important off, then I can only say this: Of course we have, a lot of stuff happened, you know.
1) McLaren's 2007 season
Say what you will about the somewhat cynical team structure which pits superstar #1 against patsy #2, but it is certainly an efficient way of hoovering up championships. Compare that to the alternative, always-tempting, very rarely successful 'superteam' scenario, and it stops being cynical and starts looking like simple common sense. McLaren have enjoyed both alternatives down the years, from the Prost/Senna era, to the cheery Hakkinen/Coulthard pecking order, and then through to the misery of Raikkonen/Montoya. Unabashed by the failure of that particular superteam, Ron Dennis tried again in 2007, pitting two-time champion Fernando Alonso against doe-eyed GP2 champion wonderkid Lewis Hamilton.
It was a disaster. Right from the start, the team seemed unsure of how exactly to work their duo with each other. In theory, a reigning two-time champion should really have had some sort of seniority, but in reality, Dennis always seemed to somehow see his protégé Hamilton as being the team leader, especially when the rookie hit the ground running so brilliantly from the start of the season, with Hamilton outqualifying and outracing Alonso by his third race. A laughable criticism it may be, but for McLaren's grand plan, Hamilton probably ended up being a little bit too good.
Things took a turn for the dubious in Monaco, as Alonso led Hamilton home in a formation finish, only for the Brit to mutter to the media that: "I have number two on my car, and I'm the number two driver", leading to a protracted investigation by the FIA as to whether the team was employing the dreaded spectre of team orders. The bad blood between the pair of them boiled over in a sensationally petty Hungarian GP qualifying session, with firstly Hamilton disobeying orders to hold station so as not to muck up the order of their final tyre changes in the final part of the qualifying session, and then Alonso deliberately wasting time in his pit box as Hamilton queued up behind him, costing the Brit a final qualifying run. After the session, it all kicked off (allegedly), with Ron Dennis cornering (allegedly) Alonso's trainer (i.e. fitness instructor, not his footwear) for a slanging match in the garage, then telling the media it was all Hamilton's fault for mucking up the pit stop order, resulting in (allegedly), this charming exchange:
Hamilton: "Don't ever fucking do that to me again."
Dennis: "Don't ever fucking speak to me like that."
Hamilton: "Go fucking swivel."
If that comical bit of Malcolm Tucker-esque shouting wasn't bad enough, McLaren's entire season was then consumed with the cataclysm of Spygate, which saw their name dragged through the mud and back again like a sack of dead kittens. All the while, Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari were left chortling away in the corner of the pit lane, happy to overcome the deficiencies of their car relative to the McLaren in order to pick up the pieces of the Woking team's casual implosion to take both titles at the season finale. Alonso disappeared back to Renault, and Dennis, suitably chastened, gave Hamilton a patsy of his very own for 2008. Which worked out a lot better, it has to be said.
2) Max Mosley's demise
Although his time in charge of Formula One began a long time before the noughties came around, this decade saw Mosley's star dominate the F1 agenda away from the racing itself, and sometimes during, and eventually witnessed his downfall. As of right now, it is literally impossible to form an objective opinion as to whether or not Mosley's long and turbulent presidency was "a good thing", mainly because throughout this decade he has balanced any decent, progressive ideas he's had with some thoroughly bizarre, and sometimes downright dodgy decisions.
The same man who pushed for the introduction of the HANS device, already busily saving lives in a potentially gruesome sport, also sold the commercial rights to F1 to his mate for 100 years. The same man who pushed for cost-cutting proposals to help a new generation of F1 teams gain some sort of a foothold in the sport as the manufacturers ran away crying also wasted countless billions on endless "flavour of the month" technological developments and rule changes. Traction control, launch control, KERS, aggregate qualifying, Sunday morning qualifying, fan surveys, test bans, refuelling bans, tyre change bans, tyre change reintroductions, baffling safety car "closed pit" rules, tyre wars, spec tyres, all serving to paint his tenure as a haphazard and reactionary mess of a presidency. Like trying to run a civilised country based on the opinions expressed in Sun newspaper editorials.
Then, of course, there was "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with five hookers", the News of the World story in 2008 that enthralled the planet with a giddy combination of libel, half-truths, conjecture and video footage of a semi-naked Mosley getting his backside whipped. Although Mosley successfully managed to get an apology from the tabloid rag over it's portrayal of the whole thing as a "Nazi orgy" (apparently, part of the NOTW's evidence that it was Nazi-themed revolved around footage of one of the ladies involved shouting “Brunettes rule!", which would seem to crucially fail to fulfil at least one aspect of the Aryan ideal), his credibility was fatally tarnished, and a year after that story broke, Mosley's reign over Formula One was over.
The irony, of sorts, of Mosley's presidential career was that having cemented his rise to the top by playing a key part in setting up FOCA, a "voice of the teams" association, it was the 21st century equivalent of that organisation, FOTA, that eventually helped to ease Mosley out of his seat, after successfully negotiating Mosley ending his time as president in return for not breaking off and starting their own series. As ever with Mosley, whether or not that was actually what he wanted all along (given that he'd already offered to stand down some years ago, only to be begged to stay on) may never be known. But it was, whichever way you look at it, and however we'll eventually come to remember it when we remember the Mosley years in decades to come, the end of a singularly pivotal F1 era.
3) Montoya's pass on Schumacher, Brazil 2001
You know instinctively that with some moments in time, even as they are happening before your very eyes, they are destined to only be able to be fully judged with the benefit of hindsight. Be it a sensational one-off football result, a painful decision taken at a romantic crossroads, or your decision to attempt the Thriller dance after one too many slugs of gin at the office Christmas party, it is impossible to really ascertain quite whether such events truly are defining moments until you take a moment to look back objectively at them. Whilst in therapy.
And such is the case with this moment from the last decade, a moment that at the time seemed to symbolise a new dawn in Formula One. After arriving in the sport on a wave of mostly-justified hype following his successes in America, Juan Pablo Montoya took just three races to give F1's sacred cow a bloody nose, shovelling Schumacher's Ferrari out of the way with a magnificent, wheel-banging move into turn one. At the time, it felt like something incredible was happening, that here, at long last, was a driver who was not only capable of taking on Schumie at his own game, but positively revelled in it. JPM fans all over the world came pouring forth into grandstands, message boards and everywhere, cheerily predicting the downfall of the F1 grandmaster in the face of this fresh-faced, chubby Colombian. Ah, to be young, sober and full of hope again.
Of course, with the benefit of that pesky hindsight, we now know that Schumacher was destined to win the title, not only in 2001, but for the next three years as well, as he pulverised the talented crop of F1 youngsters nipping at his ankles into submission. Montoya never did win an F1 title, and instead of the beginning of a new era of competitiveness in the sport, that pass now simply serves as the ultimate in F1 "What if?" moments. We thought we were watching a new alpha male muscle in to the pride of F1 lions, but we weren't expecting the challenged pack leader to turn around and rip everyone's face clean off. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
4) Schumacher's drive at Interlagos, 2006
The Noughties, as well as being the decade of Simon Cowell and global terrorism, will always be Michael Schumacher's decade. Never mind the fact that he retired just after the halfway point, his staggering dominance of the early part of it will go down as the abiding memory of the 2000 era, whatever your own personal opinion of the man. Indeed, F1 is still a sport searching to replace him, like a desperate divorcee sleeping around to try and shake off the memory of "the one". While the likes of Alonso, Hamilton or possibly Vettel might make F1 their own in years to come, right now they're incomplete, fragile mess-ups compared to the paragon of sporting domination that was the early-2000s Schumacher.
He, as if we needed reminding, won five titles in a row. In a row. From Suzuka in October 2000 to Interlagos in September 2005, only one name was associated with the Formula One world championship. And yet, despite all that, his reign was divisive, plagued with complaints about his questionable driving ethics, the preternatural performance of the Ferrari cars he was given, and his annoying demands that he should at all times be equipped with a Boobens for a team mate.
But that drive at Interlagos in 2006 was a rare moment that all F1 fans could agree on being a moment of pure brilliance. For Schumie fans, it offered one last memory of his abilities, as he overcame an early setback after tripping over Giancarlo Fisichella's front wing, which effectively left him a lap down, to sear through the field to an eventual 4th place. For Schumie haters, it offered the footnote that he didn't quite do enough to wrest the title from Fernando Alonso's grasp. But it was (for this decade at least) the final act of the German in an F1 car, and it was utterly brilliant.
Schumacher was many things, only some of them good, but on that final afternoon in Brazil, we were reminded that there will probably never be another one like him. We had, simply by blindly following our favourite sport and occasionally shouting "Oh god, he's won again?!?!" for five long years, lived through history.
Footnote: Of course, since writing the first draft of this article, Schumacher has completely ruined the gravity of this point by announcing his return to the sport. But most of what is written here still makes sense. Hopefully.
5) The Japanese Grand Prix, 2005
For all the complaints about the limitations of modern-day F1 as a piece of sporting entertainment, in that some blokes driving in circles and occasionally stopping for petrol isn't strictly a sport in it's purest form, there have still been plenty of stand-out races which will rightly be remembered as some of F1's best. From Spa in 2000, through Malaysia in 2001, to Brazil and Silverstone in 2003, Brazil again in 2008 and many more besides, there have been some outright classics to keep us entertained on occasion. But none of the other races this decade, and very few races in the whole of motor racing history, will come close to the unfathomable drama of Suzuka in 2005.
Naturally, as with all good one-off sporting dramas, the plot for the day was given a helping hand by the starting conditions. After a rain-addled qualifying session, the grid order was a mess. Ralf Schumacher(!) was on pole, Christian Klien(!!) was 4th, and the 2005 'big two' of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen were 16th and 17th respectively. When the lights went out, that was the cue for a race so full of action as to be almost unfollowable. Mercifully for the typing fingers of Patty's staff, this site was yet to come into existence, such would have been the challenge of trying to write a semi-coherent lap-by-lap report on the carnage that unfolded.
To try and sum up all of the key moments of the race would take more space than the PatroniseF1 servers will realistically allow, but suffice to say that Alonso's pass round the outside of Michael Schumacher into the terrifying 130R corner is an abiding memory in any F1 fan who was sober enough at the time to remember it. So naturally finding that link was the first time I had really seen it. Poor old Schumie was a bit of a patsy that afternoon, with Raikkonen toddling around the outside of him as well, but those two moves were only memorable because they saw the 2005 title contenders passing the formerly-dominant F1 king. In reality, the number of passing moves on just about every lap of this race were enough to keep even the most hardened of nu-F1's critics sitting quietly in the corner of the room, struggling to even find the most basic insult to hurl at the screen.
And then we had the icing on the marvellous cake that was the whole mad race, as long-time leader Giancarlo Fisichella continued in his efforts to look a bit crap whenever he was in a position of authority during his Renault years, as he defended from an attack from thin air into the final chicane on the penultimate lap, and lost valuable momentum, which Raikkonen gobbled up and used to blitz past the Italian on the final lap in a wonderful bit of wheel-banging action. It was enough to make some dull-looking McLaren mechanics shake their hands about a bit.
So for everything negative that F1 in the noughties has thrown at us, it also gave us the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix, which in my eyes, means that we're pretty much even.
Watch the key moments from the race in a barmy highlights package here.
6) Fixgate
We all know that, on occasion, F1 teams orchestrate race results according to their own devious ends. Be it by the implicit method of ensuring all the new parts end up on one car rather than the other, or the explicit method of telling Boobens to shove off out of the way, what you see on track may not necessarily be a particularly fair depiction of the true state of things. But the end-of-the-decade tumult that was Fixgate took the biscuit of F1's pure racing ethos and waggled it mercilessly in its cup of tea until the end fell off and congealed at the bottom in a festering gunge of undrinkable waste. For here was the essence of manipulating race results taken to a merciless, chilling denouement.
When the story first broke, that recently-deposed Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr was flinging round a load of crazy theories about how one of his litany of crashes and errors during his 18 month F1 career had in fact not been a result of his own incompetence, but had instead been a carefully choreographed piece of race-fixing scriptwork by Flavio Briatore, the words "sour" and "grapes" instantly sprung to mind, with many (myself included) assuming that the accusations were little more than the deluded rantings of a bitter, failed driver.
But, to many people's surprise, the whole thing turned out to actually be completely true. Crazy Flav, assisted by Pat Symonds, had coerced Piquet into crashing and triggering a safety car in order to take advantage of the desultory mess that was the 2008-era safety car rules and promote the recently-pitted Renault of Fernando Alonso right to the front of the field. So quickly did the hastily-embroidered fabric of lies and deceit unravel around the Renault management, that the higher powers within the French company quickly ejected the guilty parties from the team, and the de rigueur WMSC hearing into the allegations became less a trial, and more an exercise in apportioning punishment.
For many, it was the final step in F1's slide into corrupt deception of a once-proud sport, for others (again, myself included), it was the glorious final act in a long period of fascinatingly dodgy acts by F1's top teams. This was the final plot twist in a particularly unbelievable series of 24. This was Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge. This was the "Jez joins a cult" episode of Peep Show. Every moral fibre of my body should have hated the whole sorry farce, but somehow I couldn't help but find it madly brilliant.
The only issue now is, where do F1's scandal plots go to from here? Just how do you top Fixgate? The one thing that you can be sure of is that somehow, somewhere, somewhen, F1 will find a way. Bring on the next decade.
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