Patronise F1

It is probably fair to say that there are two iconic images from the 1999 F1 season. Michael Schumacher's impact with the barriers at Stowe corner on the aborted first lap at Silverstone, which saw his title hopes (and a significant part of his right leg) shattered for the season, and Mika Hakkinen curled up behind some hedges at Monza bawling his eyes out (visible briefly at 1:22 in this video), after spinning out of the lead of the race and seemingly gifting the championship impetus to his rivals.

Both are memorable as rare, and shocking, lapses by the two drivers who had driven so brilliantly the year before, and were expected by most to make the 1999 season their own private battleground in similar circumstances. For a young F1 fanatic, it was like the momentous day when you finally see that your parents are fallible and fragile creatures just like you, and not the superheroes that you had looked up to for so long. For those reasons, it is often easy to write 1999 off as one of those crazy, stupid years where the proper drivers mess up and a few lucky jokers filled the resulting gap. But, while this is true to an extent, there was much more to 1999 for that.

Right from the start, it was clear that this would be no ordinary season. To describe the Melbourne GP as chaotic would be to understate the situation massively. Both Stewart cars, buoyed by their qualifying pace, set on fire on the grid, Schumacher and Hakkinen both stalled in their grid slots during a protracted attempt to actually start the thing, the McLaren pair dominated the opening running only to both retire within minutes of each other, a series of mechanical issues and crashes meant that only 8 of the 22 starters made the finish, and Eddie Irvine improbably came through to win his first grand prix. Many thought that he should enjoy it while it lasted, because he'd never win another. Oh really?

Well, for a while, yes, he went back to the role as Schumacher's diligent number two, as Schumacher and Hakkinen spent the early stages of the season renewing their head-to-head from the season before. But there was something odd about the fight this time around. They were making mistakes. From Hakkinen crashing out of the San Marino Grand Prix under minimal pressure (Murray Walker's "Oooooooooooh! Offoffoff! Off goes Mika Hakkinen!" was a rare occasion where Murray's enthusiasm wasn't overstating the drama of the moment), to Schumacher's similar mistake when leading in Montreal, the giants of 1998 suddenly looked human, fallible and fragile. It all culminated in the infamous British Grand Prix weekend, when Schumacher ruined his season after racing off the track and into the tyre wall at Stowe, and then later Hakkinen and McLaren responded to this opportunity granted to them by botching a pit stop and forcing Hakkinen into retirement after he lost a wheel at Woodcote. And so the championship that nobody wanted to win was well and truly on.

David Coulthard, Eddie Irvine, Mika Hakkinen and Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen all had the chance to win the championship, but all had their own problems. Hakkinen had his Monza spin, his team mate driving into him ("David, what are you doing??"), and a crash that happened at a high enough speed to see the remains of the car end up in the London Science Museum. Irvine had the "committee meeting" farce in the pits at the Nurburgring, a lack of experience beside him (Mika Salo was somewhat implausibly chosen to replace the injured Schumacher) and his own limited experience of running at the front, Frentzen was saddled with a car that was brilliant one minute and nowhere the next (after following his win in the Italian GP with pole at the Nurburgring, he went on to qualify for the next race in Malaysia down in 14th place), and David Coulthard was David Coulthard.

Even with all that, it seemed as if Hakkinen had things under control. Until Schumacher returned in Malaysia and we were treated to the sublimely bizarre sight of the superstar Ferrari team leader playing the support role to his sottish Irish patsy. and, like most roles Schumacher turned his mind to (such as drivers champion, race winner, anti-christ), he excelled at it, single-handedly leading the Ferrari charge in Malaysia and gifting Irvine the win in the grand prix equivalent of a doting babysitter lifting a helpless floundering infant into a high chair and then spoon feeding it it's dinner. In the end, thankfully for Schumacher in many ways, Irvine couldn't overcome Hakkinen's challenge, and the Finn secured his second drivers championship by putting in a quality drive (for once that year) at Suzuka.

Even if the fight for the championship wasn't good enough for you to consider it a good year, here is a list, in no particular order, of the other things that were brilliant about 1999: The Williams and Arrows liveries, Eddie Irvine's remarkable drive at the Austrian Grand Prix (the race after Schumacher's leg break, and the moment that millions of cynical Ferrari fans mouthed "Hang on, can he actually win this title?"), the unbelievable series of crashes into the Wall of Champions in Montreal (this was the year the phrase was coined), Stephane Sarrazin's memorable one-off drive for Minardi, Johnny Herbert's win at the Nurburgring for Stewart Racing (actually, just the whole race at the Nurburgring), Mika Salo managing to replace two different injured drivers in the same season, the delightfully crazy wet qualifying session at Magny-Cours, Jacques Villeneve and BAR's hilarious humbling (the 1997 champ posted an incomparable 11 straight retirements at the start of the year, and the team failed to score a point), the pair of BARs both meeting their doom in a man's man contest to take Eau Rouge flat out and the bargeboard controversy in Malaysia.

It was also a season that seemed to unofficially mark the end of an era in F1. For 2000, the manufacturers were coming. Jaguar embarked on a calamitous re-branding of the Stewart team, BMW would have an engine supply and heavy business interest in Williams, Honda had abandoned plans for their own team for the time being and set about spreading through the BAR team, and Renault were starting to sniff around Benetton's floundering form. 1999, McLaren and Ferrari aside, was still a time of venerable re-badged Supertecs and Mecachromes, of Mugen-Hondas and re-badged private Ford and Ferrari engine supplies. Nine of the eleven teams could still be called true privateers in 1999, three short years later that figure would be down to three.

So yes, it may have been a year with plenty of mistakes, it may not have been a purists dream. But 1999 still had plenty going for it. It wasn't all broken legs and tears.

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