1) Niki Lauda
World Champion with Ferrari in 1975 and 1977, but having been lucky to survive a fiery accident at the Nurburgring between times, Lauda switched to Brabham in 1978 and retired mid-Practice at Montreal in 1979, saying he “no longer wanted to drive around in circles”, before heading back to Austria to run his airline. However, he was tempted back to drive around in circles by McLaren and Ron Dennis, who gave him a test in 1981, with The Rat signing up to drive for the team in 1982.
The partnership paid dividends almost instantly, with the Lauda winning the third race of his comeback at Long Beach, and also that year’s British GP at Brands Hatch to finish 5th in the Championship, actually winning one more race than that year’s Champion, Keke Rosberg. After a disappointing 1983, Lauda was teamed with Alain Prost for 1984 in a McLaren now powered by a TAG Porsche turbo engine. The team cleaned up, winning 12 of the year’s 16 races to dominate the Constructors’ Championship, and it was Lauda who claimed the title by only half a point from Prost despite winning only 5 races to the Frenchman’s seven, after a rain-affected Monaco GP was stopped less than halfway through – if Prost, who was being caught by Ayrton Senna’s Toleman, had finished 2nd in a full distance race, he would’ve gained 1.5 extra points and the title. Lauda won one more race, in 1985 at Zandvoort, before quitting the sport for a second time, returning in the 90s as an advisor to Ferrari, and in the early 2000s as team boss at Jaguar, and remains in the paddock as a pundit for German TV station RTL.
2) Alain Prost
Three times World Champion with McLaren in the 1980s, Prost found himself without a seat for 1992 having been fired by Ferrari one race before the end of the previous season, for saying what everyone thought, that the team was a joke (just ask poor Ivan Capelli about his 1992 season). Despite testing for Ligier in the winter, he decided against joining them and took a sabbatical instead. Early in 1992 he tied up a deal to drive for Williams-Renault for the following year, and must have been delighted to see the team dominate the season, with Nigel Mansell winning the title and breaking almost every record at that point before retiring, leaving Prost up against inexperienced teammate Damon Hill and Senna in a McLaren-Ford. Needless to say, he cruised to his fourth title and, despite almost ending up driving a McLaren-Peugeot in 1994, he retired from the sport, returning when he bought the Ligier team to form Prost Grand Prix in 1997. After a successful start, the team rapidly went downhill and folded in 2002.
3) Nigel Mansell
Theoretically, Mansell actually made two comebacks. After leading from Pole for much of the 1990 British GP before his gearbox packed up, allowing his teammate Prost (who had stolen his car for qualifying) to take the win, a typically emotional Mansell announced his retirement. However, the Williams team needed a proper driver to replace the solid but pedestrian Thierry Boutsen, and Renault and Elf decided Mansell was their man. After a promising 1991 blighted by reliability problems, Mansell swept to the title in 1992, but retired just weeks later, citing a deal the team had reneged on. The Englishman thus went to America and won the Indycar series at his first attempt in 1993.
However, as he began his defence, motorsport was stunned by the tragic death of Senna at Imola in 1994. After running David Coulthard in Spain and Canada, Renault again decided they needed a name for the French GP, and Mansell fitted the bill beautifully, qualifying second to teammate Hill before retiring from the race. After a further retirement at Jerez, he finished 4th at Suzuka after a superb battle with Jean Alesi, and won from pole at Adelaide after Michael Schumacher turned into Hill to win the title. That would’ve been a great point on which to go out on a high, but no, for Mansell shocked the world by joining McLaren for 1995. The first problem was that he was so rotund that they had to redesign the car so he could fit into it. Secondly, when he did get into it for the race at Imola, he was well off the pace, and after finishing 10th there and parking his car midway through the race at Barcelona, it was all over, and Mansell retired for the third time, this time for good.
4) Michael Schumacher
"What are you talking about Elbow?" I hear you cry, "He didn’t come back, his neck was too sore." Well of course you’re right, but that’s not the comeback I’m on about. After narrowly missing out on titles with Ferrari in 1997 and 1998, 1999 looked like it could well be Schumacher’s year, as he took successive wins in San Marino and Monaco to move into the Championship lead. However, Monaco was to be his final win of the season, and at Silverstone he lost any chance of the title when he locked up and went off at Stowe on what turned out to be an aborted first lap, breaking his tibia and fibula.
After missing 6 races, he returned in Malaysia and was instantly on pole by over a second, and spent the race driving slowly to hold up the McLarens. He still would have won, but moved over a few laps from the flag to gift teammate and Championship contender Eddie Irvine the win. He set another Pole at Suzuka but finished second to Mika Hakkinen, who took the title. Schumacher however would win the title for the next 5 seasons and narrowly missed out on a sixth before retiring at the end of 2006. F1 fans around the world got very excited when he announced he would be returning for the race at Valencia this year to replace Felipe Massa, but were to be disappointed when he had to pull out because of a neck injury.
5) Jacques Villeneuve
So far, all of the drivers mentioned have come back and won a title (or in Schumacher’s case, five), thus it’s typical that Jacques Villeneuve would be the non-conformist. Having won the title in 1997 as Williams’ number one in only his second season, the Canadian moved to the all new BAR team for 1999, retiring from the first 11 races and scoring 0 points. After a slightly better next two years, Villeneuve’s manager Craig Pollock was replaced as team boss by David Richards, who for some reason didn’t seem to like Happy Jacques very much, eventually binning him before the final race of 2003, to replace him with Takuma Sato. One might’ve thought that would be the end of him, but no, for after Renault sacked Jarno Trulli late in the 2004 season, Villeneuve was drafted in for the final three races of the season, with two 10th place finishes and one in 11th. He had already been signed up by Sauber for 2005, picking up 9 points and continuing with the team when they were taken over by BMW in 2006, although his F1 involvement finally ended after a crash at the German GP, when he was replaced by Robert Kubica. Still, he’s rumoured to want to come back next year…
6) Luca Badoer
The very inspiration for this article was Badoer’s stunning comeback for two races of the 2009 season. However, it wasn’t the first comeback the 1992 F3000 Champion had made, for after the Forti team went bust midway through 1996, Badoer sat out the following two seasons before returning for Minardi in 1999, and coming agonisingly close to a 4th place finish at that year’s European Grand Prix (). By way of symmetry, he returned for the European GP ten years on at Valencia, where he qualified last and ran last (bar folk who had damaged cars in first lap incidents), keeping his drive for the following race at Spa, where he again qualified last after spinning off, and ran last again for the entire race, although he did set the fastest time of the race in the opening sector of the lap (which features a hairpin followed by 25 seconds of KERS-assisted flat out stretch). Needless to say, the comeback is over and Giancarlo Fisichella will take over Badoer’s seat for the next race at Monza.
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