Although the championship has been decided, and the final four races of the season are now largely meaningless, that doesn't mean we won't have some cracking races. Patty takes a look at six great dead rubber races from down the years.
1) 2005 Japanese Grand PrixNot just the Mac Daddy of dead rubber races, but pretty much the Mac Daddy of any Formula One race ever. The 2005 Japanese GP was testament to the sort of entertainment F1 can produce when the gloves are off and nobody in the entire field is giving much thought to driving for a solid points finish for the championship. Two weeks before the Suzuka race, Fernando Alonso had wrapped up his first title at the Brazilian GP, but Kimi Raikkonen was the star of the show in Japan, reminding everyone what might have been in the title race had his McLaren car (and the driver in it) not been a shoddy unreliable mess for most of the season.
The entertainment was assisted by a somewhat mixed-up grid order, after a rain shower during the qualifying session displayed the folly of single-lap qualifying for all to see. To prove quite how odd the grid looked, Ralf Schumacher of all people started on pole for Toyota, while Christian Klien was fourth for Red Bull. Meanwhile, Alonso and Raikkonen lined up 16th and 17th after catching the worst of the rain.
Both of the former title contenders made electric starts, and Alonso was 8th by the end of the first lap, with Raikkonen up to 12th. From then on, they picked off competitors seemingly at will, with both of them taking time to emasculate Michael Schumacher, Alonso with his celebrated move at 130R and Raikkonen later on into turn one. But that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as the action was concerned.
Despite Alonso's progress, the race quickly became a fight between Raikkonen and long-time leader Giancarlo Fisichella. And after one of the most inept attempts at defensive driving from the Renault man ever, which saw him defend time and again from nothing in the chicane, compromising his speed down the start/finish straight in the process, Raikkonen surged past on the last lap. "Grand Prix racing!" screamed James Allen. Yes James, yes it was.
Watch highlights of Japan 2005, set to some bemusing European techno, and take time to ROFL over Rubens Barrichello's attempts to take turn one flat out, here.
2) 1995 Japanese Grand Prix
Jean Alesi's Formula One career was essentially a long single-man monologue entitled 'what might have been'. From his explosive early career, scrapping with Ayrton Senna in a naff Tyrrell at Phoenix in 1990, he looked set to be one of the next big things in the sport throughout the 1990s. But alas, he was destined for a career of averageness, lolloping about in a string of barely-competitive Ferraris, Benettons, Saubers and the like. Still, he did achieve what only a select bunch of F1 cloggers have done, winning a race. And after his 1995 Canadian GP success he looked like he might add to that number with victory at Suzuka that same year.
The championship was all sewn up, and had not concerned Alesi or Ferrari in the slightest. Michael Schumacher had already clinched the championship, thanks to a combination of some mercurial driving and the fact that Damon Hill spent most of the season gleefully crashing his Williams Renault. And the German looked set for another straightforward win at Suzuka as he lined up on pole, with Alesi alongside him in body, but almost a second slower than him in spirit.
What followed was arguably Alesi's greatest-ever drive. He was handed a stop-go penalty after being found to have jumped the start on a wet circuit, despite his later protestations that he had crept forward simply because of the slope of the track. But after rejoining down the order he then timed the switch to slicks perfectly and merrily streaked through the field, overcoming Pedro Lamy elbowing him off the track with a 'like a boss'-esque 360-degree spin, and making Hill look like an absolute patsy in the process.
By the time everyone cottoned on to the fact that slicks were the order of the day and made their own stops, Alesi had moved back up to second place, with just Schumacher ahead of him. And incredibly, he continued to close on the German's Benetton even after the tyre disparity was evened-out. But alas, the fairytale win was not to be, as his mid-1990s Ferrari did what mid-1990s Ferraris did best, and broke. "I would have fought for it, all the way to the end," Alesi said afterwards about his chances of victory. And nobody doubted that he would have been true to his word.
Watch the whole of the 1995 Japanese Grand Prix, if you have a spare couple of hours, here.
3) 1991 Australian Grand Prix
Pity Adelaide, really. A fantastic street track that always produced cracking racing, but as the long-time season finale from 1985 to 1995, only twice was the championship still alive when the Formula One flew over to the land down under for their date in Adelaide. Admittedly, both times saw absolute crackers of title-deciders, with Our Nige(TM) seeing his title dreams end as his tyre exploded in 1986, and Our Damon(TM) getting Schumachered in 1994. But it was pretty slim pickings all the same.
In 1991, Adelaide seemed determined to get its own back on the sport for neglecting it for so long and serving up endless dead rubbers for everyone to pretend to get excited about, and a torrential downpour on raceday left the circuit in a seemingly undriveable condition. Obviously, in 2011 that would simply mean that we'd run half the race behind the safety car, stop for a couple of hours to let David Coulthard talk about birds, and then do the rest of the race behind the safety car. but in 1991 the term 'safety car' was as alien as 'DRS wing' or 'Red Bull Racing', so despite the fact that the track had become a river, everyone did their best to try and race anyway.
The result of the F1/speedboat crossover event weren't great. Early on, cars were spinning off with such regularity that there were waved yellow flags at pretty much every corner. Some cars were even managing to crash while performing the ostensibly easy task of driving in a straight line. Ayrton Senna fended off Nigel Mansell smartly enough, but by lap 17 even Senna himself was waving at officials to stop the race (a mildly ironic twist given Alain Prost's similar gesture at Monaco in 1984 when he was being hunted down by Senna himself).
The red flag finally waved a lap later, after Mansell had ignominiously spun off a couple of laps ago, and Senna 'won' the 'race', following a minor set-to between the Brazilian and the race officials, who pushed for the race to be restarted despite no obvious improvement in conditions. Mansell was credited with second place on countback, while the 1991 Australian GP found a place in the record books as the shortest-ever GP, coming in at a little under 25 minutes from lights to flag.
"I don't think that was a race," Senna fumed afterwards in one of the old charmingly ramshackle FIA press conferences, where everyone sat about on deck chairs talking to Jackie Stewart while waving preposterously-long microphones. Our Nige meanwhile, ever one for complaining about things, was typically pragmatic about the whole thing. "Everything was ok," he said after emerging from hospital checks following his crash, "Other than it was a complete joke..."
Watch some brief highlights of the 1991 Australian 100m breaststroke finals here.
4) 1980 United States Grand Prix
The 1980 US GP at Watkins Glen (or US GP East as it was awkwardly referred to in order to distinguish it from the earlier race at Long Beach) was equally as dead and rubbery as the others in this list, with Alan Jones clinching his first and only world title at the previous race in Canada. And it was also the denouement to The Glen's place on the F1 calendar, a demise that I have wittered on about on Patty previously, so won't dwell on any further here.
But the race itself was one where Jones, free from the pressure of clinching Williams their first-ever world championship, underlined how deserving of the title he was. The Australian only qualified fifth - though in a qualifying session where Bruno Giacomelli put his Alfa Romeo on pole, that's probably not worth dwelling on - but was down to fourteenth place by the end of lap one, having run wide at the first turn.
From there on, Jones put in a drive as elementally brilliant as his first turn had been shambolic, surging through the field in pursuit of the leaders. By lap ten, he was up to seventh place, and as the cars ahead of him began to struggle for grip, he picked off Elio de Angelis's Lotus and Didier Pironi's Ligier. He was also assisted by Nelson Piquet spinning off and retiring, and passed his team mate Carlos Reutemann for second on lap 30. From 14th to 2nd inside 29 laps.
He then attempted to chase Giacomelli down, but while the question of whether he could overcome the 12-second lead the Italian had established was a good one, it would never be answered, as the Alfa stopped on the track on lap 32 with electrical failure. Another tick in the box of 1980s Italian F1 reliability.
Still, if there was a sense that Jones was gifted the lead, he then answered whether he would have been able to beat Giacomelli in a fair fight with a string of searing laps, his fastest lap for the race eventually bettering his qualifying time. After his title win in the previous race, this had been 59 laps of Jones turning to the rest of the field and saying 'Any questions?'.
Watch the BBC's highlights of the 1980 US Grand Prix (East) here.
5) 1977 Canadian Grand Prix
The 1977 world championship had been all about Niki Lauda and Ferrari, with the Austrian having clinched his second world title at the preceding United States GP. But the title winner was not present in the paddock as the teams assembled at Mosport Park, having parted company with the Italian squad after a turbulent season with a team unhappy with his decision to essentially gift James Hunt the 1976 crown by withdrawing from the soaking wet finale in Fuji. The final straw was Ferrari's decision to run a third car at Mosport for some Canadian hotshoe by the name of Gilles Villeneuve, and Lauda was off.
Still, with Lauda Brabham-bound for 1978, and absent from the grid, centre stage was taken by Hunt and his McLaren, and by Lotus's Mario Andretti. The pair locked out the front row of the grid, and dominated the race, engaging in a head-to-head squabble for the lead miles ahead of their opponents.
Such was their advantage that by lap 61, they came up to lap Jochen Mass, running third on the road in the second McLaren. And that was where the sensational battle began to unravel. Attempting to pass his team mate, Hunt ended up colliding with Mass and spinning off into retirement, proving that general incompetence at McLaren is not something the team invented in the mid 2000s. Towards the end, Andretti also retired with engine failure, and the win was gifted to Jody Scheckter in his Wolf.
So, as titanic head-to-head clashes went, it actually ended up being a bit like the end of Star Wars if Darth Vader had tripped over the Emperor and given up with a twisted ankle, before Luke went and sliced his own head off with his light saber. Still, at least nobody has decided to remaster the race, and add a bit in where Hunt screams 'Noooooo!' for no apparent reason.
Watch some bafflingly-edited highlights of the 1977 Canadian GP here.
6) 1957 Pescara Grand Prix
In a list of 'that wouldn't happen these days, you know' incidents about Formula One, you'd struggle to top the decision to run the season-finale on a 25.8km circuit in a random seaside town on the east coast of Italy. Pescara was described by Patty's long-departed The Hand on these pages as looking like 'a triangle with a dodgy beard', and even by 1950s F1 standards it was a track that defied credence. A high-tech floodlit Tilkedrome next to a Ferrariworld theme park and a colour-changing luxury hotel, this was not.
Still, there was a race held there as the finale to the 1957 season, the only time that Pescara would gain official F1 event status (although there were a number of non-championship events held there). There was no official Ferrari presence, after Enzo Ferrari withdrew his cars in protest of plans to ban road racing of this nature. Still, despite the loss of the prancing horse, over 200,000 fans lined the sleepy streets to watch the race that would go down as talking place on the longest-ever racing lap in F1 history. Longer even than the Nordschleife.
And, in a season utterly dominated by Juan Manuel Fangio and his Maserati, it was a rare occasion for Stirling Moss and his Vanwall to shine. Although Fangio took pole position (with a time of 9 minutes 44 seconds - imagine waiting for the sector times to come in on that one), Moss led virtually from start to finish, taking victory by over three minutes. It was an incredible win for Moss, largely because it came just weeks after Fangio had sealed his 5th world title with his never-forgotten drive at the Nurburgring.
Fangio's cause wasn't helped by a spin on oil left down by Luigi Musso's privately-entered Ferrari, nor by damage to one of his wheels which necessitated a pit stop. Still, Moss was uncatchable, and he secured the glory in what would - despite Mr Ferrari's protests - go down as F1's last-ever road race. F1 would never return to the Pescara track, beard and all.
There is not a great deal of video of the 1957 race online, but check out a YouTube-friendly look back at the Pescara track here.
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