In the 15th and penultimate race of the 1988 Formula One season, Ayrton Senna could clinch the World Driver’s Championship at Suzuka Circuit no matter what McLaren teammate Alain Prost did. This scenario was perfect for Senna. He seemed to be created for such a task — grab pole, go faster than anyone else, and win. The McLaren front row for the Japanese GP was the team’s remarkable 11th of the year, but its two drivers had far different fortunes at the start. Prost led off the grid from Gerhard Berger and Ivan Capelli. Pole-sitter (by 0.324s) Senna stalled; by the time the Honda engine in his MP4/13 restarted, he was left well back in 14th place. “It was the only start I missed all year, and it was the most important,” Senna would relate later. “When I dropped the clutch, the engine died, and then when I got it going, it did it again. I thought — ‘I am going to have to drive as hard as I can, but it will be impossible to catch Alain.’” The Brazilian nonetheless gained six places by lap two and then passed Riccardo Patrese, Thierry Boutsen, Alessandro Nannini and Michele Alboreto to take 4th place on lap four. On lap 14 the weather started to come into contention as rain began on parts of the circuit, benefitting Senna, who was particularly skilled in wet conditions. Capelli seized an historic chance on the following lap as his sea-green March-Judd nosed ahead of Prost to take the lead for one glorious moment in front of the pits, the first time a non-turbo car had led a Grand Prix in more than four years. His limelight in P1 only lasted for a few hundred meters, however, as the extra power of the Honda turbo engine allowed Prost to regain the race lead going into the next corner.

Juan Manuel Fangio — 46 years old and already a four-time world champion — arrived for the 1957 German GP at the Nürburgring’s 14.2 mile Nordschleife (“North Ring”), nicknamed “The Green Hell,” under a blazing August sky and fresh off Stirling Moss’s victory in the British GP at Aintree for Vanwall, the first-ever GP win by a British constructor. Starting on half-tanks in his gorgeous Maserati 250F, Fangio judged he could build up a sufficient lead over the Ferraris of Hawthorn and Peter Collins to stop for fuel and retain the lead. But Maserati was not the best organized of teams, and Fangio’s lap 11 pit stop lasted an agonizing 53s, allowing Hawthorn to take the lead by more than a minute when Fangio finally rejoined the race. “The Maestro” proceeded to unleash the most spectacular pursuit of his career. He broke and re-broke the Ring lap record by an amazing 12 seconds on three consecutive laps — eventually bettering his pole time by fully eight seconds — and when the Ferraris realized the danger, he was already in their mirrors. As the cars thundered past the South Curve, Fangio closed right up to Collins’ gearbox, and swept by with a wheel on the grass, peppering Collins with stones. It was the Argentine’s 24th and final Grand Prix victory, and also his greatest. As Fangio said later, “On that day in 1957 I finally managed to master the Nürburgring. It was as if I had screwed all the secrets out of it and got to know it once and for all. . . . Even now, I can feel fear when I think of that race. I’d never driven like that before, and I knew I never would again.” Classifications.

At Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in June 2011, the Canadian Grand Prix made history as the longest ever in F1, lasting more than four hours after the race was delayed due to torrential rains, and with a record five Safety Car deployments. High drama came at the very end. It was on the 70th and last lap that Jenson Button forced defending World Champion and race leader Sebastian Vettel into an error, overtaking the young German’s spinning Red Bull to score an epic victory. Button’s win is sure to go down as one of the classic comeback drives in F1 history because less than half way into the event, the 2009 titleist (starting a relatively poor 7th on the grid as McLaren struggled with low-downforce speed) had fallen back, way back. Going across the start-finish line at the end of lap seven, Lewis Hamilton tried to pass Button and the McLaren teammates collided, with the left side of Hamilton’s car striking the pit wall. (“What is he doing?” screamed Button on his radio.) Hamilton was out, and after pitting to check for damage on his car, the team decided to change Button to intermediates as the rain began to subside. In light of what happened next it was an absurd decision. The heavens opened and the Englishman was forced into the pits yet again for wet tires. The race was stopped soon afterwards to let the flooded track recover. Yet after the restart, Button promptly collided with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, sending the Spaniard out of the race.

One of Clark’s rear tires had a cut and needed to be replaced. He lost an entire lap while having the wheel changed in the pits, and the Scotsman found himself a lap behind the leaders in 15th place out of 18 starters. Rejoining the race, Clark ripped back through the field, progressively lowering the circuit record and eventually equalling his pole time of 1m 28.5s. Clark pushed his Lotus 49/3 to the edge, squaring up to pass the third-placed Surtees when Hill went out on lap 59 with an engine failure. Clark thus moved into 2nd and gradually caught Brabham and took the lead — having made up a complete lap. But it was not yet over, and with two broken Ford-Cosworth V8 engines already in the pits, Lotus team boss Colin Chapman had his fingers crossed. On the final lap, the three cars of Clark, Brabham and Surtees went into the awesome Curva Grande one behind the other when suddenly Clark’s engine cut out, which caused the car to twitch sideways. This forced Surtees and Brabham to do a lightning quick dodge round the Lotus, demonstrating why Grand Prix drivers are supremely skilled. On the final lap, the Cosworth strained for a last few drops of gasoline. Clark pummeled his red steering wheel in frustration as the low-slung, green and yellow Lotus coasted slowly toward the finish line. He was ahead of Brabham and John Surtees starting the lap, but the car had not been filled with enough fuel for such a performance. When the tumult and the shouting died down, which was nearly two hours later, the Lotus mechanics found that there still had been 11 liters left the fuel tanks in Clark’s Lotus, so he had not run out of fuel, rather the pumps had failed to pick up the last drops. After all was said and done, there had been a total of 12 lead changes in the race. Just as it is rare for one to see that many lead changes during a race today, it was a remarkably competitive race even then. Surtees won, which proved to be Honda’s first and last victory under the 3.0 liter engine formula used in F1 starting in 1966. Jim Clark’s car gently rolled past the line shortly thereafter, just a bit short of what could have been the greatest victory of his career. A truely astonishing performance not seen since the days of Nuvolari, Fangio or Moss. Classifications.

Patrick Tambay captured pole position in the Ferrari, alongside René Arnoux, but the normally-aspirated McLarens of Watson and teammate Niki Lauda suffered from lack of heat in their Michelin tires, were never able to arrive at a balanced setup and could manage only 22nd and 23rd positions in qualifying. While Tambay, Keke Rosberg and Jacques Laffite battled up front in the gorgeous California sunshine, Watson and Lauda moved steadily through the field. By lap 28, the McLarens were lying 3rd and 4th, having passed Marc Surer, Danny Sullivan and Johnny Cecotto. Lauda had led the duo off the line but had also been clearing the way all afternoon while Watson was looking after his tires. On lap 33 Watson made his move and dived past his teammate. “Niki didn’t exactly invite me to pass,” Watson observed after the race. “But we are both elderly and I had the tire advantage.” When Watson got by Lauda at the end of Shoreline Drive, he was 20 seconds behind the two leaders. With Watson closing the gap to the front and Laffite’s tires going off quickly, Ricardo Patrese challenged Laffite for the lead. He slid wide, and Watson and Lauda both passed before he rejoined the track. Soon after, the McLarens passed Laffite as well and were now P1 and P2, respectively. Yet suffering from a cramp in his right leg, Lauda could not challenge Watson in the later stages, and the Ulsterman took the checkered flag nearly a half minute ahead for his 5th career victory. Watson had required just 70 minutes to make up 22 places. It was, and remains, the farthest back from which a modern Grand Prix driver had ever come to win a Formula One race. It was also the last Formula One GP held in Long Beach, as in a sign of things to come, rising licensing fees for the promoters caused a switch to IndyCars for the 1984 race. Classifications.

The polarizing figure of Michael Schumacher cannot be exemplified better than in the Belgian Grand Prix of 1995. The then-young Schumacher and Damon Hill both qualified further down the grid than usual (16th and 8th, respectively) in a wet-dry qualifying session, with Schumi demolishing his monocoque in a Saturday practice crash, yielding an all-Ferrari front row of Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi. Alesi and Johnny Herbert each led the race — showing off with a tremendous side-by-side duel through Eau Rouge and up the long Kemmel Straight — but Alesi broke down and Herbert struggled for pace once the track was dry. By then, Schumacher had already moved up to 10th, leaving Herbert and David Coulthard to battle for the lead after Alesi dropped out on lap 3 with a broken rear suspension. After two spins by Herbert, Coulthard was leading from Hill, moving Schumacher up to 5th, 12s back. By lap 15, however, as Coulthard lost his gearbox and Berger and Hill refueled, Schumacher took the lead. It then started to rain and while Hill went back to the pits for wets, Schumacher stayed out in the Benetton on his dry weather tires. The Williams driver rapidly caught up with the German, but despite a pace six seconds per lap slower, Schumacher was able to keep Hill behind him until he went off the wet track and Hill passed. Almost immediately the changing Spa circuit conditions began to favor slicks once more and Schumacher re-passed Hill who pitted again, this time for slicks himself.

Having brilliantly overtaken virtually the entire field, Schumacher won easily from there, posting his 16th GP victory to move into a tie with Sterling Moss for all-time Formula One career victories. Schumacher and Hill staged what was one of many entertaining but bad-tempered on track battles that season. Observers were impressed by Schumacher’s ability to hold off Hill through the fast chicane at Les Combes in damp conditions while the Williams driver was on the racing line using wet tires and Schumacher on the wetter part of the track shod with dry weather slicks. But Hill was incensed by his rival’s wheel-banging tactics. Hill later commented that “We had some pretty hairy moments and I am not satisfied with being driven into. I don’t think that was acceptable. F1 cars are not go-karts.” Despite a remarkable drive from the back of the grid, Schumacher’s victory by more than 19s was overshadowed by his aggressiveness, and he was was assessed a one-race suspension by the FIA. It was, in many ways, a sign of things to come. Classifications.