News index

January 16, 2013: We look back at the time the world championship came down to a three-way fight for the title, held in a car park...

July 22, 2011: We look back at the first race to be held on the modern Nurburgring in 1984, when one F1 driver showed the rest the way in equal cars

April 25, 2011: Martin Williamson looks at ten of the biggest first-lap pile-ups in grand prix racing

January 12, 2011: Our resident expert - Steven Lynch - is back to answer more of your burning questions

April 25, 2010: Two former grand prix drivers have called for patience amid criticism of Michael Schumacher's return to Formula One

January 14, 2010: We look at why Gilles Villeneuve was so highly revered by his contemporaries

March 21, 1982: Nelson Piquet's victory in front of his home crowd caused wild celebrations in Rio de Janeiro but he was not in a position to make the most of them after collapsing on the podium, a victim of heat and exhaustion

January 23, 1982: Alain Prost won the season opener at Kyalami, but once again the weekend was dominated by off-track politics, a grim portent of what was going to be yet another year where behind-the-scenes bickering tarnished the sport's image

October 17, 1981: Nelson Piquet claimed the world championship thanks to a fifth-place finish in Las Vegas, the two points it brought enough to put him one point clear of Carlos Reutemann who was back in eighth. Alan Jones, who had announced his retirement three weeks earlier, signed off with an impressive victory and some stinging attacks on his rivals

September 27, 1981: Jacques Laffite's second win of the year in the penultimate race in Canada set up a tense finish to the season, sending the Formula One circus to Caesar's Palace with three drivers in the hunt for the title - Carlos Reutemann on 49 points, Nelson Piquet on 48, and Laffite on 43

August 30, 1981: Alain Prost took his second win of the season for Renault, leading the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort for all but a few dozen yards during a fierce battle with Alan Jones. Nelson Piquet's second place put him level with Carlos Reutemann in the drivers' championship

August 16, 1981: The Austrian Grand Prix was won in style by Jacques Laffite for the Talbot-Ligier team and much of the work was done by someone else many months before

June 21, 1981: After a season dominated by off-track politics and disputes, purists were delighted that the Spanish Grand Prix was memorable for the right reasons, Gilles Villeneuve winning a thrilling race where less than one-and-a-quarter seconds separated the first five cars

May 31, 1981: Gilles Villeneuve showed Ferrari had put its appalling 1980 season behind it with victory in Monte Carlo, but yet again the weekend was as memorable for off-track events as anything on it.

May 17, 1981: Carlos Reutemann won the Belgian Grand Prix but it was a weekend marred by endless bickering over the legality of cars and the death of a mechanic when he fell from the pit wall and a serious accident involving another

March 29, 1981: The second race of the season produced another Williams 1-2, although the order was reversed with Carlos Reutemann taking the win from team-mate and defending champion Alan Jones.

October 5, 1980: Alan Jones, who had secured the title a week earlier in Canada, polished off the season in fitting style with victory at Watkins Glen, his fifth of the season - sixth if the discounted Spanish Grand Prix was included

September 14, 1980: Nelson Piquet won the Italian Grand Prix, which took place at Imola rather than the usual Monza circuit, and in so doing overtook Alan Jones in the drivers' championship

August 31, 1980: The battle between Alan Jones (Williams) and Nelson Piquet (Brabham) for the world championshop closed to two points when Piquet won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort