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F1
6 times when F1 drivers won from the back
Daniel Ricciardo’s chances in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix looked dead and buried – but he rose again to take victory against all probability.
On the podium in Baku, Daniel Ricciardo had the look of a man who’d just been told he’d won the lottery. Pleasure, yes – plenty of that – but also the slightly stunned expression of ‘how did this happen?’ He has good reason to be surprised: up until the midpoint of the race around the streets of Baku, it hadn’t been a stellar weekend for the Australian. A crash in qualifying had put him 10th on the grid. Debris from a collision that happened ahead of him on the first lap forced him into an early pitstop to clear a blocked brake duct.
Daniel's face says it all.
On lap six of the 51-lap race Daniel emerged from the pits in P17 – and no one wins from there, do they?
Ricciardo got his head in gear and drove a great race: fast when he needed to be, managing risk precisely and overtaking clinically, including one triple pass which will certainly be a tick on his personal bucket list. But he needed other things to go his way too.
And they did… while Daniel scythed through the backmarkers, Safety Car periods and ultimately a red flag and a 24-minute stoppage brought the field back together. At the restart, Daniel was sixth. He made short work of passing Nico Hülkenberg, Lance Stroll and Felipe Massa, which left him with a foot on the podium behind Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.
Then, two bombshells: first Hamilton is forced to pit because his cockpit surround came loose (Mark Webber had one of those at the 2009 Japanese Grand Prix – it’s memorable because it’s so incredibly rare), then, with truly dramatic timing from the FIA, Vettel was handed a stop-go penalty for an earlier wheel-banging incident with Hamilton. With 17 laps of the race remaining, Daniel has no one left in front of him. It’s a 1000-1 shot – but sometimes those come off… Here’s five more memorable wins from far down the grid:
Jenson Button – Canada 2011
Jenson Button’s win at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2011 is the gold standard for victories against the odds. Despite collisions with team-mate Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, a drive-through penalty and a highly unlikely five-stop strategy, Button won a race that lasted just over four hours (the longest in F1 history).
Button, who was dead last after 37 laps of the 70-lap Canadian Grand Prix, took advantage of five safety cars and a red flag to snatch the lead from Sebastian Vettel halfway around the final lap. On the podium Vettel, who had led almost every lap, looked like a man who’d been asked to share a convivial drink with someone who had just mugged him.
John Watson – Long Beach 1983
Watson’s drive from 22nd to victory is a record
© Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Getty Images
The United States Grand Prix West, to give it its proper title, was won for McLaren by John Watson. He had started 22nd, one place ahead of team-mate Niki Lauda, who finished second. Watty’s victory is still the lowest starting place from which a grand prix has been won.
It had a lot to do with tyres. The qualifying Michelins used by McLaren weren’t on the pace of the Goodyears and Pirellis, leaving Watson and Lauda four seconds off the pace. The race tyre, however, was more up to the challenge and the McLarens cut through the field, taking advantage of bad luck and bad judgement from rivals ahead to provide the pub quizzes of the future with valuable ammunition.
Olivier Panis – Monaco 1996
It was Panis’s only Grand Prix win
© Pascal Rondeau/Getty Images
Winning from 14th on the grid is rare; winning from 14th on the grid in the tight streets of Monaco is rarer still. Taking a debut victory from 14th on the grid in Monaco to give Ligier a first win in 15 years… stuff of legend. But that’s what Olivier Panis did. The key to victory was he kept his head (and bodywork) when all about were losing theirs. He shared the podium with David Coulthard and Johnny Herbert who were the only other drivers to finish, with the other 18 cars recording a DNF – the highest percentage of retirements in F1 World Championship history.
Rubens Barrichello at German Grand Prix 2000
Barrichello celebrates his maiden win
© Rainer W. Schlegelmilch/Getty Images
Rubens’ maiden victory came from 18th on the grid after he was forced to qualify using Michael Schumacher’s car when his developed an oil leak. Fortunately for Rubens this was the old school, overtaking-friendly Hockenheim, not the emasculated go-kart track that has replaced it and, back in his race car he made short work of cutting through the field. Up to 10th on the first lap, then picking off rivals to be third before diving into the pits – his tyres presumably looking like a melted Wellington boot at this point. A lunatic-on-the-track-related Safety Car followed, and then another Safety Car for debris removal, then a stop-go for race leader Jarno Trulli left Rubens in the lead with a real shot at the first victory after eight years of trying – so of course – it started raining. Rubens made the ballsy decision to stay out and got his reward.
Giancarlo Fisichella – Brazil 2003
In terms of unlikely victories, the one you win a couple of days after the other guy has been handed the trophy has to be right up there – but Brazil in 2003 was unlikely in plenty of other ways too. Interlagos is a chaos magnet. Over the years the race has either been held in the autumn (when it rains a lot) or the spring (when it rains a lot). 2003 was very wet and had the added pandemonium of a rule that allowed teams to only bring one sort of wet tyre to a race. The drivers on Bridgestones only had an intermediate tyre which on a soaking wet circuit is like watching Bambi on ice. Fisichella started eighth but made an early stop for fuel, gambling (though, historically, not a big gamble) on a Safety Car to allow him to save enough to make it to the finish. It left him last but ahead cars were sliding, spinning, colliding and, occasionally, pitting. He accumulated places and was running at the front when Mark Webbercrashed heavily, and then Fernando Alonso crashed even more heavily into Webber’s debris. Red Flag and race result called. Fisichella’s Jordan team thought their man had won but race officials gave the victory to Räikkönen. It took a hearing at the FIA in Paris to sift through the timing data (and possibly the rule book) to give Fisi a first win.
