9 Of The Cruellest Moments In Motorsport History

This is the moment that sparked the idea for this piece. The No.5 Toyota had been leading the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours for quite some time when a loss of power caused Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima’s car to stop on the main straight with just one lap remaining.

The No.2 Porsche stormed past and claimed victory last Sunday. The No.5 car did restart but limped around the final lap too slowly to be classified, giving the No.6 Toyota and No.8 Audi the final two podiums. The scenes in the Toyota garage during those last few minutes were truly heartbreaking.

Felipe Massa was F1 world champion for just a few seconds. The Brazilian did all he could at the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix - the season finale - by winning the race, but a final lap pass by rival Lewis Hamilton on Timo Glock gave the McLaren driver the title.

The footage of the Ferrari garage after finding out Massa had missed out on becoming champion by just by one point is still painful to watch all these years later!

During the Nurburgring 24 Hours earlier this year, the No.29 HTP Mercedes AMG GT3 car was leading on the final lap of the race, only to lose out after a brave pass by the No.4 Black Falcon Mercedes on the grand prix circuit section. I’m sure getting passed for the lead on the last lap is never a good feeling…

Anthony Davidson didn’t have much luck at Le Mans recently and the same could be said for his stint in F1 with Super Aguri too. Racing at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, he was running in third place and looked set to score his first points in the series – quite an achievement with the car he had.

Unfortunately, a groundhog ran out onto the Montreal track and Davidson’s car hit it. He pitted for repairs (sure that wasn’t a pretty sight) and returned to the race but dropped to 11th place. A great and well-deserved result taken away from the Brit. He ended up finishing his short F1 career without having scored a single point, but if it wasn’t for that brave critter it might have been a different story…

Mika Hakkinen looked set to win the 2001 Spanish Grand Prix by quite a comfortable margin, but it was tragically taken away from him by an engine failure on the final lap. Talk about late drama! Michael Schumacher stormed by the smoking McLaren to pick up the victory.

The 1989 Japanese Grand Prix included one of F1’s most memorable moments, with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost colliding at the chicane while battling for the lead. Prost retired, while Senna returned to action, pitted for a new nose and bounced back to finish first.

However, he was controversially stripped of the win by the stewards for using an escape road to return to the track. Many felt it was FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre using his power against him in favour of Prost, who took the 1989 title because of the result.

Kimi Raikkonen was leading the 2005 European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring on the final lap when his suspension failed on the run to the first corner. His car spun off into the gravel, narrowly avoiding Jenson Button’s BAR. The failure had been caused by an earlier flat-spot, with McLaren opting to risk it and stay out rather than pit for new tyres.

They don’t get much more painful than this! Carlos Sainz’s Toyota Corolla ground to a halt 300 metres from the finish line on the last stage of Rally GB in 1998, meaning he couldn’t pick up fourth place. The painful result gifted Tommi Mäkinen the title instead.

9. The underdog almost triumphs

After claiming the 1996 F1 title with Williams, Damon Hill was forced to look elsewhere for a drive for 1997 and ended up at Arrows. The car wasn’t particularly great but amazingly Hill found himself leading the Hungarian GP, only for the potential win to be snatched away from him by hydraulics failure on the final lap. Jacques Villeneuve was crowned the winner of the race instead.

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