F1 mishaps

If you’re interested in great overtaking and high-speed cornering, then motor on through this iPad to Sport’s best moments of the F1 season. Here we celebrate(/snigger at) our favourite mishaps.

Image 1: McLaren’s pit crew must have felt pretty foolish at Silverstone when, with Jenson Button on course for a podium finish at his home Grand Prix, they forgot to bolt on his right front tyre at a pit stop. Button was hardly one to talk, though, having accidentally pulled into the Red Bull pit box a few races earlier – a bit of subconscious wish fulfilment from the Brit maybe, perhaps longing for a pit crew who could put his tyres on properly.

Image 2: One criticism levelled at the impressive new circuits built across the globe in recent years is that they do little to reflect the local culture. Not so at India’s Buddh International Circuit, where practice had to be stopped when a dog ran on to the track. 

Image 3: Canada wasn’t just a treacherous race for the drivers – special mention must go to the marshall who, during a safety car period, ran on to the track to remove a scrap of debris, promptly slipped and fell – and then, with a car bearing down on him, tried to get up and fell over again. Slapstick comedy at its finest. 

Image 4: When drivers spin out, the commentators often say that they’ve lost control of the car, and there’s nothing they can do to correct it. That was absolutely the case for Vitaly Petrov in Malaysia: he got a bit airborne and, when he landed, his steering wheel came off in his hands. We’d love to know what was going through Vitaly’s mind as he realised...