F1's 1-2 finishes: when dominance delights… and when it doesn't

One-two finishes tend not to be high on Formula 1 fans’ hit parades, because their occurrence is usually a by-product of a one-sided world championship. For instance, there have been five grands prix so far this season; four have resulted in one-two finishes for Red Bull; and very few people would put money on there not being further Red Bull one-two finishes between now and the end of the year.

Nonetheless, if a one-two finish is portentous, or seems to be portentous at the time, it can also be popular. When Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler delivered a 12-wheeled one-two finish in their Tyrrell P34s at Anderstorp in 1976, even the other teams were happy for Uncle Ken. I interviewed him about it 20 years later, and he said: “Luca di Montezemolo, who was team manager of Ferrari at the time, came up to me after the race, went down on his knees, and clasped his hands together: ‘Ken, that was absolutely fantastic,’ he said. A couple of years ago, at Imola, I was talking to him in the pits, and I reminded him of it, and he said he didn’t remember it, but I think he probably did. Maybe it was a bit difficult for the big boss of Ferrari to remember going down on his knees to Ken Tyrrell!” Much more recently, in 2021, after a winless spell of nine long years, even once-mighty McLaren caused rivals to offer guarded congrats when Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris finished first and second at Monza – the only one-two finish by any team that season, incidentally. And there have been other such examples of popular one-two finishes down the years.

Ferrari has racked up 85 one-two finishes in its Formula 1 history – and, if you happen to be reading this column on the day that it was posted — May 16 — then you may be interested to learn that one of those 85 took place on this day, or #OnThisDay as I like to mark such anniversaries on Twitter.

The 1976 Belgian Grand Prix, which was run on May 16 of that year, was the fifth grand prix of a season that would become dramatic later on but was at that stage looking as though it might be a walkover for Ferrari’s Niki Lauda, the reigning world champion, who had won three of the previous four races, his team-mate Clay Regazzoni having won the other. (Note to pedants: the Spanish Grand Prix would later be awarded to McLaren’s James Hunt, demoting Lauda to second, but, as the F1 circus arrived at Zolder, Hunt’s disqualification had not yet been revoked and Lauda had therefore been declared the winner.)

Now let us fast-forward to the 1998 French Grand Prix, the eighth round of a world championship that was becoming an excitingly gladiatorial battle between McLaren’s Mika Häkkinen and Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher. Schumacher had won last time out, in Montreal, while Häkkinen’s gearbox had jammed during the second start, the first having been aborted as a result of a three-car shunt involving Jean Alesi, Jarno Trulli and Alex Wurz, who famously flew his Benetton upside-down into the gravel, clambered out, jogged back to the pits, jumped into the spare car, and raced it to fourth place. Häkkinen still headed the world championship standings, with 46 points to Schumacher’s 34, but the gap was narrowing.

Three weeks later, at Magny-Cours, Häkkinen bagged the pole, but Schumacher qualified alongside him. Again there was an aborted start, this time the result of Jos Verstappen stalling his Stewart. Häkkinen fluffed the restart, was overtaken by not only Schumacher but also the man in the other Ferrari, Eddie Irvine, who then held Häkkinen up while Schumacher made good his escape. Despite some hairy attempts to pass Irvine, which included a couple of gravelly moments and even an extra pit stop for fresh Bridgestones, Häkkinen never quite managed it, and the result was a Ferrari one-two finish.