The Wall of Champions: which F1 drivers have crashed there?

Prior to the Silverstone shunt, the two had landed blows on each other race to race, with Schumacher leading the championship Canada.

The German led off the line, and was pulling a gap on his title rival, until disaster struck on lap 29.

Schumacher came into the corner too hot in the first section, meaning he lost the rear on correction, smashing into the oncoming barrier as a result.

“It was very clearly a mistake by myself,” he said afterwards. “I seem to make one a year, and I hope that’s the last one I make.”

Jacques Villeneuve – 1999

Not long after Schumacher, it was his ’97 title nemesis Jacques Villeneuve’s turn to shunt.

The Canadian’s BAR team had had a torrid season up to this point. After team boss Craig Pollock had predicted the new outfit would win a race in its debut season, its champion driver embarked on an eleven-race DNF streak.

A 16th-place qualifying position didn’t do much to raise morale at the track named after his legendary father Gilles, but by lap 34 Villeneuve had risen to eighth – and then he stuffed it in the wall.

“Some drivers cut it [the corner] pretty hard and there’s a lot of sand going on the track,” said the ’97 world champ afterwards, “so if you’re just a little bit wide you lose a lot of grip, one of those things for everybody.”

Team-mate Ricardo Zonta also hit the wall earlier in the race – the misery continued for BAR for the rest of the season, not scoring a single point all year.

Damon Hill – 1999

Things weren’t much better for Damon Hill – he didn’t even last as long as the F1 legends above.

1999 had been deeply unhappy year for the ’96 champ. Having claimed Jordan’s debut win in 1998, by the following season it seemed like Hill had had enough with F1.

Rumours swirled that he would quit after the British GP, and at Montreal, a few races prior, Hill was running in eleventh before he ran into the wall on lap 13.

“It was an accident and I crashed the car,” summarised Hill said, having got knack of an F1 interview down to a fine art. “Basically, I lost control and the vehicle hit the wall. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

Jenson Button – 2005

2005 had been a disappointing year for Jenson Button after highs of 2004, when he took his first podium – followed by a bucketload more – as well as several pole positions.

After gaining no points and an exclusion from two races due to BAR having a secret fuel tank which could made the car underweight, Button and co were still searching for a decent result to get their season started in Montreal.

Button had taken pole by over 0.25sec from Michael Schumacher in qualifying, before running third early on in the race behind the two Renaults of Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella early on, but it all went wrong on lap 13 – he was in the wall.

“The problem I had in the hairpin was I ran wide and I didn’t realise how much rubbish got on the tyres because coming into the chicane I just had huge understeer,” Button explained.

“That was it really. I should have gone across the green stuff but I thought if I did that I would have to let Michael pass and I didn’t want to do that. I’d rather crash in third than finish fourth really.”

Sebastian Vettel – 2011

Though it didn’t actually happen in a race, Sebastian Vettel has also added his name to the Wall of Champions also in 2011.

In Free Practice 1 early on, the German locked up the front right tyre on his Red Bull, over-rotating the left-hand side of the car while going too fast also.

The result was an RB7 in the wall. “I hit the kerb, slid off the track and hit the wall,” said Vettel succinctly.

The incident was a precursor to one of the great F1 races, in which Jenson Button collided with McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton, pitted six times, spent part of the race in last but ended up nipping through to win after final-lap error from Vettel.