6 F1 leaders who've 'dropped it'

As he said, one tiny mistake, “big disappointment”. On a slippery Hockenheim and with old-school gravel to entrap him rather than endless asphalt run-off, that’s all it took. The emotion in his voice and his stony glare was entirely understandable.

At least he won’t have much time to dwell on his German GP clanger, as he and Ferrari immediately turn their focus to Budapest for this forthcoming weekend. And if during the following summer break he does feel the odd pang – which he surely will – he can at least console himself that he’s not the first to drop a win, and he won’t be the last. He’s also in pretty good company.

1 Häkkinen cries in the bushes

In 1999 bitter rivals McLaren and Ferrari arrived at the Italian GP with reigning champion Mika Häkkinen desperate to win, not only to stabilise his shaky title defence, but also to get one over the reds on their sacred home soil.

Despite suffering from a fever, all was looking good when Häkkinen approached the first chicane on lap 30. But as he shifted down, Mika dropped a cog too low. The McLaren’s rear end swung around and the car slid lazily into the gravel, to the frenzied delight of the tifosi. A distraught Häkkinen flung his gloves to the ground and ran, seeking the shelter of trackside fauna to compose himself. But there was no holding back the tears.

The trouble is there’s nowhere to hide in F1. As the champ wept, an unblinking camera on a hovering helicopter captured his agony for all the world to see.

Mika did at least later win his second title, and there was some consolation that his horror show didn’t result in a Ferrari home win (that honour fell to Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s Jordan). But Häkkinen never did get the Monza victory he craved.

Talk about the one that got away.

2 Hill’s appointment with the bank

Graham Hill had done all the hard work – and then some at Silverstone in 1960. The Londoner looked all set to break into the hallowed ranks of grand prix winners, only to suffer the toughest of brakes (sic)…

It hadn’t started well. Hill stalled his BRM from the front row and was forced to dig in. Then again, he was never short of grit. Incredibly, he passed the lot – even reigning champion Jack Brabham, whose Cooper was demoted from the lead on lap 55.

But Hill’s brakes were fading badly. On lap 72, with just five to go, the BRM slithered off at Copse Corner and hit the bank.

As the 1960s got into full swing, Hill would famously win Monaco five times, the 1966 Indianapolis 500, two F1 world titles and later even the Le Mans 24 Hours. But he’d never win his home grand prix. That 1960 race was the closest he’d ever get.

3 & 4 Arnoux and Prost’s double drop

Monaco 1982 had to be on this list, a day on which the blushes of not one, but two – and almost three – F1 drivers could not be spared.

Impetuous Rene Arnoux was the first to throw it away. He’d qualified on pole in his Renault and was building a handy lead – only to spin out on lap 15.

That opened the door for Alain Prost in the other Renault, but the future legend wasn’t yet the finished article. His heavy crash coming out of the chicane on the run to Tabac played out with just two to go.

That left Riccardo Patrese with a golden chance to win his first grand prix – but inexplicably the Italian lamely spun his Brabham at the walking-pace Loews hairpin.

So now this was Didier Pironi’s race, right? Wrong. The Ferrari ran out of fuel. So too had Andrea de Cesaris’s Alfa Romeo. This would be Patrese’s after all.

Having been pushed by marshals from a position of danger, he calmly bump-started his Brabham down the hill, finished the lap and unknowingly claimed an unlikely win at the greatest race of them all.

Blushes duly spared. Mostly.

5 Mansell puts it on the line

Lotus chief Peter Warr never did understand what his revered late boss Colin Chapman saw in Nigel Mansell. “He’ll never win a GP while I have a hole in my arse” was his famously unvarnished opinion. And after Monaco 1984, Warr had seen enough.

Mansell was brilliant that day in a sopping wet principality. Second on the grid to Prost’s McLaren, he revelled in the rain to take the lead on lap 11. But then his brilliance ran out… his JPS Lotus slithered on a white line on the run up the hill to Massenet and tagged the barrier.

Thirty-one grand prix wins and a world title later, Warr remained obtuse: Mansell was lucky and nothing more. As views go, it’s a tad harsh.

6 Senna’s madness in Monaco

Vettel’s clanger will hurt now, but it has nothing on what surely has to be the most famous ‘drop’ in F1 history.

Ayrton Senna was supreme at Monaco in 1988, his mesmeric out-of-body pole lap recorded forever as perhaps the greatest we’ll ever see. But the Brazilian proved just how human he was in the race.

Around the streets, Senna had trounced team-mate and nemesis Prost, who simply had no answer. But with the race in the bag, Ayrton nosed his McLaren into the barrier at Portier, stepped from the car and melted from the scene. He was later tracked down at his apartment, too distraught to face the music.

Prost knew how he felt; he’d been there six years earlier, because even the very best can drop it. In Budapest, Vettel will just have to pick it up again.