Chequered Past

Martin Elliot

Chequered Past is a Formula 1 history podcast that dives deep into iconic races, legendary drivers, and forgotten moments from motorsport’s rich and dramatic past. Each episode revisits Grand Prix events that took place on the same date in history, uncovering fascinating stories, on-track controversies, and the evolution of F1 through the decades. Whether you're a lifelong fan or new to the sport, Chequered Past offers compelling insights and nostalgia-fuelled storytelling from the world’s fastest sport. 

  1. 19th May 1996: The Race That Destroys Its Favourites

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    19th May 1996: The Race That Destroys Its Favourites

    On the nineteenth of May, three times across four decades, Monaco did what Monaco does. It destroyed the favourites and handed the race to someone else. Stirling Moss, Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn — three of the fastest drivers in the world — eliminate each other at the same chicane on the same lap. Juan Manuel Fangio threads through the wreckage at low speed and wins by going slower than everyone else. He is forty-five years old, in his final championship season, and he barely breaks a sweat.Ayrton Senna takes pole position in the Lotus, leads with authority, and retires on lap fourteen when his Renault engine detonates — the victim of an accidental over-rev in Sunday morning warm-up. Alain Prost starts fifth, waits, manages, and inherits the race that should never have been his. He wins with a sticking wastegate and a broken car. He wins because he is still there.Michael Schumacher crashes alone on lap one, from pole position. Damon Hill leads by thirty seconds and retires with a failed oil pump on lap forty-one. Jean Alesi inherits the lead and retires with broken suspension on lap sixty. When the two-hour limit ends the race after seventy-five laps, three cars take the chequered flag. One of them belongs to Olivier Panis, who started fourteenth. He has just won the only Grand Prix of his career, in a Ligier, on fumes, by refusing to stop.Three races. Three dates. One circuit. Monaco doesn't care who qualified fastest, who has the best car, or who leads with twenty laps to go. It has its own ideas about who deserves to win. The race destroys its favourites. The patient, the composed, the ones still moving at the end — those are the ones it crowns. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    27 min
  2. 18th May 1969: The Race That Wouldn't Follow The Script

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    18th May 1969: The Race That Wouldn't Follow The Script

    On 18th May 1952, Piero Taruffi won the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten after a former champion's Ferrari failed — twice.  On 18th May 1958, Maurice Trintignant won at Monaco after every faster car in the field broke before half distance.  On 18th May 1969, Graham Hill took his record fifth Monaco victory after the championship leader, his own teammate, and the second-place Ferrari all retired mechanical failures within six laps of each other.  On 18th May 1980, Carlos Reutemann inherited the Monaco lead when the dominant Didier Pironi clipped a barrier in the rain with twenty-two laps to go. Four races. Four eras. The same result each time. This episode of Chequered Past follows all four afternoons in detail — from the forest circuit at Bremgarten that no longer exists, through the darkest season in Monaco's history, to the regulatory drama of 1969 when a governing body banned an entire category of aerodynamic device mid-weekend, and on to the political turmoil of 1980 when Formula One's off-track war was as fierce as anything happening on it. Along the way: Graham Hill's debut at the circuit he would come to define. Jochen Rindt's open letter to the sport calling for wings to be banned — published five days after Monaco. The last championship race for Cooper. The first podium for Frank Williams as a constructor. And four winners who all shared one thing: they didn't win by being fastest. They won by still being there. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    25 min
  3. 17th May 1981: The Weekend That The Pitlane Wept

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    17th May 1981: The Weekend That The Pitlane Wept

    Three Formula One races share the date of May the seventeenth. Each one is a story in its own right. Together, they trace something larger. In 1981, the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder was overshadowed before it began — a mechanic killed in practice, another seriously injured at the start, and a race that should never have been run.  In 1987, Spa-Francorchamps witnessed the most explosive flashpoint of the Mansell-Senna rivalry, and a paddock confrontation that went far beyond racing.  In 1992, Nigel Mansell arrived at Imola needing one more win to make history — and delivered it with the kind of authority that made the outcome feel inevitable. Running through all three races, across eleven years, is a single career. And on this date, that career tells a story of its own. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    20 min
  4. 16th May 1976: The Winners That No One Could Touch

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    16th May 1976: The Winners That No One Could Touch

    Three races. Three decades. Three drivers who were utterly, completely, unreachably dominant on the day — and yet somehow ended up as supporting characters in their own stories. On the sixteenth of May 1976, Niki Lauda produced one of the great forgotten masterclasses of his championship season, leading every lap at Zolder for his only career Grand Chelem.  On the sixteenth of May 1999, Michael Schumacher controlled Monaco from the first corner to the last, breaking Niki Lauda’s own Ferrari wins record in the process.  And on the sixteenth of May 2010, Mark Webber drove a faultless race from pole to flag in Monaco — and was almost immediately upstaged by a penalty handed down in a stewards’ room. Three winners who couldn’t be touched. Three races where the real drama happened everywhere else. Chris Amon’s wheel departing at Zolder with eighteen laps to go. Mika Häkkinen sliding helplessly down the Mirabeau escape road on someone else’s oil. Jenson Button sitting stranded in a McLaren because of a foam bung the size of your fist. Michael Schumacher going for a gap at the very corner where he’d already written one of the most notorious chapters of his career. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    18 min
  5. 15th May 2016: The Day That Broke the Favourites

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    15th May 2016: The Day That Broke the Favourites

    The fifteenth of May keeps appearing in Formula 1 history, and rarely kindly.  This episode traces four events on that date across four decades:  Keke Rosberg's audacious tyre gamble at the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna's devastating retirement from a race he had dominated in 1988, Max Verstappen's record-breaking debut victory for Red Bull at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix And the death of Elio de Angelis on 15 May 1986, thirty-nine days before his twenty-ninth birthday, in an accident that exposed everything wrong with how Formula 1 treated safety away from race weekends.  Cover Image: By Lala_77 - Verstappen_Spain_2016, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    22 min
  6. 14th May 1972: The Circuit That Rewards The Driver

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    14th May 1972: The Circuit That Rewards The Driver

    On the fourteenth of May 1972, a Frenchman in a car nobody expected to win led every lap of the Monaco Grand Prix in continuous heavy rain. Jean-Pierre Beltoise had one Formula One World Championship victory in his career. This was it. It was also the last championship win for BRM — a team that had once been the finest in Formula One. This episode takes that race as its centrepiece and asks a question that three other races on the same calendar date help to answer: what does it actually take, at Monaco, to beat a car that should be faster than yours? Stirling Moss answered it in 1961 with a year-old Lotus against the works Ferrari. Ayrton Senna answered it in 1988 with a qualifying lap he later said he couldn't fully explain. And Michael Schumacher answered it differently in Barcelona in 1995 — not with something beyond conscious understanding, but with the right number of pit stops. Three different answers. One persistent question. This is Chequered Past. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    27 min
  7. 13th May 1950: The Date That Traced Formula One’s Evolution

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    13th May 1950: The Date That Traced Formula One’s Evolution

    On six different 13ths of May, Formula One revealed six very different versions of itself. This episode of Chequered Past travels from the World Championship’s beginning at Silverstone in 1950 through Monaco politics in 1956, Ferrari’s ground-effect breakthrough at Zolder in 1979, Riccardo Patrese’s long-awaited return to victory at Imola in 1990, Ferrari team orders in Austria in 2001, and Lewis Hamilton’s emergence as a championship contender in Spain in 2007. Along the way, the episode explores how Formula One evolved through engineering battles, team control, championship politics and changing technology — while many of the sport’s defining themes remained remarkably consistent across nearly sixty years. Featuring Giuseppe Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Jody Scheckter, Riccardo Patrese, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    24 min
  8. 12th May 2002: The Team Order That Changed The Rules

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    12th May 2002: The Team Order That Changed The Rules

    On the 12th of May 1968, Formula 1 went racing for the first time since Jim Clark died. Five weeks after Hockenheim, five days after losing another driver at Indianapolis, the sport arrived at Jarama in Spain — and Graham Hill won in a red, gold and white Lotus that had never been seen before. The day British Racing Green ended. On the 12th of May 2002, Rubens Barrichello led the Austrian Grand Prix from pole position. He didn’t win it. What happened in the final metres of the main straight that afternoon provoked a crowd to boo, a rulebook to change, and a driver to say, years later, that it made him re-think his life. On the 12th of May 2013, Fernando Alonso won the Spanish Grand Prix at home in Barcelona. Nobody knew it would be his last Formula 1 victory. He hasn’t won since. Three Sundays. One date. This is The Team Order That Changed The Rules. Send us Fan Mail Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

    21 min
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À propos

Chequered Past is a Formula 1 history podcast that dives deep into iconic races, legendary drivers, and forgotten moments from motorsport’s rich and dramatic past. Each episode revisits Grand Prix events that took place on the same date in history, uncovering fascinating stories, on-track controversies, and the evolution of F1 through the decades. Whether you're a lifelong fan or new to the sport, Chequered Past offers compelling insights and nostalgia-fuelled storytelling from the world’s fastest sport. 

Informations

  • Création
    Martin Elliot
  • Années d’activité
    2025 - 2026
  • Épisodes
    355
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Chequered Past
  • Site web de l’émission
    Chequered Past

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