Sebastian Vettel’s peevish sideways swipe at Lewis Hamilton in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix was only one episode among numerous in a bewildering race, however one bound to be replayed perpetually in the years ahead. The demonstration of a driver calculatedly colliding with another to pick up favorable position is no irregularity in this game – occurrences including Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher jump in a flash to mind – however visually impaired, negligent street seethe is less normal. A standout amongst the most well known occurrences of a driver losing it in awesome mold played out on a drenching evening at the Belgian Grand Prix 19 years prior when race pioneer Michael Schumacher pummeled into the back of David Coulthard in the midst of a mass of shower as he attempted to lap the McLaren.
“Oh god!” came the shout from Murray Walker in the commentary box as Schumacher’s car was reduced to three wheels in the blink of an eye.
The two cars returned to the pits, where Schumacher – red mist fully descended – leapt from his cockpit and charged down to the McLaren garage, shrugging off the pleading of a Ferrari engineer as he went, where he was only prevented from laying his hands on the British driver by a wall of Coulthard’s mechanics.
“This is a bit like Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna at that Belgian Grand Prix, when Nigel got him by the throat,” added Walker
Vettel’s activities in Baku were precisely that. It could have resigned him on the spot. It didn’t as it turned out, yet the 10-second stop-go punishment that took after denied him a specific triumph in the light of the head rest issues that hit Hamilton later in the race.was the nature of a child in the play area – carelessly lashing out with no thought for the results.
“He wore loose overalls in those days and I pulled the zip up beyond his chin to just below his nose,” Mansell recalled.
He later added: “You can’t control yourself when you see the red mist. Everyone has a chip inside them called self preservation and it’s activated when you’re on the edge.
“I’d never experienced that before in my life. I saw red like there was no tomorrow.”
“When a man holds you round the throat, I do not think that he has come to apologise,”
