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.