First, an admission. Figuring that the world championship battle would go down to the wire for the fourth time in a row, we had planned the final edition of this year's classic races series to be about great title deciders - and now !
It is a bit late to change our plans now, though, so we're going to press ahead. As it happens, four of the five choices are, like next weekend's Abu Dhabi race, the last race of that particular season as well as - unlike Abu Dhabi - a title decider. And all of them are true classics, whichever way you look at it.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to include one of the races we wanted to - , when Michael Schumacher infamously tried to take rival Jacques Villeneuve out of the race. The tape we were sent by ITV has had the post-race interviews recorded over the first two-thirds of the race, so it's impossible to cut a proper highlights package of it.
We will look into finding a full version of that race at a later date. In the meantime, we have chosen the final event of 1980, the US Grand Prix East, as its replacement.
In a way, this is appropriate, as - like Abu Dhabi this year - although it was the final race of the season, it was not a title decider. Just as Button has now in 2009, Williams driver clinched the world championship at the .
Read the rest of this entry