F1 Championships: Runners-Up of the 2000s Quiz

Answer: Mika Hakkinen

The year 2000 saw the first of Michael Schumacher's five consecutive championships with the Ferrari team. Since Mercedes only supplied engines to the McLaren team in 2000, the runner-up can quickly be narrowed down to either Mika Hakkinen or his team-mate David Coulthard. In this particular year it was the defending world champion, Mika Hakkinen, who finished as runner-up.

While Schumacher got off to a good start by winning the first three races of the season, Hakkinen took over the championship lead by winning the Hungarian Grand Prix after Schumacher suffered a string of retirements. Hakkinen hung on to his position until the US Grand Prix, when his McLaren Mercedes suffered its first mechanical failure since the second race of the season in Brazil. This points setback, along with some well-crafted race wins, left Schumacher in a strong position to clinch the title at the next race in Japan and end Ferrari's 21-year wait for a new champion.

Answer: David Coulthard

David Coulthard might be my all-time favourite F1 driver, but even I can't delude myself that he ever had a good chance of winning the world title in 2001, despite finishing as the runner-up. Schumacher led the championship from start to finish and secured the title at the Hungarian Grand Prix with four races of the season remaining. McLaren's Coulthard won just two races compared to Schumacher's nine and finished behind the German at every other race that they both completed. Coulthard didn't even have the next highest number of wins after Schumacher - that honour (with three wins) went to Schumacher's younger brother, Ralf.

Answer: Rubens Barrichello

Ferrari domination of F1 continued into 2002, but this time they took it a step further when their second driver, Rubens Barrichello, was able to secure second place in the championship. The only other drivers to win a race that year were Ralf Schumacher (for Williams) and David Coulthard (for McLaren). Schumacher won 11 of the 17 grands prix (a new record number), while Barrichello clinched four (the European, Hungarian, Italian and US races). Although the final points tally might suggest that Barrichello took the runners-up spot with ease, in actuality he was in third or fourth place for significant parts of the championship after his season had got off to a bad start with three straight retirements.

Amongst the other records set by Schumacher that season were a new record winning margin in terms of championship points (Barrichello was 67 adrift at the end of the season) and a new record for the earliest point in the season that the championship was decided - he clinched it with six races still to go.

Answer: Kimi Raikkonen

At total of eight drivers from five different teams won at least one grand prix during the 2003 season. So, although the end result in the championship was the same as the previous three years (with Michael Schumacher and Ferrari triumphing yet again), it was a close and exciting competition. McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen emerged as the "best of the rest", despite his maiden grand prix victory in Malaysia being the only race he won in the entire season. His lofty championship position was the result of excellent reliability on McLaren's part (only one of his three retirements was due to mechanical problems) and a string of podium finishes - seven second-places and two third-places. In the end "The Iceman" was just two points adrift of Schumacher, who had taken six wins but only two other podium finishes.

The other race winners in 2003 were the two Williams' drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher (with two each); Michael Schumacher's team-mate Rubens Barrichello (also with two); Raikkonen's McLaren team-mate, David Coulthard; Giancarlo Fisichella for Jordan; and Renault's Fernando Alonso.

Answer: Rubens Barrichello

Rubens Barrichello's two wins in 2004 came in the tail end of the season, by which time his team-mate, Michael Schumacher, had already wrapped up the world championship title. In total Ferrari claimed eight one-two finishes, seven of which were headed by Schumacher, and won a total of 15 of the 18 races. Renault, McLaren and Williams each won a single race thanks to Jarno Trulli, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya respectively.

Barrichello stayed with Ferrari for only one more season after 2004, before getting fed up with being Schumacher's number two and switching to the Honda team.

Answer: Kimi Raikkonen

Scuderia Ferrari (aka 'The Prancing Horse' because of their logo) competed in the very first F1 race in 1950 and as a result have become almost synonymous with F1 and earned themselves legions of loyal fans worldwide. However, many F1 fans breathed a sigh of relief at the end of 2005, when Michael Schumacher and Ferrari's five-year dominance of the sport was brought to an abrupt end by Fernando Alonso and Renault. Neither Ferrari driver even had the consolation of being the runner-up - that position went to McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen.

Raikkonen ended the season with the same number of wins as Alonso, but 21 points adrift due to a greater number of retirements and non-points finishes than the Spaniard. Alonso secured the title at the Brazilian Grand Prix with two races remaining.

Answer: Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher announced his retirement from the sport after winning the 2006 Italian Grand Prix at Monza - the home race for his Ferrari team. At that point he was just two points adrift of the defending champion Alonso in the standings and in good shape to claim a record eighth world title with three races remaining. Schumacher also won the following race in China to draw level on points (and take the championship lead on countback) but he retired from the Japanese Grand Prix following an engine failure and was left 10 points behind again going into the final race. Alonso's second place in Brazil duly secured him his second consecutive world title and Schumacher bowed out of the sport with another runners-up spot to add to his F1 record.

In the end, 2006 was not Schumacher's last season in F1 as he returned to race for the Mercedes team from 2010 to 2012. However, his comeback was not particularly successful and the best result he was able to manage was a single podium place after finishing third at the 2012 European Grand Prix.

Answer: Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton made a big impression on F1 when he joined the McLaren team for his rookie season, since traditionally rookie drivers tend to crash a lot rather than taking a string of podiums, winning races and leading the world championship. However, the fairy-tale of a rookie winning the most prestigious title in motorsport didn't quite work out when his 12-point lead with two races to go turned into a single point defeat by Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. A gravel-induced retirement from the penultimate race (when he failed to change tyres soon enough) and a messy seventh-place finish (mostly due to a gearbox glitch) at the final event were the main reasons for this calamitous change in fortune.

Hamilton's team-mate in 2007 was the defending double-world champion, Fernando Alonso. In the end the two finished the season with the same number of points and the same number of race wins, but Hamilton took the runners-up spot on countback with five second-places compared to Alonso's four. Alonso's general disgust with being beaten by a rookie led to a massive fallout with McLaren's bosses and contributed to the team's disqualification from the constructors' championship following the 'Spygate' scandal.

Answer: Felipe Massa

The events of the season-ending 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix have gone down as one of the most dramatic races in F1 history. Lewis Hamilton had a seven-point lead over Felipe Massa going into the race, but Massa led the race from start to finish (excepting the pit-stop phase), which meant that Hamilton required the four points for fifth place to take the championship. Hamilton was in a (relatively) comfortable fourth position but when it started to rain he lost a place when he pitted for wet-weather tyres and then lost another when he was overtaken by Sebastian Vettel.

When Massa took the chequered flag it looked like he had done enough to win the championship - however, Hamilton was still over 30 seconds away from the finish line and in that time he managed to catch the struggling Timo Glock (who didn't have wet-weather tyres on) and pass him in the final corner.

The wild celebrations in the Ferrari garage were brought to an abrupt halt, while Massa himself gained an enormous amount of respect for his sporting behaviour on the podium in the face of bitter defeat.

Answer: Sebastian Vettel

By the time Sebastian Vettel won the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the brand new Yas Marina circuit, Britain's Jenson Button had already clinched the championship at the previous race. Vettel's win meant he ended the season 11 points adrift of the champion, who had racked up most of his points by winning six of the first seven races held that year.

In 2009, Vettel was competing in his first season with the Red Bull Racing team. He and the team then went on to win the next four drivers' and constructors' titles.