The origin of the 'Wall of Champions', the 1999 F1 Canadian GP

The last race of the Canadian GP that F1 played (before a stoppage due to the COVID-19 pandemic) was shaken by controversy after the controversial penalty that Vettel received and that gave victory to Lewis Hamilton .

That grand prix will be remembered in the future, and the wall that Hamilton almost grazed too, but there is another wall and another edition of the much more famous Canadian event. This is the birth of the Wall of Champions , which was baptized on June 13.

Specifically, the one in 1999, when the Canadian F1 GP saw the safety car go out on the track four times. The last one took place four laps from the end, after the accident caused by Heinz-Harald Frentzen, which caused Mika Hakkinen to cross the finish line in first place following the Safety Car. That had never happened before in F1, but not It was the only anecdote of that edition.

Ricardo Zonta was the first to hit the wall of the last chicane that leads to the main straight. The Brazilian was not and did not become an F1 champion, but he had just won a GT world title the year before.

After 14 laps, 1996 F1 champion Damon Hill lost the rear of his Jordan and crashed into the same wall. The race continued and on lap 30 it was Michael Schumacher, at that time the leader of the race (and two-time world champion), who ended up against that concrete wall.

The public in the stands witnessed the carnage caused by that wall and did not expect that the local hero, also an F1 champion, would be the next victim. On lap 35, Jacques Villeneuve , who was running eighth, also hit the wall, bringing out the safety car for the third time.

In addition to Hakkinen’s win, Giancarlo Fisichella and Eddie Irvine completed the podium.

The difficulty of the last chicane and how close the drivers want to go to lose as little time as possible means that accidents are repeated almost every year, but it has never happened again that several world champions end up crashing there.