1999 F1 flashback Part 1: Australia and Brazil

John Howard is Prime Minister, a yellow sea sponge is hitting the big time on Nickelodeon, and Mika Hakkinen, Eddie Irvine and Heinz-Harald Frentzen are battling it out for the Formula One world championship. Welcome to 1999.

With all but one of the races from the 1999 season available on F1 TV, I thought I would take the opportunity to explore a classic season which took many twists and turns.

1999 saw Frentzen make a surprise challenge on the McLarens and Ferraris in his Jordan and Eddie Irvine make his mark at Ferrari, especially after Michael Schumacher broke his legs in a formation lap crash at the British Grand Prix.

We will look through all this and more in this series looking back at one of the greatest seasons in F1 history.

The Australian Grand Prix was the season opener in March and was characterised by unreliability across the field. There were only eight finishers.

McLaren’s title defence got off to the worst possible start with a double retirement. Mika Hakkinen’s car suffered a mechanical failure on the throttle linkage while David Coulthard retired with a hydraulic problem. McLaren left Australia with no points on the board.

Annoyingly for them, Ferrari were having a much better time with Eddie Irvine taking his first win in Formula One. Irvine took the lead after the first safety car when Hakkinen slowed. The Northern Irishman held off Heinz-Harold Frentzen to win without any obligation to give way to his teammate, Michael Schumacher, who finished a lap down in eighth.

Despite both cars retiring, McLaren were rather upbeat about their weekend. They had dominated qualifying like they did in 1998 and built up a decent-sized lead over the rest of the field in the early stages of the race.

(GEPA Pictures/Red Bull Content Pool)

Five weeks later, in Brazil, McLaren’s optimism was justified by another dominant qualifying performance. They were also up to 9km/h quicker than Ferrari on the straights. As long as the McLarens didn’t have any reliability issues, they were surely going to win the race.

But that would have been too easy. Coulthard stalled on the grid while, later on in the race, Hakkinen lost the lead to Rubens Barrichello when he couldn’t find a gear.

This gearbox problem was short-term as Hakkinen carried on without further trouble. The Finn won the race after the overcut on Schumacher worked.

Rubens Barrichello was on for a podium finish before his engine failed. The Brazilian had driven brilliantly in front of his home crowd before his retirement from the race, leading early on before making his first stop and later overtaking Irvine on the inside into Turn 1 for third position.

A great performance like this from Barrichello and his Stewart-Ford would be seen again later on in the season. As the F1 paddock left Brazil though, there was still disappointment at the promise of what could have been.

Eddie Irvine’s fifth-place finish at Interlagos meant he hung on to the championship lead by two points over Mika Hakkinen and Heinz-Harold Frentzen. Frentzen got his second podium from two races in a Jordan that wasn’t really predicted to have the success that it had in 1999.

Meanwhile, in the constructors’ championship, Ferrari had a healthy eight-point lead over McLaren and Jordan, who were tied for second place.

Next time, we head to Imola, Monaco and Barcelona as the European season gets underway.