When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate.

We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe.

His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently.

The wanker.

Pretty much since his F1 debut with Sauber in 2002, Felipe Massa has been doing his best to shake off his reputation as a driver who is fast but wild, while for roughly the same period, dotdotdotcomma has been doing its best to reinforce that reputation.

It's not that we harbour any particular dislike of the chap but Massa is no more capable of changing his underlying nature than he is of, oh, I don't know, not spinning five times in the wet at Silverstone in 2008. During the duller parts of a Formula One season, it's nice to have someone a bit mad in the field for the occasional moments of insanity they provide and ever since Takuma Sato left the sport, Massa is the best we have.

That said, Massa has been guilty at times of Ferrarigance, which is a word we've just made up for the special brand of arrogance only a fully brainwashed Ferrari team member can display. His ridiculous protestations that Fernando Alonso had impeded him during qualifying at Monza in 2006 readily spring to mind, as does his failure to acknowledge that his spin at Fuji in 2008 had been caused when he turned in on Sebatien Bourdais. On both occasions, of course, the stewards favoured the bloke in red.

In any case, F1 would probably be less of a spectacle without loonies like Massa and "fast but wild" is not a bad epithet to have. It could be a lot worse. Just look at what we've called Michael Schumacher or Jacques Villeneuve.

Kimi Raikkonen clearly loves his racing but can just as clearly take or leave everything that goes with it. Often electrifying behind the wheel, he sounds so wretchedly bored by the whole affair when he's interviewed that you're left wondering exactly why he carries on. He is, to borrow Martin Brundle's memorable phrase, extremely low-voltage.

Raikkonen entered F1 with Sauber in 2001, despite only having competed in 23 car races in his life. He'd won 13 of them but the FIA still needed convincing that he wasn't going to be a danger to himself and others before they issued his superlicence. They needn't have worried: Kimi scored a point in his debut race, having reportedly been asleep only half an hour before the start.

When Mika Hakkinen retired from the sport, Kimi was snapped up by McLaren, where they need to have a Finnish driver to prevent the fall of the Tower of London or something, so Raikkonen found himself paired with David Coulthard, during a season that once again turned out not to be the Scot's year.

Several seasons of poor reliability led Kimi to sign for Ferrari from 2007 and it turned out to be a good choice, since he won the title in his first season with the team, overcoming a seemingly insurmountable 17-point deficit to rookie Lewis Hamilton in the final two races.

It has, however, been Kimi's extra-curricular activities that have generated the most column inches. He has had contretemps with photographers, out-stripped lap-dancers, won snowmobile races under the pseudonym "James Hunt", been thrown out of nightclubs with his inflatable dolphin, raced powerboats dressed as a gorilla and and married a model.

After an electrical fire led to his retirement from second place in Monte Carlo in 2006, the TV cameras followed Kimi as he stomped through the streets, helmet still on, and straight onto a yacht (presumably his own) floating in the harbour. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine him subsequently drinking it dry.

The yacht, that is, not the harbour.

Sebastien Bourdais is a stroppy french racing driver who's dabbled in a number of motorsport disciplines with varying levels of success, although he will always be remembered at dotdotdotcomma for entertaining the crowd at the 2007 Race of Champions with a sizeable hissy fit after crashing with what he claimed was a stuck throttle and then stomping off in a huff of which any teenager would have been proud. It's all just for fun, Sebastien mon ami.

Bourdais won the International F3000 Championship at the third attempt, beating career GP2 racer Giorgio Pantano by a couple of points but only claiming the title following a failed drugs test by points leader Tomas Enge, who had alerted officials to the possibility that he was indulging in substance abuse by claiming that he could drive his car upside-down across a ceiling.

For the 2003 season, Bourdais signed a deal to race in F1 for Arrows, who promptly went bust, so the surly frenchman jetted across to America to have a crack at Champ Car racing. He started his very first race from pole and went on to win four consecutive titles from 2004 to 2007, becoming the first person since Ted Hat in 1948 to do the horn trick, or possibly the first person since Ted Horn in 1948 to do the hat trick.

His second go at getting into F1 led to a race seat with Toro Rosso for the 2008 season, during which he was consistently blown away by promising rookie Sebastian Vettel and his humour improved not one jot.

He somehow managed to keep his seat into 2009, this time partnering promising rookie Sebastien Buemi, until Toro Rosso finally lost patience with (a) his bad form and (ii) his bad temper, and sacked him after the German Grand Prix, even going so far in their desperation to get rid him as to replace him with someone not called Sebastien.

Nelson Angelo Piquet has six names, although we've picked his three best known ones. He is commonly known as Nelson Piquet Junior and also as Nelsinho Piquet, which he has asked people not to use any more.

Nelsinho is the son of Nelson Piquet, who claimed three world championships and made no friends along the way. His father's money meant that he could race for his own team all the way up to GP2, after which things get a bit expensive even for multi-millionaires.

His last championship was in 2004 when he won the British F3 title, although the perenially under-funded and criminally under-rated Ulsterman Adam Carroll heroically took the fight to the last event at Brands Hatch, about which we could go on but probably shouldn't.

Little Nelson competed in GP2 and A1GP, before curiously being picked up by the Renault F1 équipe, first as a test driver and subsequently as a racer, where his disappointing form was about what many of the more astute paddock observers had been expecting.

The perception of him as a sulky rich kid was given further weight when, after being sacked by Renault part way through 2009, he went running to the FIA with allegations of race-fixing, claiming that some bigger boys had forced him to crash deliberately at Singapore in 2008, in order to put team-mate Fernando Alonso on exactly the right strategy to claim the win.

The revelation was indeed shocking. We'd all got so used to seeing Piquet crash that believing he'd done so on purpose was difficult to reconcile. The fall-out saw Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds lose their jobs and, if there's any justice, brought an end to Nelsinho's career in the top flight.