Mercedes-Benz is a German motor vehicle manufacturer improbably named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer stars Mercedes McNab and Julie Benz, who played dumpy failed vampirette Harmony and fiendlishly sexy uber-vamp Darla respectively.

Mark Webber is an Australian racing driver and a bloody good one too, mate, although ever since an aerodynamic fault led to his Mercedes somersaulting twice on the Mulsanne straight during practice for the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours, he has put forward a convincing case for being Johnny Herbert's successor as the unluckiest man in F1 or, indeed, sportscars.

He has lost more F1 podium finishes through no fault of his own than he has any right to and more than once he has been in a position to win a race that has then been snatched away from him. Notable amongst these occasions was the drenched 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, when his own nearly-team-mate Sebastian Vettel ran into the back of him behind the safety car just as it looked as if the second-placed Webber had the beating of eventual winner Lewis Hamilton. Strewth!

In fact, the Japanese race in 2007 turned out to be really quite eventful for Mark, who had food poisoning for the race and threw up inside his helmet during the first safety car period. Yuk.

Given his luck, it is perhaps not surprising that Mark is also twice a winner of the "Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'F*ck' In A Live ITV Broadcast" award¹.


¹"What was Sato doing, for f*ck's sake?", Turkey 2005 and "Kids with not enough experience to do a good job that they f*ck it all up", Japan 2007

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.

The first Polish F1 racing driver, Robert Kubica also possesses the most remarkable nose seen in the sport since the days of Alain Prost. Even the 2004 Williams "walrus nose" didn't make as many people jump when they saw it for the first time.

Pushing his startling proboscis to one side for a moment (no mean feat in itself), Kubica has quickly come to be recognised as one of the very finest talents around. His exemplary 2008 season was seen by many as more deserving of a title than those of the McLaren and Ferrari drivers, who actually stood a chance of winning it.

His maiden victory in Canada during the 2008 season was scored at the track where a year previously he had crashed spectacularly, clipping Jarno Trulli's Toyota and becoming airborne before striking a crash barrier at over 185mph. The accident subjected Kubica momentarily to 75G but a trip to hospital revealed nothing more than light concussion and a sprained ankle.

Either safety had come a long way in F1 or they build them tough in Krakow.

A Grand Prix team founded in 1977 by an Italian financier and a group of people who'd just left the Shadow team, whose initials together made up the acronym AROWS, which is almost a word. Shadow, having lost Tony Southgate, Jackie Oliver and Dave Wass to the new team, presumably became known simply as "Had", although we're still scouring the record books to confirm this.

Arrows designed and built their first car, the FA/1, in just over seven weeks and were promptly banned from using it because it was essentially an exact copy of the Shadow car. Its replacement, again produced in just over seven weeks, was called the A1, although on the track it was anything but.

The Italian financier, meanwhile, left the team after being slung in jail for financial irregularities. Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

Renaming themselves Footwork at the beginning of 1991 did nothing to improve the team's fortunes and they had to wait until 1997, by which time they were called Arrows again, before almost winning a race, Damon Hill coming within half a lap of victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix before the failure of a throttle component that famously cost 50p.¹

The 2002 season was to be the team's last, with the money running out halfway through the year. At the french Grand Prix, the drivers were asked to fail to qualify deliberately - rather than it just seeming that way - to avoid the harsh penalities that Bernie Ecclestone sees fit to impose when a team's really struggling.

They finally chucked in the towel with five races to go and left the sport having set a new record of 382 races without a win, most of which were down to Derek Warwick.


¹That's probably why it failed. Other teams were spending between £60 and £70 on it.