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.

Born in the picturesque English hamlet of Stevenage in 1985, Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton was named after the American sprinter Carl Lewis and the legendary British easy listening DJ David Hamilton. He has since moved to Switzerland and attempted to distance himself from association with David Hamilton.

Hamilton famously approached McLaren boss Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards in 1995 and told him that he wanted to race for him one day. Dennis told the ten-year-old Hamilton to call him in a few years and thus was a mutually rewarding relationship forged. Some of the more disreputable members of the dotdotdotcomma staff have since adopted a similar strategy in approaching girls in clubs, although they have yet to demonstrate a level of success anything like Hamilton managed.

On his way to F1, Hamilton picked up titles in karting, Formula Renault UK, the F3 Euroseries and GP2, after which he picked up Nicole Scherzinger, who was apparently already a well-known singer with girl band Pussycat Dolls, but who first came to the attention of the dotdotdotcomma editorial team for wearing a really smashing dress during the title-deciding race at Brazil in 2008 and then jumping about in it quite a lot.

Hamilton's time in F1 has been far from dull and he has shown almost as much ill-conceived misjudgement as he has jaw-dropping ability. The audacious overtaking moves and lightning pace have been accompanied by pit-lane crashes and overly optimistic first-lap lunges, as well as more than his fair share of FIA wrist-slaps.

The decision to strip him of his win at Spa in 2008, seemingly for being too good at overtaking Kimi Raikkonen, still baffles those of us who don't wear Ferrari T-shirts.

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.

One of the few modern privateer F1 teams that lasted for more than a decade, Sauber began life as a sportscar manufacturer, enjoying some success (despite basing themselves in Switzerland, where motorsport is actually illegal) and forging a slightly distasteful alliance with the young Michael Schumacher.

The team moved into Formula One at the beginning of 1993, turning up at the first race with cars sporting a black livery which appeared excitingly modern and sleek but which was, in fact, just the first indication that the world's dullest F1 team had arrived.

Even potentially exciting developments, such as (a) grabbing a top-flight engine by forging a slightly distasteful alliance with Ferrari, (2) promoting a vastly inexperienced Kimi Raikkonen from Formula Renault straight to an F1 race seat and (iii) courting controversy by apparently running an exact copy of Ferrari's 2003 car and passing it off as their own, could not change the general perception of them as a bit dull.

Even when they spent a fortune on a state-of-the-art supercomputer, they went and called it Albert.

The curtain came down on their 13 years in the sport at the end of 2005, when BMW completed a takeover of the team and Peter Sauber presumably celebrated by having a really nice cigar.