Chequered Past
Chequered Past is a Formula 1 history podcast that dives deep into iconic races, legendary drivers, and forgotten moments from motorsport’s rich and dramatic past. Each episode revisits Grand Prix events that took place on the same date in history, uncovering fascinating stories, on-track controversies, and the evolution of F1 through the decades. Whether you're a lifelong fan or new to the sport, Chequered Past offers compelling insights and nostalgia-fuelled storytelling from the world’s fastest sport.
Episodes
359 episodes
23rd May 1982: The Race That Nobody Wanted To Win
The 23rd of May has a habit of producing extraordinary racing at Monaco. Three times across three different decades, the same date has delivered three completely different kinds of grand prix.In 1971, Jackie Stewart arrived already leadi...
22nd May 1955: The Teddy Bear That Won at Monaco
On 22 May 1955, Maurice Trintignant — a Provençal winegrower's son who had once been declared clinically dead and carried a stuffed teddy bear in the pocket of every racing car he ever drove — became the first Frenchman to win a World Champions...
21st May 1950: The Crowd That Looked Away
On the 21st of May, Formula One has produced three races that looked, at the time, like any other Sunday — and only revealed their true significance long after the chequered flag.In 1950, at the second round of the very first World Champ...
20th May 1973: The Day That the Drivers Drew the Line
On 20th May, Formula 1 has a habit of making history. In 1962, Jim Clark arrived at Zandvoort with a car that would change the sport forever — even though it didn't win. In 1973, the drivers arrived at a brand new circui...
19th May 1996: The Race That Destroys Its Favourites
On the nineteenth of May, three times across four decades, Monaco did what Monaco does. It destroyed the favourites and handed the race to someone else.Stirling Moss, Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn — three of the fastest drivers in...
18th May 1969: The Race That Wouldn't Follow The Script
On 18th May 1952, Piero Taruffi won the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten after a former champion's Ferrari failed — twice. On 18th May 1958, Maurice Trintignant won at Monaco after every faster car in the field broke before half dista...
17th May 1981: The Weekend That The Pitlane Wept
Three Formula One races share the date of May the seventeenth. Each one is a story in its own right. Together, they trace something larger.In 1981, the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder was overshadowed before it began — a mechanic killed in ...
16th May 1976: The Winners That No One Could Touch
Three races. Three decades. Three drivers who were utterly, completely, unreachably dominant on the day — and yet somehow ended up as supporting characters in their own stories.On the sixteenth of May 1976, Niki Lauda produced one of the...
15th May 2016: The Day That Broke the Favourites
The fifteenth of May keeps appearing in Formula 1 history, and rarely kindly. This episode traces four events on that date across four decades: Keke Rosberg's audacious tyre gamble at the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix,&nbs...
14th May 1972: The Circuit That Rewards The Driver
On the fourteenth of May 1972, a Frenchman in a car nobody expected to win led every lap of the Monaco Grand Prix in continuous heavy rain. Jean-Pierre Beltoise had one Formula One World Championship victory in his career. This was it. It was a...
13th May 1950: The Date That Traced Formula One’s Evolution
On six different 13ths of May, Formula One revealed six very different versions of itself.This episode of Chequered Past travels from the World Championship’s beginning at Silverstone in 1950 through Monaco politics in 1956, Fer...
12th May 2002: The Team Order That Changed The Rules
On the 12th of May 1968, Formula 1 went racing for the first time since Jim Clark died. Five weeks after Hockenheim, five days after losing another driver at Indianapolis, the sport arrived at Jarama in Spain — and Graham Hill won in a red, gol...
11th May 1947: The Failure That Started a Legend
What does it mean to build something that lasts? Not a car, not a season, not a dynasty — but an institution. Something that absorbs failure, survives its founders, outlasts its rivals, and keeps coming back.This episode of Chequered Pas...
10th May 1970: The Streets That Give and Take
Three Formula One races share an exact date — May the tenth — across eleven years. In 1959, Jack Brabham took his first Monaco victory as Stirling Moss’s transmission failed with nineteen laps to run. In 1964, Jim Clark ...
9th May 1993: The Podium That Would Never Be Repeated
On May 9th 1993, at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, three of the greatest drivers in Formula One history stood on a podium together for the only time. Alain Prost won. Ayrton Senna was second. Michael Schumacher was third. Between them, ...
8th May 1982: The Date That Took and Gave
We mark the eighth of May with five stories across forty-five years of Formula One.In 1977, Mario Andretti dominated Jarama while Williams Grand Prix Engineering quietly entered its first race. In 1982, Gilles Villeneuve died...
7th May 1967: The Race That Burned
On the seventh of May 1967, Denny Hulme won the Monaco Grand Prix. Not far behind him, Lorenzo Bandini was dying.This episode is built around a date — the seventh of May — and four races across four decades that each forced Formula One t...
6th May 1984: The Race That Senna Had to Sit Out
The sixth of May has hosted exactly one Formula One World Championship Grand Prix in the sport’s history — Imola, 1984. It was the day Alain Prost led from the first corner and never looked back, the day Nelson Piquet set the race’s fastest lap...
5th May 2024: The Wait That Ended in Miami
It's May the fifth, and Chequered Past returns to three Formula One races separated by four decades. In 1985, Elio de Angelis became the winner of the San Marino Grand Prix without leading a single lap — after Ayrton Senna ran out o...
4th May 1969: The Wings That Rewrote The Rules
On a single calendar date — the fourth of May — three remarkable stories from Formula One history converge. In 1969, the Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuïc produced one of the sport's most terrifying afternoons: twin wing failures sent ...
3rd May 1987: The Wall That Waited
On 3rd May 1981, Formula One’s brand new San Marino Grand Prix roared into life at Imola — and a tyre gamble in changing conditions cost Gilles Villeneuve everything. On 3rd May 1987, Nelson Piquet’s Williams hit the wall at Tambure...
1st May 2026: The Life That Defied Every Obstacle
Alex Zanardi died at home in Bologna on 1 May 2026, aged 59. In this special bonus episode, Chequered Past tells his story from the beginning: the Bologna boyhood shaped by loss, the karting prodigy who swept the 1987 European championship, the...
2nd May 1976: The Off Track Moments That Changed Formula 1
Chequered Past returns to a date that doesn't announce itself — May 2 has never carried a marquee race — but reveals, on close inspection, a remarkable chain of consequential moments. We open in 2000, at Lyon-Satolas airport, where ...
1st May 1994: The Race That Stopped The World
No circuit in Formula One has accumulated more meaning on a single date than Imola on the first of May. In 1983, Patrick Tambay won there for Ferrari carrying Gilles Villeneuve's number, in one of sport's quiet acts of dedication. In 1988, Ayrt...
30th April 1994: The Day That Claimed Ratzenberger
April 30th is one of the most consequential dates in Formula One history — defined not by a single moment, but by what happened, what followed, and what changed.In 1994, qualifying for the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix was brought to a halt...
