Race and classic pictures

When Schumacher reached a painful breaking point

In his long Formula 1 career spanning over 21 years and comprising 306 starts, seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher sustained remarkably few injuries. The worst of them was the broken leg he suffered on this date in 1999 during the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

That year, Schumacher had qualified in second position behind McLaren's Mika Hakkinen, with their respective team mates Eddie Irvine and David Coulthard lining up behind them on the second row.

But when the lights went out, BAR's Jacques Villeneuve and Williams' Alex Zanardi both stalled, forcing race control to throw a red flag. It was under that red flag that Schuamcher's Ferrari suffered a brake failure and went into the barriers at Stowe at high speed. Coulthard (bottom picture) went on to win the race from Irvine after a wheel came off Hakkinen's car.

The broken leg put Schumacher out of Formula 1 until the penultimate race of the season in Malaysia. Mika Salo sat in for him during his absence. When he returned, Schumacher took back-to-back second place finishes but his title chances were long gone.

Hakkinen won the title that year, by just two points from Irvine.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.