F1 Championships: Runners-Up of the 1980s Quiz

Answer: Nelson Piquet

Nelson Piquet (who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1952) made his grand prix debut in 1978 and scored his first F1 points in 1979, but it was in 1980 that the future triple world champion first became a race winner and championship contender. His first win was the United States Grand Prix West, which was held at the Long Beach track in California, and he followed that up with two further wins at the Dutch Grand Prix and Italian Grand Prix later in the season.

However, the season was dominated by the Williams team - whose drivers Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann finished first and third in the drivers' championship - and Piquet had to settle for the runners-up spot, while his Brabham team ended up third in the constructors' championship behind Ligier. Piquet's talent was underlined by the fact that his team-mates (Ricardo Zunino in the first part of the season and Hector Rebaque in the second) only managed to score a single point between them.

Answer: Carlos Reutemann

The 1981 South African Grand Prix took place before the start of the main F1 season and was run to Formula Libre rules but with only some of the F1 teams competing thanks to a political dispute between two rival governing bodies. The defending champions, Williams, were one of the teams that did enter the race and one of their drivers, Carlos Reutemann, duly won it. Reutemann's form continued into the first part of the season and he took two victories, two second-places and one third-place in the first five races.

However, his challenge trailed off after those early successes and two non-points finishes in the last two races of the season handed the title to Piquet and Brabham by a single point.

Answer: Didier Pironi

The 1982 F1 season was marred by political wrangling, sporting disputes and the tragic deaths of two drivers as well as the career-ending accident suffered by Didier Pironi. The first race of the season saw a strike by the drivers and the fourth race of the season, the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, was boycotted by a number of the teams. The Ferrari team, along with their drivers Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi, were one of the teams that did take part and their domination of the race led to the team ordering both drivers to slow down. Villeneuve was in the lead and obeyed the team order, but Pironi chose to interpret the order differently and overtook Villeneuve on the final lap to win the race. The bad blood between the team-mates was immediately obvious and Villeneuve vowed never to speak to Pironi again - a prophetic statement, given that Villeneuve was killed in qualifying for the next race in Belgium.

Riccardo Paletti of the Osella team was killed at the Canadian Grand Prix and Didier Pironi had a massive accident in practice for the German Grand Prix, which ended both his championship challenge and his F1 career. Keke Rosberg claimed his only championship title and the fact that Pironi wasn't overtaken for the runners-up spot was probably of little consolation to him.

Answer: Alain Prost

The 1983 season was a tight contest in which a total of eight drivers from six different teams claimed an F1 race win. Alain Prost took four races (the French, Belgian, British and Austrian Grands Prix) and led the championship for the majority of the season.

However, a number of non-points finishes and three retirements in the last four races of the season doomed his championship challenge and his title lead was overhauled at the final race in South Africa when Nelson Piquet of the Brabham team finished in third place, while Prost's Renault sat forlornly by the side of the track following a turbo failure.

The Renault team were also runners-up in the constructors' championship behind Ferrari (whose drivers, René Arnoux and Patrick Tambay, finished third and fourth in the drivers' championship).

Answer: Alain Prost

The 1984 season proved to be no luckier for Alain Prost than the previous one as he again finished as the runner-up, this time by the even closer margin of just half a point. The half point came about when the rain-affected Monaco Grand Prix was stopped early and only half-points were awarded to the top six finishers, which included Prost who was in second place behind Ayrton Senna when the red flag stopped the race, but was awarded the win thanks to a rule which counted back to the positions after the last fully completed lap.

In the end, Prost won seven races in 1984 compared to just five wins for the eventual champion, Niki Lauda. Both drivers suffered several retirements as a result of reliability problems, but Lauda had more podium finishes than Prost and therefore secured his third and final world championship title by the slimmest of possible margins.

Answer: Michele Alboreto

Alain Prost finally broke his run of runners-up finishes by winning the F1 drivers' championship in 1985, leaving the position open for Ferrari's Michele Alboreto to claim instead. Alboreto, a rare example of a successful Italian Ferrari driver, took a total of three race victories for the Ferrari team, two of which were the 1985 Canadian Grand Prix and the 1985 German Grand Prix.

He also had a further five podium finishes for the Ferrari team that year and held the championship lead on-and-off until the Austrian Grand Prix, after which Alain Prost took over and Alboreto's challenge fell away thanks to the unreliability of his Ferrari. Alboreto remained with the Ferrari team until the end of the 1988 season, but they won no more races together and his runners-up spot in 1985 remained the high point of his career.

He retired from the sport in 1994 and was killed while testing a sportscar at the Lausitzring in Germany in 2001.

Answer: Nigel Mansell

Replays of the left-rear tyre of Nigel Mansell's Williams F1 car exploding at 180mph on the Adelaide street circuit's Brabham Straight, amidst a shower of sparks, are often aired because it was one of the most dramatic F1 incidents of the 1980s. Sadly for Mansell, it marked the end of his season-long challenge for the world championship title and left him with the much undesired runners-up spot.

It also cost his Williams team-mate Nelson Piquet a chance of a third world title, as he was forced to make a precautionary pit stop in the aftermath and handed both the lead of the race and a second consecutive championship to McLaren's Alain Prost.

Answer: Nigel Mansell

Nigel Mansell was the F1 world championship runner-up for the second season in a row in 1987. This time, his championship challenge didn't go down to the wire, but was ended when he crashed his Williams in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix and suffered injuries to his ribs that ruled him out of both that race and the final race of the season in Australia.

At that point he was 12 points behind the championship leader, his team-mate Nelson Piquet, with two races and a maximum of 18 points remaining.

In Australia, his car was taken over by the Brabham driver Riccardo Patrese, who could only manage 9th place because it broke down with an oil leak with two laps remaining - so even if Mansell had finished the season he would probably have been runner-up anyway.

Answer: Alain Prost

For most of the 1980s, F1 operated a points system that allocated 9 points for a win, 6 for second and then 4-3-2-1 for third to sixth places respectively, with the added stipulation that only a driver's best 11 results could be counted towards their championship points total. Alain Prost scored a total of 105 points from 7 wins and 7 second-places, but had to discount three of those second-places, worth 18 points, for a final tally of 87. Meanwhile his team-mate, Ayrton Senna, scored 94 points from 8 wins, 3 second-places, a fourth-place and a sixth-place, but only had to drop the latter two scores (worth just 4 points) for a final total of 90. So the championship title went to Senna. That particular scoring system only lasted another two seasons before being dropped in 1991 in favour of a system that included all of a driver's results.

Answer: Ayrton Senna

McLaren's Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna continued their championship rivalry from 1988 into the 1989 season. They took ten race victories between them (six for Senna and four for Prost), but Senna was 16 points behind Prost with two races to go as a result of a series of mechanical failures on his McLaren and an accident at the Portuguese Grand Prix.

At the penultimate race in Japan, the pair crashed at the chicane when Senna challenged his team-mate for the lead of the race and both cars were initially out of the race before Senna got the marshals to give him a push start.

He was then able to not only re-join the race, but fight back to take the victory as well. However, shortly after the race, the stewards made the controversial decision to disqualify Senna for missing the chicane as a result of the accident and handed the championship win to Prost.

The incident caused an already poor relationship between the team-'mates' to become even worse; a situation that continued into the races of the early 1990s and became one of the greatest rivalries in the history of the sport.