The exact Ferrari chassis that Michael Schumacher was driving when he claimed his fifth world championship at the 2002 French Grand Prix has become the second-most expensive Formula 1 car ever sold at auction, after fetching a cool $6,643,750.

The car was the stand-out lot in RM Sotheby’s and Formula 1’s first ever auction, held at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend at the Yas Marina Circuit on November 30.

The final sale price of the F2002 was the second highest amount ever paid for a Formula 1 car in history – the highest being when another Schumacher car, an F2001, was sold by RM Sotheby’s for $7,500,000 in 2017. A portion of the funds from the sale of the 2002 car will go to the Schumacher family’s Keep Fighting Foundation

Also on offer in the sale was the sole remaining 1982 Ferrari 126 C2 chassis in the world, an ex-Patrick Tambay and Mario Andretti-driven car (pictured above) that went for $2,143,750.

At the lower end of the price scale, meanwhile, a Formula 1 Slot Car Racetrack signed by all 20 of the 2019 drivers sold for $48,000, with the proceeds from that sale benefitting the Reaching the Last Mile Fund.

In total, RM Sotheby’s inaugural auction held in partnership with Formula 1 generated $31.3 million in total sales.

Top Ten Sales

1. 2017 Pagani Zonda Aether - $6,812,500
2. 2002 Ferrari F2002 - $6,643,750
3. 2015 Ferrari FXX K - $4,281,250
4. 1982 Ferrari 126 C2 - $2,143,750
5. 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing - $1,581,250
6. 2011 Aston Martin One-77 - $1,440,625
7. 2014 Koenigsegg Agera R - $1,356,250
8. 1996 Zagato Raptor Concept - $1,086,250
9. 1993 Porsche 911 Singer - $825,000
10. 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8 - $782,500

The decade of the 2010s in Formula 1 began with the dominance of Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing, and it closed with the celebration of a sixth championship for Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton.

In between, however, there were plenty of missteps and more than one disappointment. Here's a look back at 10 disappointments that top the list:

1: Failure to tell a good story

The biggest disappointment in the last 10 years is probably Formula 1’s failure to tell the story of the extraordinary abilities of the new hybrid V6 turbo engines in 2014.The new formula was trashed by several key people in F1, notably then-Ferrari boss Luca Montezemolo, who called F1 “taxi-cab racing.”

Chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was also guilty of the same kind of criticism, as was Melbourne F1 promotor Ron Walker and Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz.

Jean Todt, the FIA president, missed a great opportunity to promote the sport at a time when motorsport needed a more sustainable story.

2: Money talks

One of the biggest disappointments in the last decade was the way in which the private equity company CVC Capital Partners cared only about the return on its investment in the sport and pursued cash ruthlessly throughout its tenure between 2006 and 2017.Everything they did was designed to squeeze money from the sport and to avoid any investment. Perhaps one cannot criticize such people as this is their goal, but it is a good warning to all sports to avoid the same happening to them.

3: Honda in 2015

McLaren ended its 20-year partnership with Mercedes-Benz in 2014, in favor of a return to Honda the following year.The previous McLaren-Honda relationship between 1988 and 1992 had been the most successful in F1 history.

The new partnership, however, quickly turned into a complete disaster with the relationship breaking down completely in 2017, with McLaren doing a deal to use Renault engines and Honda jumping into a new partnership with Scuderia Toro Rosso.

4: New Jersey

In 2011, construction workers paused from their work along what was to be pit lane, to hear the official announcement that there would be a Grand Prix of America on a street circuit at Port Imperial on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, opposite midtown Manhattan, in 2013.The proposed circuit was brilliant and promised to create a new Monaco-style race. A parking garage was designed to be converted into a pit and race control building, with the ground floor transforming into retail outlets for the rest of the year. It all fell apart over money.

The garage is still there.

5: Robert Kubica's crash

Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica was seriously injured while competing in the Ronde di Andora rally in February 2011.A crash barrier came through the engine compartment and into the cockpit area of the car, leaving Kubica with multiple fractures to his arm, hand and leg.

Kubica was due to race for the Lotus F1 team that year but had already signed a precontract that would have seen him driving for Ferrari in 2012.

Although he later returned to F1 with Williams at the end of the decade, the sport was deprived of the best years of one of the most talented drivers of his generation.

6: Hispania, Manor, Caterham

The 2010 Formula 1 season began with three completely new teams entering Formula 1, offering the hope of new blood in the sport.The problem was that the financial structure of the sport was such that they won very little prize money.

The first to go was Hispania, which had become HRT, which disappeared at the end of 2012. Lotus became Caterham but lasted only until the end of 2014, while Virgin became Marussia and then Manor but closed up shop at the end of 2016.

7: F1 Indian Grand Prix

The arrival of Formula 1 in India suggested that the sport was on the verge of breaking into the world’s second most populous country, but the Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit outside New Delhi was not a great success.The event was held three times, the last being in 2013, but then there was a dispute over taxes between the sport and the government of the state of Uttar Pradesh, which meant the race contract was terminated.

8: Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso was unquestionably one of the most talented drivers of his generation, winning two World Championships early in his career with Renault in 2005 and 2006.The fact that he never won another title was a great disappointment, although his career choices were largely to blame for his lack of success. His move to Ferrari in 2010 was expected to put the red team back on top, but after five years of failure he quit.

A further four years at McLaren were even less successful.

9: Pay TV

The decision to switch TV coverage to pay-TV stations in many parts of the world meant that the sport made a great deal more money.The switch also meant that F1 fans in the sport’s primary markets were deprived of free-to-air coverage, and as a result TV viewership tumbled dramatically.

These losses were balanced by gains in viewer numbers from new markets, but the sport lost a lot of hardcore fans because of its greed in the course of the 2010s.

10: Williams

After its relationship with BMW ended in 2005, Williams had to fall back on customer engines and gradually slipped down the F1 field.In the early years of the 2010s, things were dire but then in 2014 the team did a deal to use Mercedes engines and suddenly the team was back in the running, or so it seems. In 2014 and 2015, the team was third in the constructors’ championship but then fell back to fifth in 2016 and 2017 and has finished last in 2018 and 2019—despite still using Mercedes power units.

It has been a painful ride for Williams F1 fans.

PODCAST #86 – Damon Hill: Overcoming loss, achieving success, and finding one’s identity

F1 veteran Kimi Raikkonen has been in the sport for a long time and he even has a few unique records of his own. One example is that he is the only driver to take a race win during the V10, V8 and V6 Turbo eras. However, there is another unique record to his name, though he shares this one with fellow Finn, Keke Rosberg.

Both drivers are the only 2 F1 world champions to have won more races in a year where they did not win the title. Case in point is the 2005 Formula One season where Kimi Raikkonen recorded 7 wins, but the title went to Fernando Alonso and Renault. Meanwhile, Keke Rosberg won only two races in 1985, when the title went to Alain Prost.

Kimi Raikkonen also missed out on a world championship in 2003 when he lost to Michael Schumacher by 2 points. Another interesting fact about the 2005 season was that he equalled Alain Prost’s 1984 record of the most wins in a season without winning the title.

He was heading into the season on the back of a disappointing 2004, and things looked fairly bleak when he finished P8 and P9 in his first two races. However, things soon picked up as he won back to back wins in Spain and Monaco, putting himself right behind Championship favourite Alonso.

Raikkonen then pulled up his socks and his best driving came at the end of the season, winning four of the last seven races, This included one of his best ever drives from the back of the grid to pull off an incredible triumph in Suzuka. He fought his way to the front, passing Schumacher and putting in stunning laps to pit and come out ahead of front-runners Webber and Button, but behind leader Fisichella. With his form that day though, he quickly caught the Italian and passed him for the win.

At last, in 2007, his crowning glory came when he plucked the world championship from under the noses of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. The McLaren duo had been warring throughout the season, while Kimi Raikkonen just did his own thing.

MONGRIP launch a special bracelet made from a tyre run by Ayrton Senna during his iconic performance at the 1993 European Grand Prix - the race which saw him climb from fifth to first on lap one, a lap widely regarded as the best seen in the sport.

Donington. 1993. Senna. Nothing more needs to be said.

In what is widely regarded as the Brazilian's finest ever drive, Senna won at Donington by over 80-seconds. Such was his brilliance that only Damon Hill finished alongside him on the lead lap. Even fierce rival Alain Prost, who finished third, was a lap down.

MONGRIP, alongside the Senna brand, have teamed the racing tyre rubber with 18 karat gold trim, and the 161-bracelets, were launched at the Automobile Club of Monaco.

“What struck me with the MONGRIP Legend Senna Limited Edition is that they were able to source one of the most iconic tyres ever used by Senna in F1," said Bruno Senna, nephew of Ayrton. "The 1993 Donington Park Grand Prix is undeniably one of the most spectacular performances by Ayrton.

"I have many objects which remind me of my uncle, but none as particular as this bracelet that gives honor in a modern and elegant way."

Being launched in Monaco and with 18 karat gold, you would be right to think that a piece of memorabilia is not cheap. One bracelet will set you back €4,400 (£3,745).

The following is an excerpt from the new book: “Niki Lauda: His Competition History,” by Jon Saltinstall. The hardcover book contains 375 pages and 500 photos and is available for pre-order from The RACER Store. Click here for more information.

From the introduction…

For those with little more than a passing interest in the history of Formula 1 motor racing, Niki Lauda is the man who survived a near-fatal conflagration at the Nurburgring in 1976 and came back to win the World Championship a year later, having lost out to James Hunt following the accident.

Those concerned with the history of the sport in a little more depth know of him as the teenager who started racing against the wishes of his family, bought a March works drive, wheedled his way into BRM and, having shown his mettle there, got the call from Ferrari just when things were on the up and was able to shape a winning team around him. A man who turned his back on the Scuderia (after two world titles) much as Enzo Ferrari had done to him following the accident, went to Brabham in a big-money deal with Bernie Ecclestone, then walked away from the sport and went off to run his own airline. A man who then came out of retirement two years later and took a third world title before retiring for good, but stayed close to the sport with roles as a TV presenter and a team principal.

But a closer analysis of Lauda’s career on a race-by-race basis reveals a lot more than this. It shows a man who was always fiercely assured of his own capabilities, but who from the earliest days had a level of self-control and racecraft that would epitomize his career. He had a well-developed awareness of the sport’s risks – he got out of Formula 3 in the last year of its ‘screamer’ era as he found it inhabited by madmen – but was as quick as anyone on the great unsanitized road circuits at Spa, Brno and the Nürburgring; indeed, he holds the outright Formula 1 and touring car lap records for the Nordschleife.

He was a versatile all-rounder who won hillclimbs on alpine mountains and grass-roots ‘Flugplatzrennen’ on concrete airfields, who competed successfully in Group 6 sports prototypes and who was acknowledged as one of the best touring car drivers of his day. In Formula 2 and later Formula 1 he had to measure himself against a teammate who was regarded at the time as the fastest in the business, Ronnie Peterson, and he emerged also with a reputation as a great test and development driver. In 1979, while enduring a season in one of the least reliable Formula 1 cars of his career, he had the motivation and competitiveness in more equal machinery to win the concurrent Procar Championship.

His status as the definitive ‘comeback king’ stands up not just in the context of his return to racing after his Nurburgring accident in 1976, but perhaps, more significantly, in his return to the cockpit after retiring from the sport in 1979. Few other drivers have delivered championships in different eras, let alone after having a two-year hiatus when they did not compete at all. Formula 1 in the 1980s was a very different sport from the one it had been in the 1970s, requiring a step-change in driving style and technique; Lauda not only adapted to it, he mastered it.

1968: Beginnings

Whether or not his family believed in his abilities as a racing driver, Niki Lauda certainly did. Self-confidence was never an issue for the young Viennese, who built his career entirely independently from the wealthy background into which he was born. Living on his wits and his undoubted street-wise intelligence, he later said that in the beginning he was always one car ahead of his career (and his bank account); the one he was actually racing at any one time had not yet been paid for.

The foundation for his first racing season is a story that has entered motor racing folklore. In late-night high jinks on an icy road, he wrote off a Mini belonging to school friend Peter Draxler’s father, then bought the wreck for 38,000 schillings that he borrowed from his grandmother, and almost immediately part-exchanged it for a full-blown two-year-old Group 2 racing Austin Mini Cooper S from state champion Fritz Baumgartner. Baumgartner hit it off with the forthright youngster and helped him reassemble the Mini’s 1,275cc engine in the garage of the Lauda residence, Niki’s parents having been persuaded that he was merely looking after the machine for a friend and that working on it would help him develop his engineering skills. His ability to talk his way out of trouble was already well-developed…

Listed in the program as ‘A.N. Lauder’, the young Austrian’s first motorsport event was the Bad Muhllacken hillclimb, organized by the Motorsportclub Rottenegg. He took part in his ex-Baumgartner Mini that he and the car’s former owner had fettled to deliver some 100hp. The purchase price had included a few exploratory laps at the Semperit tire company’s Kottingbrunn test track, where, to the surprise of the Mini’s vendor, Lauda had immediately found the ideal line, showing none of the hasty overexcitement so often displayed by newcomers.

Baumgartner, one of the quickest touring car drivers in Austria at the time, was impressed, but cautioned the youngster that as these few laps represented his only experience of the car, for his first competitive outing he should use no more than 8,000rpm rather than the 9,000rpm the engine would accept.

Lauda surprised more experienced drivers at Bad Muhllacken with his self-discipline as he dutifully stuck to his self-imposed speed limit to avoid overreaching himself – and also to avoid incurring any damage that he could ill afford to pay for. A clean, steady first ascent was good enough for third quickest time. Using another 500rpm, his second run was fastest outright and gave him second place on aggregate in his class, 1.5 seconds adrift of the overall victor. He reflected later that he could have gone quicker; the car still had something to spare.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen among other things one of his former racing Ferraris, a Ferrari engine signed by the German, and even a tiny piece of racing hardware with the man’s autograph go under the hammer.

At the Paris event that started on February 5, auction house RM Sotheby’s is now trying to find an owner for a Ferrari helmet used by Schumacher back in 2001.

The piece is question is the Schuberth QF1 he wore when he won the 2001 Malaysian Grand Prix. The helmet was then demoted to a spare during the Barcelona Grand Prix, and later was used to shoot a Schuberth QF1 ad.

The helmet is made of carbon fiber and comes complete with the visor used during the Malaysian Grand Prix, signed and dated by Michael Schumacher. It also comes with a certificate attesting its authenticity, enough to make Sotheby’s confident it can fetch up to €60,000 for it ($65,000).

Michael Schumacher’s glory years behind the wheel of a Formula 1 racer were those when he was on the payroll of the Scuderia. Of the 7 championships he won in his career, five were consecutive wins for Ferrari, between 2000 and 2004. He also drove for Jordan Grand Prix and Benetton, scoring a total of 91 race wins to his name.

Schumacher disappeared from the public eye in December 2013, when he got injured on a ski slope in the French Alps. The following surgeries and treatment saved his life, but due to privacy reasons his current physical and mental state remains largely unknown.