1999 Formula One World Championship

[1] His team McLaren just missed out: it was Ferrari that clinched the World Constructors' Championship by a margin of four points.

Williams entered the season with an all-new driver pairing: Ralf Schumacher (driving for Jordan in 1998) and Alessandro Zanardi.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen completed a straight swap with the younger Schumacher, taking the vacant seat at Jordan alongside 1996 champion Damon Hill.

Frentzen's 1998 teammate, the 1997 champion Jacques Villeneuve, moved to the newly founded British American Racing (BAR) team.

He was partnered with McLaren test driver and FIA GT1 champion Ricardo Zonta, one of three F1 rookies on the grid at the beginning of the season.

1998 Tyrrell driver Ricardo Rosset had retired from racing, while his teammate Toranosuke Takagi moved to Arrows.

A wrist injury to Luca Badoer led to Prost test driver Stéphane Sarrazin making his F1 debut at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Mika Salo, driving for Arrows in 1998, was left without a full-time drive for 1999, but he later served as an injury replacement for both Ricardo Zonta for three races (after his accident during practice of the Brazilian Grand Prix), and Ferrari's Michael Schumacher for six races after the latter broke his legs at Silverstone.

[10][11][12][13] The first round of the championship was in Australia and, unsurprisingly, the two McLarens of Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard started on the front row.

So the McLarens were first and second into the first corner and pulled away, until both suddenly broke down: Coulthard when his gearbox failed and Häkkinen with electrical trouble.

This left Eddie Irvine in the second Ferrari to take his first ever win ahead of Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Ralf Schumacher in the Williams.

After the cancellation of two proposed races left an unusual five-week gap in the calendar, the Grand Prix circus struck down in Brazil.

This left Coulthard and Schumacher to battle it out, and the German jumped his rival in the stops to win, sending the tifosi wild.

Schumacher won by half a minute, with Irvine making it a Ferrari 1–2, and Häkkinen had to be content with the last podium spot.

For the next race in Spain, Mika Häkkinen took pole position as usual ahead of Eddie Irvine, teammate David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher.

Coulthard's miseries ensued when he ignored the red light at the end of the pit lane and was handed a stop-go penalty.

Qualifying for the next race in France was disrupted by rain, and it resulted in Rubens Barrichello taking pole ahead of Jean Alesi's Sauber and Olivier Panis's Prost.

He pulled away, but then suffered an electrical problem, which cost him a lot of time and handed the lead back to Barrichello.

Nearing the end of the race, Häkkinen completed his comeback by passing Barrichello to lead, but then both of them, with most other front-runners, had to stop for extra fuel.

Schumacher sustained a broken leg and thus his potential as a Drivers' World Championship contender was cut short.

After the restart, Häkkinen pulled away from Irvine and Coulthard and looked set to win until one of his rear wheels suddenly became detached.

Coulthard led for most of the race, but Irvine jumped him in the second round of pit stops to take the win ahead of the Scot.

Coulthard put Salo under pressure and tried to pass, but hit the Ferrari's tire and damaged his front wing, which forced him to pit for repairs.

In Italy, Mika Häkkinen took his eleventh and what would be his last pole position of the season, ahead of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and David Coulthard.

After two aborted starts, Frentzen led Häkkinen and Coulthard into the first corner, but at the back of the pack, Damon Hill got away slow because of an electrical failure.

Irvine had a slow stop of 30 seconds when his team couldn't find the fourth wheel to put on and with half of the race gone, Frentzen was leading Coulthard and Ralf Schumacher.

Frentzen's race cruelly ended with an electrical failure after his first stop and the new leader Coulthard spun off into retirement when the rain truly arrived.

Giancarlo Fisichella inherited the lead, but he also spun off and retired, so Johnny Herbert in the Stewart gained first place.

And on a drying track, he held on to finish ahead of Jarno Trulli in the Prost and teammate Rubens Barrichello.

After the race, the Ferrari cars were found to be illegal by an FIA official and were disqualified, which would make Häkkinen the world champion instantly.