The Athletic

There was a point in the summer of 1999, where it really looks like Eddie Irvine might do the unthinkable,

an end Ferrari's world championship drought in Michael Schumacher's absence.

But as Irvine will readily admit today,

he feels his unlikely title bid was given a big assist by McLaren and Mick Harkinan

dropping the ball when a straight forward championship was there for the taking.

However, McLaren weren't the only ones helping Irvine out in Germany, as for the first time in his Ferrari career, the man who had been subjected to team orders whenever he found himself in front of Schumacher, now got to benefit from them, as Schumacher's stand in Miccosalo had to give up victory at Hockenheim to help Irvine's quest for the world championship. To discuss all of that and much, much more here on this episode of Bring Back V10s, we have Ed Straw and Matt Beer joining me, Glenn Freeman. To Ed, tell us, when you think of the 1999 German Grand Prix, what's the first thing that comes to mind? I think it's probably the first thing that comes to mind for everyone. It's the Salo race, isn't it? It's the race that Micasalo could slash should have won, depending on where you are in the argument. So, yeah, I think this is one of those races that's just got that one overwhelming storyline that everybody thinks about, even though there's lots of other things going on. Matt, any of those other things make the cut for you here? Are you full Salo as well?

Oh, I wish. The only thing that slightly rivals the feeling of thinking Mika Sala might be

really, really good for a fortnight is was this the race where Patrick Head accidentally

radioed Ralph Schumack and not Alex Nardi to give him a massive bollicking during qualifying. I haven't come across that, but I hope that's true. I think there was one race where in qualifying he pressed, Patrick Head pressed the wrong button and radio you are very slow in this sector, thinking it was to Zanardi, which sadly was often the case, but it was actually Ralph and Ralph wasn't impressed. I think that was Hockenheim. Before we get going, then, if you've not checked out the race members club yet, you really are missing out. From Bring Back V10s, you not only get access to all regular episodes early and ad-free, but you get bonus podcasts and videos from us all year round now. We're currently in the middle of our second revisited series

where we go back through an F1 season race by race. This year, we're doing 1993, which was

voted for by our members. So you get to have a say in that as well. During the main run of new

episodes, which we are now firmly in, you get to ask questions about each show, which I then answer in our new debrief

episodes. We launched that in season 11. And our members get to ask questions as well for our

end of season Q&A and members only bonus shows that run between series as well. There's so much

more. We've got chat style community groups. We can talk to like-minded fans. There's bonus stuff around current F1. Ed's involved in a lot of that. There's even MotoGP stuff. Matt's involved in a lot of that. So if you're a two-wheeled fan as well, you can add a membership that's got that. So why not come and check it out? We've got seven-day free trials running at the moment as we release this episode.

You can find links to us in the description of this show as well. It's got to be worth a look. Even when you have to pay for it, it costs less than a price of a cup of coffee for a month, or at least where I live. And it'll last a lot longer. And too honest, I don't like coffee, so I'd rather have this. The big news then heading into Hockenheim focused on if McLaren would implement team orders

after David Cuthard had taken Mick Hacken and out at the start of the Austrian Grand Prix,

with title rival Eddie Irvine going on to win that race for Ferrari.

McLaren said there would be no team orders and the drivers remained

free to race with Coulthard fifth in the standings, but only 16 points behind Hacking in the

championship, so therefore definitely not out of contention. McClaren boss Ron Dennis said the team

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