The Athletic

Ruben's Barakello's move to Ferrari in 2000 was always likely to result in him finally becoming an F1 winner at some point

that he probably thought it would come in more straightforward

circumstances than it did when he finally broke his duck at Hockenheim that year.

Barrichello came from 18th on the grid to win the German Grand Prix, helped by a track

invader and an inspired strategy call to stay out on dry weather tires when the rain hit

one end of the circuit.

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of tears afterwards, first on the slowing down lap,

then again on the podium, creating those iconic images that are instantly recognizable today

where Barrichello is sobbing into a Brazilian flag.

So joining me, Glenn Freeman, to revisit Germany 2000, and hopefully

without bursting into tears at any point, are Ed Straw and Ben Anderson. Now, Ed, you know the

drill with the opening question. When you think of this race weekend, what's the first thing that

comes to mind? Well, it's the track invader, but one specific aspect of it in particular, and that's his execution of his mission that really sticks in the mind, because it's a nod to one of my favourite things in football, because you know you get protests at football that are scrawled on bed sheets, they're quite hard to read, the font size is all wrong, they're running out of space, and it's just very, very hard. It undercuts the seriousness of the protest, and the track invader at Hockenheim had quite a similar vibe, didn't he? Whatever he had written wasn't actually very easy to read. It was on, I don't know, white coat or something under his. He had one of those sort of plastic raincoats over the top. So that almost undermined what he was doing. So I think the message I want to get

across here is that if you are going to do something stupendously dangerous like that,

and absolutely don't, make sure you've got your sign writing and order and your messaging right,

brief to the point. Can't be an afterthought. That's a good point. Until we researched this

episode, I wasn't aware of what the messaging said because it was so hard to work out. I think I've seen some claims of what it said. I'm not sure we've put it in the episode. Maybe I'll have to dig it out mid-recording and we can see what the internet claimed was on the back of, yeah, I don't know. Was it a coat? Was it a giant bed sheet?

No idea.

But if we're talking about achieving his mission, as we'll get into, he did spectacularly cost the Mercedes-powered McLaren's victory.

So I guess even if he couldn't read his message, he messed up Mercedes-Day, which I think

was his goal. Ben, you passed your audition on our recent Imola-99 episode, so it's good to have

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