Ranking the 5 Most Amazing Moments in Formula 1 in 2015

One of the reasons we watch Formula One is to experience those special moments that come along only a few times in every season.

Maybe it'll be a win that ends up defining a driver's career, an overtake that makes us sit up and stare or a piece of car control so superb it almost defies belief.

Or it could be the arrival of a once-in-a-generation talent, a second in time that decides the outcome of the world championship, or perhaps a highly significant day in the sport's history that we'll remember for the rest of our lives.

The 2015 edition of F1 didn't deliver a pulsating title race, but over the course of the year, we did at least get to witness a few very memorable, exciting, shocking or season-defining moments.

Here are the five we picked out as most worthy of the tag "amazing." In the interest of variety, moments that won one of our F1 Awards were not included.

The Moment the Title Race Turned—Then Turned Back—in Hungary

The Hungaroring, just outside Budapest, Hungary, is everything a modern F1 venue should not be. Short, narrow and with only one straight of any note, prevailing theory suggests it shouldn't produce good racing.

And yet, for a variety of reasons, it so often does.

The 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix was a truly exceptional race. Lewis Hamilton dominated qualifying, taking pole by more than half a second, but a poor start saw him fall to fourth behind the two Ferraris and team-mate Nico Rosberg.

A botched attempt at passing Rosberg on the first lap dropped him further down the order, and another error—this time when trying to defend against Daniel Ricciardo after a safety car restart—left him totally out of contention despite being the quickest man on the track.

Rosberg, meanwhile, had been driving around uneventfully but quite slowly. He was up to second after Kimi Raikkonen retired and looked set to score 18 points. With Hamilton outside the points, that would have been enough to put him into an unlikely world championship lead.

Then Daniel Ricciardo decided he wanted second...

On quicker tyres, the Red Bull man had caught Rosberg but lacked the straight-line speed to pass using DRS. He therefore tried the late-braking move he perfected in 2014's Hungarian Grand Prix, lunging down the inside into Turn 1 from a long way back.

He went too deep, and Rosberg cut back to exit the corner ahead—but the German didn't quite calculate his line correctly and left Ricciardo, who refused to yield, with nowhere to go.

The Australian's front wing made contact with Rosberg's rear-left tyre, puncturing it. The Mercedes limped slowly back to the pits for a new tyre—slowly enough for Hamilton, who had fought his way back into the points, to overtake.

Rosberg's 18 points became just four for finishing eighth, while Hamilton—who had previously been looking at losing a hatful of points to his team-mate—scored eight for finishing sixth, extending his championship lead to 21 points.

How different the title race might have been had Rosberg been the man with momentum heading into the summer break...

The "Arrival" of Max Verstappen at the Malaysian Grand Prix

Lars Baron/Getty Images

When Red Bull announced 16-year-old Max Verstappen would be a Toro Rosso driver in 2015, they heaped unheard-of expectation upon the young man's shoulders.

The eyes of the F1 world were on the Dutchman when he made his racing debut—then aged 17—at the Australian Grand Prix. On that day in Melbourne, he assuaged any concerns over his ability to drive a car quickly in a grand prix.

But that's only one part of being an F1 driver. Could he hack it wheel-to-wheel with the top racers in the world?

The Malaysian Grand Prix gave us the answer—and one moment in particular marked him out as something special.

Having qualified sixth in his first wet qualifying session, Verstappen got a poor start and dropped to 11th after two laps. However, he had promising pace and as he approached the halfway point of the race, and he found himself behind Daniel Ricciardo.

The Australian was, of course, one of the drivers of 2014. He beat four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, won three races and was—more importantly, in this instance—the lead driver of Red Bull, the senior team to Verstappen's Toro Rosso.

A team towards which Toro Rosso drivers may be expected to show a little bit of deference and respect.

But Verstappen attacked Ricciardo as he would have any other driver. A DRS assist put him within range of the RB11 at the entry to Turn 1, and when Ricciardo defended the inside line, Verstappen tried to go around the outside.

He hung on all the way around the long, tightening corner before diving aggressively down the inside into Turn 2. Ricciardo had no answer and could only watch as the youngster sped off on his way to becoming the youngest-ever points scorer in F1 history.

And fans around the world realised that maybe, just maybe, the hype around Verstappen was justified. The next race—in China—more or less confirmed it was.

The move can be seen at No. 5 on Verstappen's favourite overtakes of the year at the official F1 website.

The Spectacular Podium in Mexico

Lars Baron/Getty Images

The first Mexican Grand Prix since 1992 was about as interesting as watching the markings dry on the side of a Pirelli tyre. A combination of thin air, the track layout and the way modern cars are designed meant it was almost impossible for one driver to closely follow another—after the first lap, two crashing Ferraris provided the biggest highlights.

But though the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez failed to deliver on the track, it went some way to making up for it after the race.

Nico Rosberg stepped out of his car to celebrate in front of 50,000 incredibly loud, passionate fans. The atmosphere was more reminiscent of a hugely important football match than a grand prix—more so when a reasonably large section of the crowd started up a chant of "Nico, Nico, Nico."

Placing the podium and post-race car park in the heart of the huge Foro Sol stadium was a masterstroke by the event planners.

Tens of thousands of fans were able to witness and join in with the celebrations without even leaving their seats, and everywhere the drivers looked there was colour, waving flags and happy faces.

Rosberg called it the "best podium ever"—and Niki Lauda, a motorsport fan and participant for over 50 years, agreed with him.

Pastor Maldonado's Impossible Save in Austria

Pastor Maldonado is a man more frequently subject to criticism than praise, but what he managed to do with his car at the Austrian Grand Prix was nothing short of incredible.

The Venezuelan had driven an excellent race and was involved in a scrap with Max Verstappen over seventh place in the closing laps at the Red Bull Ring. Despite his Lotus possessing a powerful Mercedes engine, the straights at the circuit are short and Verstappen was defending hard—so he wasn't having an easy time getting by.

Maldonado got a good run out of the final corner with three laps to go and made the most of a DRS assist to close up on the Dutchman. Both aimed for the inside line, and at the last minute, Maldonado realised he wasn't going to get it.

He was forced to swerve to avoid a collision, lifting off the throttle for the merest fraction of a second as his car slid sideways—with DRS open—at more than 300 kilometres an hour. Losing control at that sort of speed usually results in a meeting with the barriers, but not this time.

In the blink of an eye Maldonado made six distinct steering inputs: hard left, hard right, left, right, left and a flick to the right before straightening out, foot nailed to the floor, having lost only 15 kilometres an hour in the process.

Sky Sports' F1 expert Mark Hughes called it "one of the greatest pieces of raw, reactive car control ever seen"—and Hughes is no newcomer to the sport.

The save alone was special, but it turned into an overtake a few metres later when Verstappen outbraked himself into Turn 1, letting the Lotus man through into seventh.

It was one of the few moments in 2015 that could accurately be described as "breathtaking."

An alternative view of the incident can be found here on YouTube.

Nico Rosberg's Gust of Wind Moment in the United States

The United States Grand Prix was one of the highlights of the year. Torrential rain meant no one got much running in practice, and qualifying—postponed until the Sunday morning—was an exciting, wet-weather showdown that ended abruptly at the end of Q2.

Nico Rosberg needed to stop Lewis Hamilton winning to keep his title hopes alive and started from pole, but he lost the lead—in contentious circumstances—to his team-mate almost as soon as the race started. Hamilton pushed Rosberg wide, the two touching wheels, and the German ended up fifth.

Angered by Hamilton's aggressive driving, Rosberg fought his way back up the order and did something he hadn't managed to do since the start of the V6 turbo era—he passed Hamilton on the track and made it stick.

He then built up a relatively comfortable lead. Job done, it seemed.

However, in the closing stages, a safety car bunched up the field, and at the restart, Hamilton was right behind his team-mate—with slightly fresher tyres. But even so, it looked like Rosberg would emerge victorious—and keep himself in the championship.

The 47th lap, the first after the safety car had returned to the pits, passed without incident. But on the 48th, Rosberg lost the car coming out of Turn 16. He spun up the rear wheels and didn't regain control until he was on the run-off area for Turn 17.

Hamilton gratefully accepted the invitation, cruised past and won the race—and with it, his third world title.

Rosberg told assembled media at the next race in Mexico that a "gust of wind" had caused the error.

But regardless of the cause, it was a staggering way to lose a race win he seemed to have more than earned and—especially given his anger at Hamilton over the first-corner move—the worst possible way to kick himself out of the title hunt.

Capgate followed shortly after...