Six of the Best: Dead Rubbers

For every season that ends with a thrilling last race showdown, there are several campaigns where the titles are wrapped up early - giving the final rounds a meandering irrelevance in any practical sense.

With the 2015 championships sewn up in Sochi (constructors') and Austin (drivers') respectively, the last two races, in Mexico and Brazil, have rather flatly lacked the dramatic tension, intrigue or consequence of all that went before them.

However, history has shown many times that just because there's nothing to play for, it doesn't mean you can't have a classic race. Here's hoping the 2015 season bows out in Abu Dhabi with a bang rather than a damp squib in a manner akin to the races featured in our recap of six of the best dead rubbers.

2005 Japanese Grand Prix, Suzuka

The 2005 Japanese Grand Prix had nothing at stake but pride, but, with the leading contenders freed from the tactical shackles of a championship fight, served up a race for the ages.

Fernando Alonso had sealed his maiden title at the previous round in Brazil, finally putting down the season-long challenge of Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren. Wet qualifying at Suzuka mixed up the grid for Alonso's first race as champion, with Ralf Schumacher on pole for Toyota, and Alonso and Raikkonen 16th and 17th respectively.

With race-day dry, both Alonso and Raikkonen carved through the pack in mirrored scintillating drives, maximising Suzuka's status as an old-fashioned racing circuit where the driver can make the difference.

Michael Schumacher was also recovering from a lowly grid slot, and proved a midfield check to the Alonso and Raikkonen charge. In an all-time classic move, Alonso outrageously passed Schumacher around the outside of 130R, encapsulating the 'changing of the guard' mood of the season.

Raikkonen jumped Alonso in the first pit stops, staying out longer than the Spaniard and maximising the advantage as Alonso hit traffic. Up ahead, Giancarlo Fisichella in the sister Renault had streaked into a 19 second lead, and Raikkonen's relentless pursuit would define the race's outcome.

Emerging from his final stop 5 seconds down on the Italian with 8 laps to go, Raikkonen reeled in Fisichella, capitalising on the Renault's overly-defensive line into the final chicane to blast down the outside on the straight into turn one on the last lap - sealing a classic comeback drive with a sensational win.

It wasn't just the frequency of the overtaking that marked the race, it was its potency and quality. Raikkonen passing Schumacher around the outside of turn one, Alonso's wheels on the grass swoop past Mark Webber, and finally Kimi's wheel-to-wheel victory pass; a series of seminal Suzuka moments that highlighted the attacking racecraft that would come to define the post-Schumacher generation.

2004 Brazilian Grand Prix, Interlagos

The 2004 campaign was the last of the five consecutive titles that Michael Schumacher won for Ferrari to ring in the 2000s, with Schumacher clinching the championship at Spa in late August to leave four dead rubber races spread across two months to round out the season.

It wasn't quite as desperate a state of affairs as in 2002, when Schumacher had wrapped the title up in mid-July with six races left, but Ferrari's campaign had been even more dominant - with only Jarno Trulli in Monaco and Kimi Raikkonen in Belgium able to break Ferrari's stranglehold on the winner's circle heading to the final race in Brazil.

The race marked the first running of the Brazilian GP at the end of the season, with the race having switched from its traditional spring billing for 2004. The change of seasons had little effect on Interlagos' predilection for mixed conditions though, with race day as elementally mixed as the grid - which had hometown hero Rubens Barrichello on pole followed by outgoing Williams driver Juan-Pablo Montoya and Raikkonen, with Schumacher down in 18th after a crash and a ten-place grid penalty.

The race started on a drying track, with Raikkonen out-dragging Barrichello through turn three to seize the lead. The early action was frenetic, with Montoya, Massa and Jenson Button scrapping feverishly behind the front two. Barrichello came back at Raikkonen on lap 4, re-capturing the lead into the Senna S.

Crucially though, Barrichello lost out by delaying his stop for dry tyres - ceding the advantage to Montoya, who swept around the outside of Raikkonen as the pair left the pits together. The trio now ran behind Fernando Alonso's Renault, with the Spaniard reaping the benefits of boldly starting on dry tyres by taking the lead through the pit stops.

Alonso's early searing pace proved unsustainable though, and through the later fuel stops the Renault fell by the wayside, eventually trailing home in fourth. Montoya and Raikkonen broke away from Barrichello, maintaining a searing pace and repeatedly breaking the lap record as they circulated almost nose-to-tail for the duration. Montoya kept his cool to hold on for victory, laying down a marker against his future teammate ahead of his move to McLaren in 2005.

1995 Australian Grand Prix, Adelaide

1995 was Michael Schumacher's first foray into season-long dominance, with the German wrapping up his second title in much less controversial circumstances than his first with victory at the Pacific GP two races from the end of the campaign.

Damon Hill's Williams had once again been Schumacher's closest challenger, but the Briton had endured a disappointing campaign, epitomised by a series of errors including collisions with Schumacher at Silverstone and Monza and race ending crashes at the Nurburgring and Suzuka.

Hill ended the year on a high however with one of the most crushing victories in Formula One history, winning the season-closing Australian GP by over two laps in a race of startlingly high attrition.

Having started from pole, Hill was beaten off the line by teammate David Coulthard into turn one, with the Ferraris of Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger swamping a slow-starting Schumacher. Schumacher though quickly dispensed with Alesi and then Berger into the hairpin, and set about catching the Williams pair.

The tone for a race that would descend into mild farce was set when race-leader Coulthard extraordinarily crashed into the pit-lane entry wall when coming in for his first stop on lap 19 - gifting the lead to Hill.

Hill's situation improved still further on lap 23, when Schumacher exited the pits just behind Alesi and the two came together in a slithering, messy accident at the hairpin - eventually eliminating both with collision damage.

This left Hill with a substantial lead ahead of seemingly cursed second place, with Berger on lap 34, Heinz-Harald Frentzen's Sauber on lap 39 and Johnny Herbert's Benetton on lap 71 all suffering mechanical failures while running behind the Williams.

Hill coasted home, with Olivier Panis' Ligier trailing in second a full two laps down - despite having chuntered around the final few tours with smoke emitting from his failing Mugen engine. Gianni Morbidelli took a career-best third for Footwork, rounding off the most unlikely podium of the campaign.

It was only the second time in F1 history that a race had been won by two laps, after Jackie Stewart's victory at the 1969 Spanish GP. It was the first of unusual back-to-back wins for Hill in Australia, with the Briton repeating the feat by winning the season-opening Australian GP, this time in Melbourne, to kickstart his 1996 championship campaign in style.

1990 Australian Grand Prix, Adelaide

The 1990 Australian GP saw Nelson Piquet's Benetton take victory after holding off a late charge from his former, bitter Williams intra-team rival Nigel Mansell in the Ferrari.

F1 arrived in Adelaide under a cloud after Ayrton Senna claimed his second world title at the previous round in Japan by ramming championship rival Alain Prost off the road. In something of a footnote victory, Piquet led home teammate Roberto Moreno for a Benetton 1-2, and he would follow up his first win in three years with a second consecutive victory at Adelaide.

The race was marred by lingering controversy over the collision in Suzuka. Senna caused a stir by criticising three-time World Champion Jackie Stewart during a TV interview after the Scot questioned Senna's on-track conduct, while Prost stormed out of the drivers briefing meeting and refused to appear in a pre-race photoshoot to mark the 500th World Championship Grand Prix, leading some to question his state of mind ahead of the race.

Nevertheless, Senna took pole from McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger, with the Ferraris of Prost and Mansell on row two. Piquet was back in seventh, but after a fast start he leapfrogged Jean Alesi's Tyrrell and Riccardo Patrese's Williams to run on the back of the McLaren and Ferrari duo from the start.

Senna quickly established a substantial lead, with Mansell passing Berger on lap two to lead the chase. A mid-race brake problem and spin for Mansell would demote the Briton to the back of the leading pack with Piquet, who had passed Berger and Prost, promoted to second behind the cruising Senna.

Senna's procession to a seemingly inevitable victory was thwarted on lap 61 though, with the McLaren hitting the wall after suffering gearbox trouble. This left Piquet in the lead but Mansell was charging behind him, having repeatedly broken the lap record as he attempted to make up for lost ground.

After dispensing once more with Prost and Berger, Mansell closed up to Piquet - aided by the Brazilian running wide on the penultimate lap. As the pair headed down the Brabham straight for the last time Mansell tried a desperate lunge into the hairpin, but Piquet saw him coming and the two narrowly avoided contact. Piquet held on to round out the season in style, while Mansell had to settle for second on his last race for Ferrari - just failing to bookend his Scuderia career with victories.

1978 Canadian Grand Prix, Circuit Ile Notre Dame

The 1978 season was a tour de force for the revolutionary Lotus 79, with Mario Andretti sealing the title in tragic circumstances by winning the Italian Grand Prix in a race which was tarnished by the death of his teammate, Ronnie Peterson.

The popular Swede's death left F1 in shock, but there was some form of redemption for the sport at the close of the campaign with Gilles Villeneuve's maiden victory at the first Canadian Grand Prix to be held in his home state of Quebec.

If some countries inherit their heroes by proxy, finding a natural home for their patriotic support by attaching it to the nearest or most prominent available figure, others are blessed with idols of enduring charm and charisma, whose legacy becomes a collective construct of the national identity.

Villeneuve was certainly the latter. A man of singularly spectacular and uniquely alluring style behind the wheel, and one of the few drivers in F1 history whose anthropomorphic style could be identified by a mere silhouette, outline or engine note, he captivated both Canadian and global audiences with equal fervour.

The emergence of Villeneuve coincided with the Canadian Grand Prix moving to Montreal. A Quebecois French-Canadian by birth, the narrow snaking ribbon of the Circuit Ile-Notre Dame was a natural fit for Villeneuve.

The 1978 race in Montreal took place in October as the closing round of the season, and as such remains on record as one of the coldest Grands Prix of all time. Villeneuve was able to turn this to his advantage, much to the chagrin of rivals including Mario Andretti, who felt that circumstances had been engineered in Villeneuve's favour.

Fighting his way through from fourth in the early running, Villeneuve was giving chase in a distant second place when the leading Lotus of Jean-Pierre Jarier, Peterson's replacement, expired with a loss of oil pressure. Jarier's retirement handed Villeneuve the lead, and created a Canadian 1-2 of sorts - with Jody Scheckter in second place at the wheel of a Wolf-Ford owned by Canadian billionaire Walter Wolf.

Villeneuve came through to take his maiden win in front of a tumultuously adoring crowd of 70,000, crossing the line as snowflakes fell and Canada rose as one to acclaim their new hero.

1971 Italian Grand Prix, Monza

It's a little remembered facet of one of Formula One's most iconic races, but the 1971 Italian Grand Prix was a meaningless dead rubber - Jackie Stewart having sealed a dominant second title, and first for Tyrrell, at the previous race in Austria.

Stewart's first race as a double World Champion would be at Monza, round 10 of the 11-race season. The race would be the last of the slipstreaming epics at the classic Monza circuit before the first chicanes were added in 1972, and would serve up both the fastest ever race at the time and the closest finish in F1 history.

The new champion was not a factor in the drama however, with Stewart qualifying seventh and retiring after just 15 laps with an engine failure. Chris Amon started from pole position for Matra, but he was one of just eight (another record) lap leaders through the course of the race.

Of the eight, Ronnie Peterson led the most laps at 23 across eight different bursts out front, but the closeness of the racing meant the lead, not to mention the remainder of the points positions, was changing multiple times per lap.

The race eventually distilled into a six-man battle between polesitter Amon, Mike Hailwood's Surtees, Stewart's teammate Francois Cevert for Tyrrell, Ronnie Peterson's March, and BRM teammates Howden Ganley and Peter Gethin - none of whom had ever won a Grand Prix before.

Amon ultimately dropped back from the pack with a broken visor, leaving a five-man sprint to the finish as the contenders started their 55th and final lap with Peterson in the lead. Gethin, who had led only two laps up to that point, was third approaching the Parabolica, but made a tyre-smoking pass between Peterson and Cevert at the final corner to take the lead for the last time.

Gethin crossed the line 0.1s, or 70cm, ahead of Peterson, with Cevert, Hailwood and Ganley coming home in a blurred roar of mechanical thunder - the top five covered by just 0.61s. It was Gethin's first and only win in just his 16th Grand Prix, with the Englishman writing his name into the record books as the victor of one of the most famous and record-breaking races in F1 history.