What a pity it is that when Formula 1 reaches its 70th anniversary, there'll be no actual racing to bring the celebrations to life. The very first F1 race was held at Silverstone on May 13th 1950. The race was won by the Alfa Romeo of Italian driver Giuseppe Farina, who would famously go on to become F1's first ever world champion later in the season.
Were it not for the global pandemic tearing away the first half of the 2020 F1 calendar and tossing it aside, the sport would have marked the occasion on race day at the Spanish GP, three days ahead of the anniversary itself. Instead, Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya will be silent and the 20 F1 cars that would have been haring around it will be sat up on axle stands in factories across Europe.
Still, we can at least mark the occasion in our own way. I've been asked to pick out six of the best Grands Prix from those 70 years - races either that I remember watching live, or have enjoyed reading about much later on. They're listed in no particular order and we've dug out archive footage for each one.
Obviously, I can't possibly hope to recall every great race and every spellbinding individual drive in six entries. I therefore hope you'll add your own nominations in the comments below.
Fangio's last Grand Prix win was arguably also his best. The Argentine was 46 years old at the time, the track was the world's most challenging (the old Nurburgring, then even more than now just a thin ribbon of tarmac in the Eifel countryside) and the competition could hardly have been tougher.
But Fangio in his Maserati 250F got the better of the Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins in qualifying, and so started the 22-lap race on pole. He lost the lead away from the flag but regained it on lap three, thereafter building a 30-second lead over the chasing Ferraris. Whereas both of those stayed out on lap 12 and indeed for the entire race, Fangio pitted for new tyres and half a tank of fuel.
Fresh rubber and a lighter fuel load gave him a speed advantage throughout the race, but the strategy would depend on a quick pit stop. When a mechanic lost a wheel nut and the stop took three times as long as it should have done, Fangio might have thought it was game over. Instead, 48 seconds down on the two Ferraris, the Maserati man redoubled his efforts and set off in pursuit.
Fangio broke the lap record nine times in the final 10 laps of the race, entering that rarified zone in which driver, machine and circuit are in perfect symbiosis. He got by one Ferrari, then retook the lead of the race on the final lap. He crossed the line for the last time a few seconds ahead of Hawthorn, Collins half a minute behind in third. Fangio's fourth race win that year was also enough to clinch a fifth world championship.
It must have seemed absurd that afternoon to imagine that Fangio might never win another world title, let alone another Grand Prix, so emphatic was the nature of that victory. But maybe Fangio himself knew it, saying after the race, "I have never driven that quickly before in my life and I don't think I will ever be able to do it again."
For race winner Jean-Pierre Jabouille, the final few laps of the 1979 French Grand Prix at Dijon were relatively straightforward. He won by 15 seconds, entirely unaware that behind him in the battle for second one of the most thrilling F1 duels of all time was being waged by his Renault team-mate René Arnoux and Ferrari's Gilles Villeneuve.
The pair went wheel-to-wheel over the final few laps of the 80-lap race in a contest that had more in common with a boxing match than open-wheel motor racing. Villeneuve got by Arnoux on lap 79 with a desperate lunge into the first corner despite an enormous lock-up, only for Arnoux to pull the same move a lap later. The final tour of the 2.4-mile circuit was one of Formula 1's most memorable, the duo banging wheels and running one another off the road until Villeneuve eventually made a move stick.
He crossed the line just two tenths of a second ahead of his rival, splitting the turbocharged Renaults. That second position helped cement Villeneuve's reputation as one of F1's most dogged and instinctively brilliant drivers.
Some races live long in the memory for an astonishing individual performance, or a titanic battle between two drivers. This one does because of the sheer madness of the final few laps - seemingly nobody wanted to win the Monaco GP in 1982.
The race weekend got underway beneath a pall, the scintillating Gilles Villeneuve having been killed at Zolder only a fortnight previously. René Arnoux's very powerful turbocharged Renault lined up on pole, but the Frenchman spun and stalled his car at the Swimming Pool on lap 15, handing the lead to team-mate Alain Prost.
For the following 59 laps young Prost, only in his second year in F1 and yet to win a race, led comfortably until rain began to fall three laps from the end. He nerfed his Renault forcefully into the barrier and out of the race while exiting the chicane, gifting the lead to Brabham's Riccardo Patrese.
The Italian looked on course to take his maiden victory in F1 until he spun coming into the hairpin on the penultimate lap, stalling his car and allowing several rivals to get through. Patrese was done for - wasn't he? Didier Pironi took the lead but gave it up almost immediately when his Ferrari's fuel tank ran dry and coasted to a halt in the tunnel.
Andrea de Cesaris should have found himself leading with only one full lap to go, his first F1 win and Alfa Romeo's first for three decades in his grasp, but then he too ran out of fuel. And so Derek Daly moved into the lead in a Williams that had lost its wings in an earlier accident, only for his gearbox to fail before he could start the final lap.
In commentary, 1976 F1 champ James Hunt said, "Well, we've got this ridiculous situation where we're all sitting by the start-finish line waiting for a winner to come past, and we don't seem to be getting one!" But then we did, the seemingly done-for Patrese finally crossing the line for the final time, winning perhaps the most incredible Monaco GP of all time. He'd been able to point his Brabham down the hill at the hairpin and bump start it, capitalising on the incidents, failures, and bone-dry fuel tanks that littered the circuit ahead of him.
This is the first of my six nominations that I'm old enough to have witnessed first time around. I remember rain coming down hard in the final stages of the race as McLaren's Lewis Hamilton closed in on reigning world champion and race leader Kimi Raikkonen.
With three to go, Hamilton attempted a ballsy move going into the final chicane but the Ferrari driver elbowed him out the way and across the grass. Hamilton clearly gained an advantage by cutting the corner, but quickly conceded the place to Raikkonen. He then immediately retook the lead with a lunge going into La Source. The two of them tip-toed around the penultimate lap on dry tyres and a wet circuit, Hamilton taking a trip across the grass in the middle sector and handing the lead back to the Finn.
Raikkonen spun moments later, allowing Hamilton to get back through. By this point I was on my feet and screaming at the television - I'd never witnessed anything quite like it. Hamilton disappeared into the lead while Raikkonen ran wide at Blanchimont and crashed into a tyre barrier, his race over.
That final lap was impossibly tense, but Hamilton just about kept it together in treacherous conditions and eventually crossed the line in first. Remember the controversy a couple of hours later when he was demoted to third by the stewards? They judged that although he had given up the position to Raikkonen after cutting the corner at the final chicane, he hadn't done so enough.
I was incensed, not least because Raikkonen had later binned it anyway. The stewards' decision gifted the race win and 10 world championship points to Hamilton's closest title rival Felipe Massa, who rather than trailing the Briton by six points was behind by only two.
But we all know how that one turned out...
In hindsight, I think this race is so memorable as much for Sebastian Vettel's misfortunate as Jenson Button's victory. The German was the reigning world champion and had utterly dominated the first third of the 2011 season, winning every race but one and finishing second in China.
The Red Bull driver looked invincible, so when on the very last lap of an astonishing race he put a wheel out of line and slipped wide, gifting the lead at the very last to McLaren's Button, he was finally proven to be human after all. It was the first really costly mistake Vettel had made in F1, although in more recent years he seems to have made a habit of it.
All of which is to say nothing whatsoever about the previous 69 laps. The race had been halted part way through for two hours as a thunderstorm rolled through - the chequered flag wouldn't fall until four hours after the lights had first gone out.
Button seemed to be enduring a terrible Canadian GP. As well as visiting the pits six times, once for a drive-through penalty, he also collided first with his team-mate and then with Fernando Alonso. He picked up a puncture and at one point found himself in last position. But some characteristically masterful driving (and strategy calls) in changeable conditions put the Briton on Vettel's tail coming into the final lap, from where he could apply the pressure. It was just enough to make the German crack.
The best wheel-to-wheel racing the hybrid era has served up yet? It certainly was for me, that dice between Hamilton and Rosberg at the Bahrain GP in 2014 made all the more dramatic by the fact they were teammates. The sheer skill and precision it took for the pair to race as hard as that, but not once overstep the mark - it staggers me to this day.
I was on a Porsche launch in Italy at the time and remember walking into my hotel room midway through the race. I found a live broadcast on Italian television and could barely understand a word - that battle to determine the winner of the race was so thrilling, though, the commentators could have been speaking Klingon and I wouldn't have enjoyed it any less.
Again, it was another one of those moments that had me leaping out of my seat. That's what keeps me coming back to F1 season after season, no matter how many processional races I might have witnessed. Sooner or later, I know I'll get to watch something that will blow me away; something that I'll be talking or writing about for years to come.
What I remember most vividly is Hamilton conceding his leading position to Rosberg at the tight right-hander at the end of the main straight, knowing that by taking a wider line into the bend he would get much better exit and be able to out-drag his rival towards the next bend. I still reflect on the confidence and assuredness it must have taken to deliberately give the position up for a moment.
That 'duel in the desert' was like a foreshadowing of what was to come in F1 over the following years - the two Mercedes out front, Hamilton (almost) always with an edge. What a privilege it was to watch live.