Jordan took full advantage of wet conditions and a safety car to help Heinz-Harald Frentzen take a surprise win at the French Grand Prix. Rubens Barrichello's Stewart had taken an even more surprising pole position, but in the race he instantly came under pressure from David Coulthard. The Scot quickly passed Barrichello but retired just a handful of laps later with electrical problems. Michael Schumacher then took the lead but also experienced electrical problems and lost a huge amount of time. Mika Hakkinen was next in line to wrest the lead from Barrichello and succeeded, only to lose it to Frentzen when he was forced to make a splash and dash pit stop towards the end of the race. It was a brilliant strategic win by the Jordan team, which had brimmed Frentzen's car at his one and only pit stop and then told him to save fuel behind the safety car. Frentzen went on to win one more grand prix that season and finish third in the drivers' championship.
1985
Nico Rosberg was born in Wiesbaden, son of the 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg. He was brought up in Monaco and became fluent in German, English, Italian, Spanish and French; but only learnt a spattering of his father's native Finnish. In his early career he raced under both German and Finnish nationalities but was eventually officially classified as German when he reached F1 due to the nationality of his passport. In his early karting days he was team-mates with Lewis Hamilton, but ended up moving through the ranks quicker and eventually made it to Formula One a year ahead of Hamilton in 2006. Just a year earlier in 2005 he had been considering a degree in aeronautical engineering at Imperial College London but decided to race in GP2 instead. When he joined Williams, he scored the highest ever result in the team's engineering aptitude test, taken by all the team's drivers.
1926
The shortest ever entry list for a grand prix took to the track at Miramas for the Grand Prix de l'ACF. Just three cars turned up, all Bugattis, after the governing body changed the technical rules before the race, much to the anger of the majority of the competitors at the time. Jules Gouz won the race ahead of Bartolomeo Costantini and the other competitor Pierre de Vizcaya retired.
1965
Jim Clark led home a British 1-2-3 victory at the French Grand Prix, held on the daunting Clermont Ferrand circuit. It was a typically dominant display by Clark in the Lotus and a young Jackie Stewart came through to take the third podium place of his debut year, ahead of John Surtees' Ferrari. It was Clark's third win of the season and he went on to take four more and the championship.
