The greatest Portuguese GP moments

Formula 1 has a rich and often dramatic history in Portugal despite its relatively short stays in the nation due to various contractual and financial hardships.

But, in the world championship's 2020 calendar crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Portimao has sprung into action with the Algarve International Circuit set to welcome F1 this weekend.

Since confirmation of the Portuguese GP being back on the F1 schedule for the first time since 1996, memories instantly stretched back to a period of incredible history for the series when Estoril was an ever-present fixture between 1984-96.

Under very different circumstances, history is repeating itself as the opening encounter at Estoril also marked F1's comeback after a long absence, with the nation hosting F1 world championship grand prix events between 1958-60 - a trio of races that included Stirling Moss standing up for title rival Mike Hawthorn when he was initially disqualified, only for the result to propel Hawthorn to the world crown against Moss.

But for the most memorable moments of F1 history recorded in Portugal, Autosport's editorial team has selected five key races that helped shaped the series.

1984: Lauda fights back to win the title

Luke Smith

There are some nice parallels that can be drawn between the 1984 and 2020 Portuguese Grands Prix. In both cases, F1 is returning to Portugal after a 24-year hiatus at a new circuit.

In 1984, that new circuit was Estoril, which played host to the season finale as McLaren team-mates Niki Lauda and Alain Prost prepared for their championship showdown. Lauda entered the final race leading the drivers' championship by 3.5 points, putting him in the frame for a third title almost 10 years on from his maiden crown.

But the momentum swung Prost's way in qualifying as an error from Lauda left him a lowly 11th on the grid, with his team-mate and title rival on the front row. If Prost won the race, Lauda had to finish second if he wanted to win the championship.

Lauda set the pace in the warm-up, only for a water leak to force a second engine change of the weekend ahead of the race. A turbo issue meant he had to bide his time in the early part of the race too, sitting at the rear of a gaggle of cars including Keke Rosberg, Ayrton Senna, Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson.

Lauda picked them off one by one, rising up to third by half-distance and escaping the traffic, but had 37 seconds to make up to Nigel Mansell in second place if he wanted to win the championship.

Although he was able to whittle the gap down to about 25s, Lauda's turbo issue got worse, causing the gap to grow again. Barring an incident for either Prost or Mansell ahead, he would lose the championship.

Yet with 18 laps to go, the crucial slice of luck arrived for Lauda. A brake issue - allegedly resulting from a pre-race decision not to run sturdier brake discs - caused Mansell to spin off and retire from the race, promoting Lauda into second place.

It gave the Austrian the points he needed to win the championship by just half a point from Prost - which remains the closest margin of victory in an F1 title race.

"This championship means more than the others," Lauda said. "I liked my win in 1977, coming back after the accident, but this was much harder.

"When you win the title against a man like Prost - and the equipment is the same - you can't relax for a single race. There has been pressure all the way."

Lauda picked the 1984 Portuguese Grand Prix as his 'Race of My Life' for Autosport, with McLaren designer John Barnard calling the race "the one time I saw Niki just chuck everything at it and go for it big time".

1985: Senna's sensational first victory

Kevin Turner

One of the finest wet-weather drives of all time, by one of Formula 1's most legendary figures, came at Estoril 35 years ago. The 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix wasn't an exciting race, but it did provide something that fans of all sport look for: a special performance from a true great.

PLUS: F1's greatest wet-weather drives

In the dry the day before, Ayrton Senna had taken the first of his 65 F1 pole positions and on race day he was able to demonstrate his wet-weather skills in horrible conditions.

Senna led his Lotus team-mate Elio de Angelis from the start, splashing around the first lap 2.7 seconds ahead. The Brazilian continued to edge clear as McLaren's Alain Prost moved forward to challenge de Angelis for second.

The 25-year-old was more than half a minute clear as half-distance approached - and the rain had now got so bad that even Senna, the driver who had been furious that the 1984 Monaco GP had been cut short due to the conditions, thought the race should be stopped.

It wasn't and the treacherous nature of the circuit was underlined when Prost aquaplaned into retirement on the straight.

Only nine of the 26 starters were classified, around half of the retirements due to spins or crashes, and Senna lapped everyone except the second-placed Ferrari of Michele Alboreto, more than a minute behind the Lotus.

"The big danger was that conditions changed all the time," said Senna. "Once I nearly spun in front of the pits, like Prost, and I was lucky to stay on the road."

Autosport's Nigel Roebuck wrote in his race report: "Senna's victory will be remembered as a classic. Just occasionally comes a race when one driver makes the rest look ordinary, and this was one such. He had been in a different class right from the green light."

PLUS: Ayrton Senna's 10 greatest F1 drives

Was this drive better than Senna's famous 1993 European GP triumph at Donington Park? Well, he had a tricky turbocharged engine, an H-pattern gearshift and no traction control. And it was only his 16th world championship start. So yes. And that makes it a standout moment in F1 folklore, never mind Portuguese GP history.

1989: An underdog story

Jake Boxall-Legge

In the Ayrton Senna/Alain Prost/McLaren years, it was a rarity for someone else to win a grand prix - but the 1989 race at Estoril was one of those rare off-days for the team, on which Ferrari capitalised. Champion-elect Prost was off the boil compared to Senna, who'd streaked to pole by nearly six tenths from Ferrari's Gerhard Berger.

Then Berger overturned Senna's pole immediately, catching a phenomenal getaway off the line and surged into the lead as Senna had to contend with Nigel Mansell in the other Ferrari. The Austrian built an early break over the other frontrunners but, once Mansell cleared Senna, Berger came under fire from his moustachioed stablemate - who used the backmarker traffic perfectly to pass and preserve the lead.

Mansell then undid his good work in the pitlane, overshooting his box as he came in to stop and put the car into reverse. He was black-flagged for that, which also let Berger and Senna back through and left Mansell with it all to do again. Never a man to know when he's beaten, Mansell charged back up to Senna's tail and mounted a first-corner pass on lap 49 - but instead ended up clipping Senna to thrust the pair of them into retirement.

With a 32-second lead over Prost, Berger took an unassailable victory amid a troubled season, in which he had faced rampant unreliability and a horrific crash at Imola early in the campaign.

The 1989 Portuguese GP was also memorable for the good fortune that a plethora of underdogs had received throughout the weekend. Roberto Moreno, driving for the little Coloni team, was able to scrape his way out of pre-qualifying with Stefan Johansson's Onyx and the two Larrousse-run Lolas of Philippe Alliot and Michele Alboreto.

PLUS: The F1 underdog thwarted by its bazooka-seeking owner

In full qualifying, however, the super-sticky Pirelli qualifying tyres helped to produce a wonderfully random grid. Behind the McLarens and Ferraris, Minardi's Pierluigi Martini took fifth. Alex Caffi split the two Williams drivers in his Dallara, with Martini's team-mate and future HRT F1 team principal Luis Perez-Sala in ninth ahead of Martin Brundle's Brabham. Out of pre-qualifying, Johansson bagged 12th behind the second Brabham of Stefano Modena, while Moreno dragged his sluggish Coloni to 15th, outqualifying the Benetton of Emanuele Pirro.

Meanwhile, Lotus' Nelson Piquet qualified 20th, Derek Warwick in the Arrows qualified only 22nd, while Johnny Herbert failed to make the qualifying cut having only been able to get his Tyrrell to the 27th-fastest time.

The race was equally as fortuitous for the unfancied teams and, although the Goodyear runners were in better shape, the drop-off for the Pirelli drivers wasn't as dramatic. Martini led Minardi's first ever lap when the frontrunners all stopped, and eventually converted his starting position into a fifth-place finish.

However, the driver of the day had to have been Johansson, who qualified well on the Goodyears and then made an innovative no-stop strategy work perfectly. The Swede rose through the order and was on for a couple of points before the two Williamses were called into the pits amid overheating issues.

Having been 55s down the road from race-winner Berger, Johansson brought his blue-and-pink machine across the line for a famous podium - Onyx's last ever Formula 1 points.

1993: Prost retires on top as Schumacher continues to climb

Haydn Cobb

When the Formula 1 paddock arrived at Estoril, few would have predicted the enormity of the changing of the guard moment that would both prelude and follow the 1993 Portuguese Grand Prix, itself packed with action, as Alain Prost clinched his fourth world title while Michael Schumacher secured his second grand prix victory.

Prost held centre stage in Estoril before the race had even begun by taking a bow as he announced his F1 retirement, swayed by the looming presence of Ayrton Senna at Williams for 1994.

Senna had his own dilemma to ponder in Portugal as he weighed up his future while a young Mika Hakkinen - drafted in as replacement for the sacked Michael Andretti at McLaren - caught the eye as he outqualified the Brazilian by 0.048s before crashing out while fighting at the front.

"Before Estoril, I felt that Ayrton wasn't maximising his performance, and of course his team-mate hadn't been pushing him either, certainly not to the maximum," Hakkinen told Autosport in 2018 about the race. "So then I came next to him in Estoril - and I kicked his ass!"

PLUS: How Hakkinen gave Senna a wake-up call in 1993

Senna's race also ended prematurely with engine failure on lap 20, as Schumacher waited for his moment to strike with a smart one-stop strategy - despite racing in the spare Benetton due to handling problems with his car in practice.

The race is also remembered for one of the strangest crashes in F1 history when Gerhard Berger, through a combination of a bump at the pitlane exit and suspected suspension failure, lost control of his Ferrari and endured a spin on the straight, narrowly missing Derek Warwick in the Footwork before he slammed into the left-hand barrier.

In a race of attrition, with Mark Blundell crashing from sixth and Riccardo Patrese clashing with Warwick fighting for fifth, Prost pressured Schumacher for victory in the closing stages.

But, knowing second place would be enough to seal his fourth world crown, with Williams team-mate Damon Hill putting in a recovery drive after stalling on the formation lap from pole position, Prost didn't need to go all-out against Schumacher to create history.

1996: Villeneuve's pass on Schumacher

James Newbold

The departure of Williams designer Adrian Newey and the end of a works Renault engine supply meant the rivalry between Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher was short-lived, lasting but a year as they scrapped over the 1997 title. But, in 1996, few could have predicted the extent to which their careers would diverge in the not-too-distant future.

And when at that year's Portuguese Grand Prix Villeneuve made a pass worthy of discussion among the very best in F1's history around the outside of Estoril's final corner, he laid down a marker that he was a man to be taken seriously indeed.

It wasn't often that Schumacher was taken by surprise - Juan Pablo Montoya at Interlagos in 2001 one of few able to claim that honour - but he was here. Needless to say, the long right-hander leading onto the straight hadn't been considered an overtaking spot before - Schumacher later admitted to looking in his mirror for Villeneuve only to find him alongside - but the Canadian rookie managed it with what Autosport's Nigel Roebuck called "without question the overtaking manoeuvre of the grand prix season".

Too much wheelspin off the line dropped Villeneuve from second to fourth and he was 14s behind race-leading team-mate Damon Hill after 15 laps until "Schumacher and Villeneuve came up to a chicane disguised as a Minardi," wrote Roebuck. Hapless gentleman driver Giovanni Lavaggi obliged Schumacher into a brief lift, giving Villeneuve a shot at a move he'd insisted to his team had been possible given his experience of running outside lines on ovals in Indycar.

"I told the team before the race I was sure it was possible, and they told me they'd come and pick me up from the guardrail when I tried!" he joked afterwards.

Schumacher described a "scary moment" as their wheels came close to interlocking, but Villeneuve was ahead and, in a performance Roebuck praised as "emphatically his most convincing to date", went on to beat Hill and win to keep his slim title hopes alive until the final race.

The fact Schumacher's rivalry with Villeneuve was so short-lived shouldn't take away from the moment of unparalleled excitement it created.

Let us know your verdict on social media. Which is your favourite Portuguese GP moment?