When George Russell was disqualified from the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps since his car was underweight, handing the victory to then-Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, he became the first driver to be disqualified from a Formula 1 race victory in three decades.
It hadn't happened since 1994, when Michael Schumacher was disqualified from the same race at the same track. Schumacher was disqualified when his Benetton was found to have excessive wear on the wooden skid block on the underside of the car, and Damon Hill was awarded the victory.
Skip ahead one year later, and fellow British driver Lando Norris found himself becoming the first Formula 1 driver to win a world championship after having been disqualified for a rules infraction earlier in the year since Schumacher went on to win the 1994 title.
Schumacher also missed the next two races at Monza and Estoril due to a ban he was issued following the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, a race from which he was also disqualified after finishing in second place, because of the fact that he overtook Hill on the formation lap and failed to serve a stop-go penalty in time.
Schumacher held off Hill to win the title that year by a single point after the pair were involved in a mid-race collision during the season finale at Adelaide.
Lando Norris' 2025 disqualification a first-of-its-kind since 1994
As for Norris, he initially finished the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the antepenultimate race of the 24-race 2025 season, in second place, ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri in third. But after joining race winner Max Verstappen on the podium, Norris and Piastri were both disqualified.
Formula 1 rules state that thickness of the planks underneath the cars must be no less than 9mm, and the planks beneath both McLaren cars fell shy of that 9mm requirement. Norris was stripped of the 18 points he initially scored with his second place finish, and Piastri was stripped of the 15 points he initially scored with his third place finish.
The penalty ultimately kept Verstappen in the title fight after it had appeared that Norris had all but locked up his first world championship with two Grands Prix, plus one sprint race, remaining on the calendar.
1997 Formula 1 controversy revisited
Sure, we also can't forget about 1997, when Schumacher entered the season-ending European Grand Prix at the Circuito Permanente de Jerez in Spain with a one-point lead over world championship rival Jacques Villeneuve.
Schumacher deliberately ran into Villeneuve to preserve his lead, but while he was knocked out of the race due to the contact, Villeneuve continued and finished third to win the title by three points. Schumacher ended up being disqualified from the championship entirely due to his actions.
Villeneuve himself had literally just been disqualified from the season's penultimate race at Suzuka, prior to the incident. He ignored waved yellow flags on back-to-back laps during a practice session and had been sent to the back of the grid, but he started on pole anyway after Williams appealed.
He finished fifth and scored two points, which would have given him a one-point lead over Schumacher heading into the season finale, but he was disqualified after Williams withdrew their appeal.
Yet in terms of a straight-up rules violation, McLaren's violation on Norris' car was the first to be discovered on the car of the eventual world championship winner since Benetton's infraction on Schumacher's was discovered 31 years prior at Spa.
It's an interesting bit of history, no matter how you slice it.
But Lando Norris also earned the F1 title, no matter how you slice it.
Of course, it's not as if Norris was blatantly caught cheating, per se; this was more of a team issue than anything else, and they paid for the fact that they were found to be blatantly afoul of the rule book.
And we'd be remiss not to mention the fact that Norris earned his world championship, plain and simple. It's not a matter of who "deserved" it, even if there is a contingent of fans who claim that he is the weakest world champion of the 35 who have ever managed to win at least one title.
He was the rightful world champion of 2025, even if he hasn't been on top of any of the post-season best driver votes hosted annually by various platforms, featuring drivers from several forms of motorsport.
Whether or not the MCL39 was a rocketship, or whether or not any one of a number of other talented drivers would have done better in the same car, is irrelevant in this context.
Norris did what he needed to do to finish the season with the most points scored, and he did it despite the disqualification and the Zandvoort engine failure, along with a number of other hiccups throughout the 24-race season.
He kept his composure to finish third, which is exactly as low as he could afford to finish, in the season finale in Abu Dhabi to hang on to a two-point lead over Verstappen, after Verstappen clawed his way back from 70 points behind (and actually overtook Piastri for second, after Piastri had been 104 points ahead of Verstappen while leading).
The 2026 Formula 1 season is scheduled to begin on Saturday, March 7, with live coverage of the Australian Grand Prix from Albert Park Circuit set to be provided by Apple TV, beginning at 10:55 p.m. ET, as a part of the sport's new broadcast rights deal. There are 24 Grands Prix and six sprint races on the 2026 calendar.