This Is The Worst F1 Finish Ever

June 26, 2011. Valencia Street Circuit. Sebastian Vettel took pole, led from the front, and won comfortably on his way to that year's championship. Fernando Alonso — who seems to have done his last competitive laps of Barcelona this year — finished second to a home crowd, while Mark Webber placed third. None of that is particularly unusual for the sport in 2011.

What was unusual: every single car that started the race crossed the finish line. All 24 of them. At the time, this was only the fourth time such a thing had happened. For most of those 24 cars, a clean run with no failures is a good day. But for Narain Karthikeyan and his HRT, it earned him an unexpected place in the history books.

Formula 1 records tend to cluster around achievement. Fastest lap, most wins. youngest champion, and so on. But for Karthikeyan's most durable record sits at the other end entirely: He is the only driver in the history of the sport to finish a Grand Prix in 24th place. Dead last in a 24-car field, at the 2011 European Grand Prix.

Hispania Racing Team — HRT — entered Formula 1 in 2010 as one of three new constructors brought in under a restructured entry process. The team was based in Spain, perpetually underfunded, and inherently at the back. The car they fielded in 2011, the F111, was slow enough that Karthikeyan and teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi failed to qualify for the season opener in Australia. When they did qualify and race, they were racing for the final classifications, not for points.

The structural gap between HRT and the midfield was not a matter of driver performance — it was a matter of budget and engineering deficits. On a circuit where attrition usually reshuffled the order, HRT could occasionally escape last place. But a race like Europe 2011, where everyone finished, there was nowhere to hide.

Red Bull was looking for race mileage for a young driver they were developing. His name was Daniel Ricciardo, and you can still find him around the F1 world through his involvement with Red Bull and Ford. He replaced Karthikeyan at HRT for the remainder of the 2011 season — except for the Indian Grand Prix, where Karthikeyan was given his home race back and finished 17th, ahead of Ricciardo by over thirty seconds.

HRT folded at the end of the 2012 season after failing to improve competitively or financially. Karthikeyan's 24th-place finish at Valencia remains the lowest classified result in Formula 1 history. Like HRT, the European Grand Prix at Valencia was discontinued after 2012, but while both the team and the race are gone, Karthikeyan's record has gone down in history.