During the Lewis Hamilton heyday, him going nearly three years without a grand prix victory was unthinkable, but it became a reality as the long drought began after winning the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
It would be 945 days, or two British Monarchs and four prime ministers, before he would win again - taking a record-breaking ninth win in the British Grand Prix in his final Silverstone appearance for Mercedes before heading to Ferrari.
The win broke the record for most wins at a single grand prix, a record Hamilton jointly held with Michael Schumacher on eight in Hungary and France, respectively.
In the near 1,000 days between Hamilton wins, the world changed, almost beyond recognition. Here is what happened.
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January - June 2022
2022 began with the first-ever pig-to-human heart transplant in the United States on January 10th, with Tennis great Novak Djokovic deported from Australia after traveling to Melbourne for the Australian Open.
Djokovic was not vaccinated against COVID and believed he had an exception, but he was detained by border security and subsequently deported by the Victorian state government.
On 24th February, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, believing Kyiv would fall in hours.
The conflict remains ongoing with Putin thus far failing in his objective as Kyiv stands and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy receiving universal support from the west, including US President Joe Biden.
On March 5th, the discovery of Endurance was announced, the ship Sir Earnest Shackleton took on his fateful trip to Antarctica in 1914.
Endurance was crushed in pack ice in the Weddel Sea the following November, and was one of the greatest undiscovered ship-wrecks, until her discovery - remarkably intact on the sea floor.
In late April, it was announced that Elon Musk was to buy social media site Twitter for about $44 billion. He later made the site considerably worse and re-branded it, for some reason, to X.
Thinking big, in May 2022, the first-ever image of a super-massive blackhole was captured, Sagittarius A* at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy, whilst in June over 1,000 people were killed when an earthquake struck the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
July - December 2022
In July 2022, England won UEFA Women's Euro 2022, the first trophy won by either the men or women since 1966, whilst the Commonwealth Games took place in Birmingham.
Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was also assassinated.
The major news from August 2022 was the passing on August 30th of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Come September and the United Kingdom underwent a change in both Monarch and Prime Minister within two days.
On September 6th, Boris Johnson formally resigned after various scandals, with Liz Truss becoming the 15th prime minister in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
She died on September 8th, with her eldest son Charles becoming King Charles III, with the state funeral taking place on September 19th.
On September 23rd, Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng crashed the UK economy after promising nearly £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, which spooked financial markets.
Come October 20th, and Truss was forced to resign, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister of all-time at just 50 days, to be replaced by Rishi Sunak, as Musk also completed his take-over of Twitter.
On November 11th, cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed, leading to the ultimate imprisonment of Sam Bankman-Fried, while December 2022 was dominated by the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, culminating in Lionel Messi finally winning the one trophy that eluded him after a 3-3 draw and penalty shootout against France.
January - June 2023
The new year of 2023 started with the January funeral of Pope Benedict XVI, who passed away in late December 2022.
In February, the United States was in a flux about Chinese spy balloons after some research balloons drifted across the mainland, with officials also declining to rule out the possibility of aliens...
On March 17th, over a year since he invaded Ukraine, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian children commissioner for the unlawful deportion and transfer of children.
In April, SpaceX launches Starship - the largest rocket ever made, surpassing the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
It exploded four minutes after launch in what was called "a rapid unscheduled disassembly." To you or me, it blew up.
Come May and the World Health Organisation formally declared COVID-19 to no longer being a pandemic, whilst on May 6th, Charles III was formally coronated in the first coronation of a British monarch since 1953.
The world was gripped in June 2023 by the fate of the submersible Titan which went missing on a dive to the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
The sub was found to have imploded, instantly killing the crew of five, including Titanic expert PH Nargeolot.
July - December 2023
In July, film fans were treated to two giants going head-to-head as Oppenheimer and Barbie were both released, the event being dubbed Barbenheimer, whilst in August, India became the latest nation to soft-land on the moon with an unmanned probe touching down at the lunar south pole.
In September, another earthquake struck, this time in Morocco, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Come October and the Republican party in the US House of Representatives removes Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with no obvious replacement.
This was on October 3rd, with Mike Johnson not being elected until October 25th, essentially shutting down the House for nearly a month.
On October 7th, Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, killing over 1,000 people and taking hostages.
Israel would later invade and commence a bombing operation of the Gaza Strip, for which it had received wide-spread condemnation.
On November 2nd, the last track from The Beatles is released, featuring restored vocals from John Lennon and George Harrison. It is titled Now and Then, whilst on December 31st, Queen Margarethe II of Denmark, the only reigning female sovereign, announces her abdication.
January - July 2024
January 2024 started with an earthquake in Japan on New Year's Day, before a second disaster hit on January 2nd at Haneda Airport.
A Japan Air Lines Airbus A350 was coming into land, but a Japanese coastguard aircraft was on the runway when it was not supposed to be. The JAL A350 was destroyed by fire after a full evacuation, with five killed on the coastguard plane.
In February, Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijan president and familiar figure on the F1 podium, is re-elected to a fifth term of office, whilst March sees the United Nations Security Council pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
April sees a full solar eclipse visible in North America, whilst on May 30th, former US President Donald Trump is found guilty on all 34 counts of his hush-money trial in New York.
June 24th sees Wikileaks founder Julian Assange strike a deal with the US in a plea bargin, and finally leaves the UK to return to his native Australia.
On July 4th - three days before Hamilton's win drought finally comes to an end, the UK held a general election in which Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party wins 411 of the 650 seats compared to just 121 for Rishi Sunak's incumbent Conservative party.
Starmer takes office on July 5th - during Free Practice 3 at Silverstone...
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