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Daniel Ricciardo's rather sombre Singapore Grand Prix is far from the only disappointingly unfitting end to a great Formula 1 career.
Whether it's a limp performance akin to Ricciardo's - he was running last and was sacrificed to block Red Bull's title rival from grabbing a bonus point in his final race before being dropped - or misfortune robbing a driver of a great swan song, we've picked out 10 other times a driver who at one point was regarded among F1's best went out on a flat note.
We haven't included those great drivers who had their careers or lives ended before, during or shortly after their final race.
David Coulthard - 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix
Special one-off Wings for Life white Red Bull livery? Check. Rare (back then) point-of-view helmet camera? Check. Track you've won on previously? Check.
It had all the makings of a classic farewell, but David Coulthard's 246th and final F1 start only lasted one corner before his beautiful white Red Bull was gutted by a one-two punch from Williams drivers Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima.
Rosberg tapped Coulthard from behind in the Senna S, sending him into a recoverable spin that a whack from a helpless Nakajima soon made unrecoverable.
It meant the 13-time race winner played no further part in one of the greatest F1 title deciders of all time, switching from F1 driver to F1 spectator two hours sooner than expected.
Jenson Button - 2017 Monaco Grand Prix
Having made way for Stoffel Vandoorne at McLaren, 2009 champion Jenson Button was quick to not call his exit at the end of 2016 a proper retirement. And he stayed true to his word by jumping back in the McLaren six races into the 2017 season to stand in for Fernando Alonso, who was making his Indianapolis 500 debut.
McLaren was in the final year of its miserable Honda alliance and early-season reliability problems meant Button was facing a 15-place grid penalty that would effectively guarantee a last-place start at the track with the fewest overtaking opportunities.
That didn't stop Button from showing he'd lost none of his one-lap speed in qualifying though as he dragged the McLaren into Q3.
Button spent 57 of the 78 laps effectively running in last place before an attempt to improve his position at Portier went badly wrong.
He went down the inside of Pascal Wehrlein's Sauber, only to find the door closed, leading to the Sauber being flipped onto its side against the barriers.
Both drivers walked away but a three-place grid penalty that Button will never serve for a clumsy incident was an unfitting way for a great grand prix career to end.
Emerson Fittipaldi - 1980 United States Grand Prix
Emerson Fittipaldi had the potential to be more than a two-time F1 champion but is frequently the unfortunate answer to the question of the worst team move in F1 history.
Fittipaldi was champion with Lotus in 1972 and with McLaren in 1974 but, having finished runner-up to Niki Lauda in 1975, Fittipaldi made the surprise decision to leave McLaren for the Copersucar team set up by his brother Wilson.
Just two podiums followed in the five years he spent with the team before he walked away from F1 at the end of 1980, with his F1 finale lasting just 15 laps at Watkins Glen before a terminal suspension problem struck.
But Fittipaldi did find great success thereafter in CART, winning 23 races, the 1989 title and providing Nigel Mansell with his closest competition when he crossed the pond in 1993.
Damon Hill - 1999 Japanese Grand Prix
Damon Hill already knew his second season with Jordan in 1999 would be his final year in F1 before it even started. But what ensued was an unexpectedly difficult battle to end it on his terms.
Having beaten team-mate Ralf Schumacher to deliver Jordan's first win in 1998, Hill suddenly found himself playing second fiddle to new team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen while grappling with a lessening love for F1.
By the time of a miserable rain-soaked French GP - Frentzen won, but Hill was "thankful" for the electrical problem that ended his race early - in late June, Hill knew he wanted out of F1, seeing the next round at Silverstone as the perfect signing-off point.
Ironically, team boss Eddie Jordan tried to replace him before the British GP but negotiations then led to Hill's management agreeing for him to stay until the end of the year, despite his desire to finish after Silverstone.
"I was trapped in a nightmare where I wanted to stop immediately but couldn't for fear of the financial consequences," Hill explained in his excellent 2016 autobiography.
"By that stage, all that mattered was that I survived, could look after my family and that I did not inflict the same upon them that I had to endure on losing my father."
The whole ordeal placed a massive strain on Hill. He suffered panic attacks across the remainder of the season and voluntarily called time on his final F1 race at the season-ending Japanese GP 32 laps early: "I'd reached the maximum I could tolerate in this dangerous sport."
The understandable - especially with hindsight - intentional Suzuka retirement wasn't so much the disappointing end, as the unfairly slow and painful march towards it.
Kimi Raikkonen - 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Kimi Raikkonen proved he was still worthy of a place on the F1 grid after Ferrari replaced him with Charles Leclerc, by effectively ending Antonio Giovinazzi's F1 career during their three years together at Alfa Romeo.
They were evenly matched by 2021 with Giovinazzi's one-lap advantage being balanced out by Raikkonen's still razor-sharp racecraft.
But in the Abu Dhabi season finale, Giovinazzi was sixth tenths of a second quicker in qualifying than Raikkonen, who was dumped out in Q1.
His race was going OK, running 18th but only a few seconds adrift of Giovinazzi, before a brake failure sent him spinning into the barriers at the Turn 6/7 chicane.
Raikkonen managed to get his Alfa back to the garage but the problem proved terminal and marked the end of his glittering F1 career.
Jacques Villeneuve - 2006 German GP
Most of Jacques Villeneuve's F1 career after his title-winning 1997 season was a disappointment, but there was something particularly frustrating about his F1 farewell.
Villeneuve had got himself a two-year Sauber deal for 2005-06 before he'd even started his lacklustre three-race Renault cameo at the end of 2004.
He didn't exactly blow his less experienced team-mate Felipe Massa out of the water in 2005 and when BMW completed its takeover for 2006, it was clear Villeneuve - signed before BMW came onboard - was on borrowed time, with Nick Heidfeld brought in to lead the team and third driver Robert Kubica waiting in the wings.
While Villeneuve's performance in 2006 was far from disastrous - he had four points finishes to Heidfeld's six and outqualified him 7-5 - BMW was keen to evaluate Kubica.
It intended to just bench Villeneuve for the Hungarian GP, after he mangled his car in a final-corner crash at Hockenheim. BMW would then decide who would see out the season.
An unimpressed Villeneuve had no intention of waiting to find out who won the shootout, immediately splitting with the team and ensuring crashing out of Hockenheim while trying to recover from a first-lap clash completed a frustrating end to an F1 career that peaked in year two.
Niki Lauda - 1985 Australian Grand Prix
Niki Lauda had already ensured his F1 career didn't end on his bizarre mid-weekend withdrawal from the 1979 Canadian GP, when he'd decided driving unreliable Brabhams around in a dangerous sport was no longer worth it, by returning two years later with McLaren.
By year three of his comeback, he was a three-time champion when he beat team-mate Alain Prost to the 1984 title by half a point.
The following year was far less successful - and particularly less reliable - with Lauda suffering 10 retirements in the 14 races he competed in, having missed two due to a wrist injury.
But he won at Zandvoort and five races later at the season finale - the inaugural race in Adelaide - it looked like Lauda was going to get a dream swan song.
He'd qualified down in 16th place but a spirited charge, and problems for many of the frontrunners, meant Lauda led with 25 laps to go after a pass on Ayrton Senna.
But it wasn't meant to be as a brake problem sent Lauda's McLaren into the wall and out of the race, a continuation of the reliability problems that had thwarted Lauda’s better-than-it-looked final F1 season.
Juan Pablo Montoya - 2006 United States GP
Two races before Villeneuve's exit, F1 lost another box-office grand prix winner with Juan Pablo Montoya splitting with McLaren after the United States GP.
It's sometimes remembered as retribution for Montoya causing a multi-car pile-up at Indianapolis that eliminated four cars on the spot including himself and his McLaren team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, but Montoya had already committed to a NASCAR switch for 2007 which McLaren boss Ron Dennis suggested he hurried along.
McLaren-Montoya was a mouth-watering prospect on paper and incredibly potent at its best, as Montoya's three grand prix victories in 2005 showed. But when McLaren slipped down the pecking order with a V8-powered McLaren MP4-21 that contradicted Montoya's stubborn driving style, the partnership was always destined to collapse.
It’s just a shame it did so after Montoya's worst first lap in F1 rather than one of his genuine (but rare) 2006 highs, such as his third at Imola behind the famous Michael Schumacher-Fernando Alonso rematch.
Carlos Reutemann - 1982 Brazilian Grand Prix
Carlos Reutemann U-turned on his decision to make his gutting loss at the 1981 title-decider his F1 swan song, instead continuing with Williams for 1982 while team-mate Alan Jones retired (temporarily, before his own disappointing but highly lucrative return with F1's original 'Haas' team).
But despite a strong second in the Kyalami season opener (above), Reutemann went permanently into F1 retirement after taking his Williams and Rene Arnoux's Renault into the catch fencing at the Brazilian GP.
There were plenty of theories as to why Reutemann really walked away, from his fear of his place in a British team amid the looming Falklands War, to his growing disillusionment with racing following his near-miss in the 1981 title fight.
Whatever the real reason, Williams team-mate Keke Rosberg instead went on to win the title that Reutemann had come so painfully close to one year prior.
Nigel Mansell - 1995 Spanish Grand Prix
Nigel Mansell had many apparent F1 farewells throughout the latter half of his F1 career, but his actual final race didn't feature any of his trademark dogged heroics.
After Williams picked David Coulthard for 1995, Mansell ended up partnering with long-time rival McLaren instead. But there was just one small problem: he couldn't fit in the cockpit.
That led to Mansell sitting out the first two races while McLaren redesigned the car.
It was hardly worth the wait either as he suffered a miserable pair of weekends at Imola and Barcelona - the latter of which ended 47 laps early when Mansell retired a healthy McLaren as he felt "the car was not driveable".
He continued in his 2015 autobiography "watching Damon [Hill] and David Coulthard driving the Williams in 1995 was hard because my car didn't even fit me. It was incredibly uncomfortable, very uncompetitive".
Mansell chose to step away from McLaren and F1, citing disillusionment: "I felt, rightly or wrongly, that the whole world was on my shoulders. I felt that some people were taking from me and not giving any support."
