None of the Formula 1 contingent made it to the final in the main event at this year's Race of Champions. The good-natured but ultra-competitive annual contest sees top names from F1, rallying, sportscars, touring cars and extreme sports take each other on in an array of machinery in head to head knockout races around an arena, with the 2011 running taking place in Dusseldorf.
World champion Sebastian Vettel, fellow German legend Michael Schumacher, ex-F1 man David Coulthard and Renault's Vitaly Petrov and tester Romain Grosjean were present to uphold F1 honour, but only Schumacher would get as far as the semi finals. Last night Schumacher and Vettel had teamed up to win the Nations' Cup element for Germany.
Today they blitzed individual paths through their heats, only to come up against each other in the quarter finals. Driving special RoC buggies, it was the seven-time F1 champion who overcame the two-time champion, as Schumacher knocked Vettel out of contention.
But Schumacher would only get one step further, as Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen saw him off in an ultra-close semi-final race in KTM X-bow sportscars. Coulthard had also reached the quarter finals, but was stopped there by DTM touring car champion Martin Tomczyk, who beat him in Skoda Fabia rally cars.
Grosjean and Petrov were eliminated in the heats. Petrov did not manage a single win, and was beaten by Grosjean - ironically his big rival for the second 2012 Lotus Renault seat alongside Kimi Raikkonen - in their heat match-up in Skodas.
But Grosjean was unlucky not to get further, as his heat results meant he was stuck in a tie-break with Kristensen and Vettel, all on two wins apiece, and the organisers had to use their combined lap times to split them.
That meant Grosjean lost out to Vettel by just half a second. With all the F1 men out of the way, the final was fought out between rally star Sebastien Ogier and Kristensen, with the Frenchman blasting to victory on his RoC debut.