Formula 1 Driver Wins Ranking

Jim Clark is undeniably one of the greatest and most dominant champions in F1 history, securing two titles in 1963 and 1965 and just missing out on the '62 World Championship due to an oil leak in the final race of the season. Clark has the fourth highest win percentage in history of 34.25%. He also has an astonishing 33 pole positions from 72 starts.

Famous for his formidable speed and partnership with Colin Chapman, Clark spent his entire F1 career driving for the Lotus team. Many fans and supporters alike believe the Scot would've added to his Championships if it wasn't for his fatal accident at an F2 race in Hockenheim in 1968. Clark still currently holds the record for the most career 'Grand Slams'. Here, you will find the Formula 1 records for most championships race wins, pole positions, race entries for both teams and individuals.

If you want to know more about the youngest drivers to win championships, races, points and podiums, read our article here. Realising he couldn't match the young Frenchman on outright speed, Lauda often started behind his teammate as he instead opted to concentrate on race setup. His decision paid dividends as he pipped the Frenchman to the title at the final race in Portugal through being a more consistent points scorer across the year. Lauda won five grands prix in 1984 to Prost's five, but only once finished outside the top two all year. He also became only the second driver ever to win the world championship without scoring a single pole position all season. The list displays theall time F1 driver rankingsfor the most amount of races, victories, podiums, pole positions, fastest laps and the total amount of points for each F1 driver.

We also have the all time F1 teams ranking and the current F1 Records page. The output and the list of the fastest drivers of all time offers some great names indeed. Of course, there are the obvious ones that rank highly—Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, all of whom emerge as the top five fastest drivers. However, there are some names that many may not think of as top 20 drivers on first glance. Is that the Kovalainen that finished his career circling round at the back of the Grand Prix field in Caterham, I hear you ask?

For those of us who watched Kovalainen throughout his F1 career, it comes as little surprise that he is so high up the list when we consider pure speed. Look at his years on the McLaren team against Lewis Hamilton. The qualifying speaks volumes, with the median difference of just 0.1 seconds per lap. Ask Kovalainen himself and he'll tell you that he didn't perform at the same level as Hamilton in the races for many reasons . But in qualifying, his statistics speak for themselves—the model has ranked him so highly because of his consistent qualifying performances throughout his career. I, for one, am extremely happy to see Kovalainen get the data-driven recognition that he deserves for that raw talent that was always on display during qualifying.

In a season packed with close racing, controversy, and tight championship battles, it is easy to pay attention to just the winners and losers. But the season has so much more than just the championship battle between an all-time great and a future great driver. There were break-out performances, stunning qualifying laps, talented rookies looking to make their mark, and the return of a two-time world champion who still has unfinished business in the sport. An interesting parallel for Alonso might be Schumacher,7 who returned to F1 in 2010 after three seasons away.

In the three seasons before he retired again, he finished ninth, eighth and 13th in the standings, leading just three laps and notching only one podium in 58 races. Although Alonso is younger than Schumacher was in his comeback attempt — age 39, versus 41 — his current relative driver Elo (+30) is a lot lower than Schumacher's was (+46) one race into the 2010 season. For good or potentially for bad, Alonso remains the biggest wild card of the 2021 season. He's actually done it all and more, rewriting almost every record in the sport, holding the wins record for 19 years and record for most World Championships for 14 years. The only driver in history to top two decades, topping the 90's at 58 points to Häkkinen's 45, going on to dominate the first half of the 2000s topping the decade once again with an impressive 57 to Räikkönen's 47. Growing up I wasn't the biggest fan of Michael, he was always winning and I supported the silver team, it was only once I grew up did I understand just how brilliant he was.

Fast, strategic, reliable and adaptable he was undeniably in another league to anyone else on the grid and no matter what you think of him on track, off track he was the perfect gentleman. It was actually Ferrari and Schumacher's success that helped me appreciate the job Mercedes and Hamilton are doing currently. His comeback from 2010 to 2012 is also included in his points tally taking his top ten finishes in the standings to an unprecedented 16 seasons , he is also the fourth most experienced driver of all time.

The two-time world champion left F1 as its third-highest rated driver in the 2018 season, then spent two years dabbling in SportsCar and IndyCar racing. Elo currently has Alonso ranked sixth in the field, with the sixth-best reliability score as well, after decaying his rating to reflect his time away from the sport. He made his return, heavily bandaged up and still suffering the effects of his accident, just six weeks later at Ferrari's home race at Monza. Lauda defied the odds to finish fourth on his return and took the championship down to the wire with a podium at the United States Grand Prix four weeks later.

The season finale took place in appalling wet conditions in Fuji, with some drivers even appealing for the race to be cancelled. Lauda was one of those, and fearing for his safety, he pulled into the pits to retire after just two laps. With the Austrian failing to score, Hunt's podium finish was enough to send the title his way. The first driver in the Top 10 is David Coulthard, who also happens to be the highest placed non-championship winning driver on this list. The Scot finished third in the standings in 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000 and was runner up in 2001. Towards the tail end of his career he joined the brand new Red Bull racing team, taking the their first ever podium with an exquisite drive to 3rd in the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix.

The Briton stayed for seven seasons taking 8 more wins in the process including McLarens last win at the Brazilian GP in 2012. Nelson Piquet became F1 World Champion for the second time, despite having trailed Alain Prost by 14 points with just three races to go. After a tensely-fought season that featured eight different winners, the final standings saw just 10 points separating the top three, with Piquet just two clear of Prost at the very top. Prost had led the championship for much of the season, but a run of three retirements in the final four races left him vulnerable.

It was to be Piquet who stepped up to capitalise, winning two of the final three races to snatch the title away from Prost. Piquet's '83 title was the last F1 championship win for the famous Brabham team. It is the blended perfection of human and machine that create the winning formula. It is this blend that makes F1 racing, or more pertinently, the driver talent, so difficult to understand.

How many races or Championships would Michael Schumacher really have won without the power of Benetton and later, Ferrari, and the collective technical genius that were behind those teams? Could we really have seen Lewis Hamilton win six World Championships if his career had taken a different turn and he was confined to back-of-the-grid machinery? Maybe these aren't the best examples because they are two of the best drivers the world has ever seen. There are many examples, however, of drivers whose real talent has remained fairly well hidden throughout their career.

Those that never got that "right place, right time" break into a winning car and, therefore, those that will be forever remembered as a midfield driver. At the time of writing, Vettel has just ended his 6 year semi-successful stint at Ferrari, finishing runner up in the standings in both 2017 and 2018. Vettel has had a difficult time as of late, seemingly growing more unhappy at the Italian outfit over the recent years. From the 2021 season Vettel will be driving for the recently rebranded Aston Martin F1 team, you never know, he could still creep higher on the list... The 1992 World Champion is next up, competing in 15 seasons between 1980 and 1995.

His story is one of my favourites, one of patience, determination and heart break. Mansell excelled in arguably the most competitive era of F1; fighting his way to the top of the mountain and driving some of the greatest races ever... (Silverstone '87 anyone) He also drove for four of the most legendary teams in the sport; Lotus, Williams, Ferrari and McLaren. See major Formula 1 records including most driver and constructor Grand Prix wins, world championships, pole positions, attendances and more.

Formula 1 Driver Number Of Wins From the first lap in Bahrain to the final lap in Abu Dhabi, Carlos Sainz proved that he is every bit as capable as LeClerc in the Ferrari. His season started slowly, but the results started coming as he acclimated to his new team. Four podium finishes, including a second place in Monaco and a third place in the season finale at Abu Dhabi, propelled the Spanish ace to fifth place in the world championship. Although he rarely threatened his teammate, Barrichello enjoyed his most successful season in 2002, when he won four races for the team and finished a career best second place in the drivers' championship. A test-driver for Williams in 1991, Hill's big break came in securing a team-drive alongside then three-time world champion Alain Prost in 1993. Hill ably supported Prost to his fourth and final drivers' title and surprised many at the time with 10 podium finishes including three wins.

In this ranking, he is hurt slightly by his lack of qualifying pace, scoring only six pole positions in his career. As for the rest of the field, Red Bull's other driver, Sergio Pérez — who joined from the former Racing Point team over the offseason — seems primed for a big season as well. Pérez in his new Red Bull has the third-best Elo rating of any driver/team combo, with a 70 percent chance of beating an average driver after accounting for reliability. That's on par with Bottas , who has finished second in the championship each of the past two seasons in what Elo considers a clear case of car carrying driver. In McLaren's ride, Elo gives Ricciardo a 64 percent chance of beating the average driver, which edges him ahead of his new teammate, Lando Norris .

But if we remove the team factors and put both drivers in equal equipment, Elo saw Verstappen as actually having had the better season in 2020. Verstappen led the field with a relative Elo of +90 points on an average team, compared with Hamilton's +78 mark. Conditional on finishing the session, Elo would expect Verstappen to beat Hamilton head-to-head in identical cars 56 percent of the time in qualifying and 53 percent of the time in races. One of the most thrilling seasons in F1 history, 1986 delivered a titanic three-way fight featuring F1 heavyweights Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, and Nelson Piquet.

Prost became the first back-to-back champion since Jack Brabham in 1960 after a dramatic and famous season-finale in Adelaide, during which title favourite Mansell's left rear tire exploded on the Brabham Straight at 180 mph. Prost took the win to pip a dejected Mansell by just two points in the final standings, despite the Englishman having held the championship lead for seven consecutive races before the finale in Australia. The closest championship battle in F1 history, Austrian Niki Lauda secured his third drivers' world title by defeating McLaren teammate Alain Prost by just half a point in his penultimate season before retirement. Lauda returned to F1 with McLaren following a two-year sabbatical and found himself with the chance to win a third world title just two years later. Despite having held the upper hand over teammate John Watson during his first two seasons back in the sport, he found the younger and faster Prost a very different challenge.

Lap times from qualifying sessions are normalized to adjust for differences in race tracks, which enables us to pool lap times across different tracks. This normalization process equalizes driver lap time differences, helping us compare drivers across race tracks and eliminating the need to construct track-specific models to account for track alterations over time. Another important technique is that we compare qualifying data for drivers on the same race team , where teammates have competed against each other in a minimum of five qualifying sessions. By holding the team constant, we get a direct performance comparison under the same race conditions while controlling for car effects. The most experienced pilot in F1 and it shows, competing in 18 seasons and showing no signs of slowing down, Kimi has made appearances in two top 10 decade lists . His experience and his drives for legendary teams McLaren, Ferrari and Lotus over the years have earned him such a high placing on this list, his consistency at the top for almost 2 decades is unrivalled.

Winning the 2007 World Championship could've easily been his 3rd title triumph, narrowly missing out on the Championships with McLaren in 2003 and 2005 due to unreliability. Stirling Moss is often remembered as the greatest driver to have never won a World title, finishing runner up 4 years on the trot from 1955 to 1958 and finishing in the top 3 in 1959, 1960 and 1961 respectively. Amazingly, Moss has an F1 racing record of 35 retirements (52.2%) during his F1 career which still landed him comfortably in the top 20 greatest drivers ever, a testament to his ability in the car. Although this list is based on F1 performances alone it must be mentioned that Moss raced from 1948 to 1962 in plenty of different categories and won 212 of the 529 races he entered.

Took the first pole position of his career at Sochi and would have secured his maiden victory too if not for the sudden deluge which clipped his wings just a few laps from the end. Scored a second-place finish behind Ricciardo at Monza, qualified high up the grid most weekend and delivered consistent Sunday performances which combined strong pace and composed wheel-to-wheel racing. Lewis Hamilton is one of the all-time great Formula 1 drivers. Seven world championships, 103 wins, a knighthood, and he was within a single lap of claiming his eighth world title.

He's done all this while being an activist and vocal supporter of equal rights and the LGBTQ community. Lewis Hamilton holds the record of most victories with 103, ahead of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel . Schumacher also holds the record for the greatest gap between his first and last victories, with over 14 years between the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix and 2006 Chinese Grand Prix. Alberto Ascari and Vettel share the record for wins from consecutive starts with nine, although only Vettel has done this in consecutive races . The youngest winner is Max Verstappen, who won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix at the age of 18 years and 228 days old. The oldest winner is Luigi Fagioli, who was 53 years and 22 days old when he won the 1951 French Grand Prix with Juan Manuel Fangio.

The most starts without a victory is 208, achieved by Andrea de Cesaris. Findings were scored and weighted using a min-max normalisation formula with final rankings weighted towards championship wins, reliability, and team performance to emphasise performance against peers and avoid manufacturer bias. But Lewis Hamilton is still one short of equaling Michael Schumacher's record of 7 Championship wins.

Schumacher won the first two titles with Benetton in 1994 and 1995. He then went on to win 5 consecutive titles with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004. He is considered by many to be the greatest F1 driver of all time. Interestingly, Schumacher ended his F1 career racing for Mercedes, the same team Hamilton is in currently. It was so close that when Felipe Massa crossed the line, he thought he'd actually done enough to be crowned champion until around 30 seconds later when Hamilton grabbed fifth and the extra point needed to eclipse the Brazilian. Massa actually won one more grand prix than Hamilton across the season, but there was little else to separate them.

Between them, they started 13 out of 18 races on pole and delivered some of the closest and most tense racing of any championship fight in recent decades. Had a stellar first half of the year in terms of results, picking up three podium finishes. While his season trailed off in terms of results, the performance level didn't and he was unfortunate to lose fifth in the drivers' championship.

The 1970's was the closest decade in terms of points and also with the lowest points average. Lauda ended the decade as the second most successful driver on 43 points, just one point behind Fittipaldi and level on points with Scheckter and Regazzoni. The early story of Niki Lauda is similar to the one of Nelson Piquet, also coming from a family who strongly disapproved of his racing ambitions, Lauda famously took out a £30,000 bank loan to buy a seat with the March team in F2. Perhaps the greatest story of all though was his comeback after his horrific accident at the 1976 German GP at the Nurburgring.

Remarkably only missing two races and getting back into the seat just six weeks later, Lauda missed out on the title to James Hunt by just a singular point. Nelson Piquet's story is one of great interest and a story of dedication. Originally a tennis phenomenon, the Brazilian was a regional champion and one of Brazil's most exciting prospects before his focus switched to Go Karting.

Racing under an altered version of his mother's surname to hide his new found love from his disapproving parents, even winning Karting and Sportscar championships wasn't enough to win his parents over. Piquet is the second most successful driver of the 1980's. Next up we have one of my all-time favourite drivers, the original 'flying Finn' himself; Mika Häkkinen. Mika's was the first driver I ever supported in F1, silver over red and all that...

Helping McLaren secure their last Constructors Championship to date. In a dramatic finish to the final race of the season, Red Bull's Verstappen overtook the Mercedes driver on the last lap to claim victory at the Yas Marina Circuit and secure the first world championship of his career. The four-time world champion scored a couple of superb, and very popular, results by finishing on the podium in Azerbaijan and Hungary.