The F1 Stat Blog Your Home of F1 Statistics
You might remember that last year BBC did a lot of articles about F1’s greatest drivers, personally I disagreed with the list so I’m doing my own. As I am the F1StatMan the top 10 drivers will be based only by their stats. To save myself some time, and stop my indecisiveness, I’ve used a formula to rank them all for me. The formula isn’t perfect and I know that a lot of people will disagree with some placements but it’s based on stats and stats alone. It slightly favours the modern drivers with more races though I have done what I can do even it out a little.
This is just part one and just the drivers ranked between 10th and 6th. 5th to 1st will be done at a later date
10) Niki Lauda
The Austrian triple champion is number 10 in my stat list. He won 25 of his 177 grands prix which isn’t a particularly great win percentage but he does also have the highest retirement percentage (45.61%) on this list. Lauda had one of the better returns to F1, after a two year absence at the start of the 80s he returned and won the 1984 Drivers’ Championship with McLaren.
Mansell absolutely DOMINATED 1992, he was on pole in all but two races and was no lower than second in every race he finished that year. He has the joint fourth most F1 wins but is only ninth because he only has the one championship. With a bit more luck he could have been a triple champion and been pushed up to fifth with my formula.
8) Jim Clark
Jim Clark won 25 races, exactly the same as Lauda but Clark had over 100 fewer races. Clark had 33 pole positions, a record at the time and one that stood for 20 years until Ayrton Senna beat it in 1989. He was the first British double champion and had he not died I’m sure he would have won at least one more championship.
The current F1 champion and in just over 100 races he has 28 wins, 49 podiums and somehow even more helmet designs than podiums. Vettel has a lot of youngest ever records, including youngest winner, polesitter, champion, double champion and so on. He is the only driver to win his first three Drivers’ Championships in consecutive years and by the time he retires will almost definitely be in the top three of this list.
Sir Jackie Stewart entered exactly 100 F1 grands prix, winning 27 of them and three World Drivers’ Championships. He won his three championships in just nine seasons, giving him a 33.33% WDC percentage which is behind only Schumacher and Fangio. Both during and after his racing career Stewart was very vocal about racing safety, without his effort there would definitely have been a lot more deaths in not only F1 but most other forms of motorsport too.
