The top 20 F1 drivers of all time
From Moss to Max, Lauda to Lewis and a playboy to the Professor, this is my ranking
Picking the best in any sport is difficult. Times change. Perceptions alter. nostalgia plays tricks. The here and now is uniquely vivid.
In motor racing, the task is even harder. While a football is still essentially a football (if made of different materials), Formula One divides between the era of immediate peril and one of more distant peril. it is still dangerous and always will be but the change confuses accurate assessment between one era and another.
It is a personal list. Forgive me.
20 NIGEL MANSELL
Was there a more tenacious driver? Or were many more loved by the British public?
He seemed to spend his life travelling uphill, the nearly man who wore his heart on his sleeve. His tyre cruelly blew in the adelaide decider in 1986 and then he was beaten to the title by nelson Piquet in 1987, before finally triumphing in 1992 at the age of 39, abetted by a brilliant adrian newey-designed Williams.
At Ferrari, he was Il Leone. The defining image of his glory years was the crowds that spilled on to the tarmac at silverstone to hail him: Mansell-mania in action.
19 MARIO ANDRETTI
His achievements on either side of the atlantic were extraordinary. By the time he came to Europe, he was already the winner of the indianapolis and Daytona 500s.
A man of charm and courtesy, but no little competitiveness, he was an emblem of the american dream. Born near Trieste early in World War Two, he spent seven years in a dispersed people’s camp, making it to the Usa in 1955. superbly versatile, he won the 1978 world title with Lotus.
18 NELSON PIQUET
A master at getting a team to work around him, he excelled under Bernie Ecclestone’s leadership at Brabham, where he won two of his three world titles in collaboration with legendary chief designer gordon Murray.
He moved to Williams, where he used his intelligence to get the better of Mansell, and called the Briton a blockhead with an ugly wife. The squabbling fell just short of fisticuffs.
17 SIR JACK BRABHAM
A reticent, sometimes truculent, character yet a royal of australian sport.
Grandson of a cockney greengrocer who emigrated to australia in 1885, Brabham remains the only man ever to win the world title for a team bearing his name. He was 40 at the time, claiming the third of his championships.
He died in 2014, the last champion from the 1950s to go.
16 NICO ROSBERG
HE will always be the man who beat Lewis Hamilton to the title in the same machinery. never as gifted as his erstwhile friend, the cerebral german screwed himself to his task in 2016, having been clobbered by his Mercedes teammate for years. Who else would have shown the same powers of resilience? He even stopped cycling in the summer break to lose one kilogram in leg muscle and credited his pole at Japan, by a hundredth of a second, to this.
He retired immediately after taking the championship, knowing a repeat was beyond him.
15 JAMES HUNT
THE great playboy once inspired a queue of Ba stewardesses to form outside his bedroom door. showing immense bravery he won the 1976 world championship driving on through blinding fantails of rain in Fuji in his title decider with niki Lauda.
For a too-brief period, before his lifestyle distracted him, Hunt was the best on the grid. He died too young, 45 of a heart attack, taking with him a cavalier spirit but leaving behind an indelible mark.
14 SEBASTIAN VETTEL
A brilliant front-runner. His glory days came at red Bull, with his four titles in consecutive years from 2010. The blown diffuser era, the car sucked to the ground, best suited him. He made good use of it and Ferrari came calling with £50million a year.
Alas, his time in italy did not deliver the prize he wanted. He might have won the title in quick red cars in 2017 and, more so, in 2018, but it seemed Hamilton may have got inside his head.
13 GRAHAM HILL
Only man to win the Triple crown — Monaco, Le Mans and the indianapolis 500.
A charismatic figure with his neatly trimmed moustache, he was one of the most well-known figures of the swinging sixties.
He won two titles and was ‘Mr Monaco’ for his five wins there. some considered him overbearing. stewart, however, told me he was the fairest man he ever met.
12 NIKI LAUDA
A hero of sport, recognisable by the scars he suffered in the fire at the nurburgring in 1976. so disfigured was he that skin was taken off his thigh to rebuild his face. six weeks later he returned at Monza, his wounds weeping as he pulled on his balaclava.
A three-time world champion, he understood that success depended not only on his skills as a driver, but in making the team tick for him. Later, a decisive executive chairman of Mercedes during Hamilton’s glory years. He died aged 70 of lung failure, a fighter finally consumed by the fire.
11 ALBERTO ASCARI
Lit the fire of italian motorsport after World War Two. Ferrari’s first world champion, in 1952, and again in 1953, many reckoned him faster than even Juan Manuel Fangio. ascari crashed into the Monaco harbour in 1955 fighting for the lead and died a week later at Monza. Fangio said: ‘i’ve lost my greatest opponent.’
10 FERNANDO ALONSO
Does alonso ever have an off day? He barely has an off session. He is unerringly consistent and enduringly brilliant.
He goes on at aston Martin to his mid-40s, shifting perceptions of the possible in the modern era. Two world titles badly undersell him, and to think the last came nearly 20 years ago. One memory is his 2017 indianapolis 500 debut. He drove like a god, all the american drivers looking up in awe. i am convinced he would have won, but for his Honda engine blowing.
A Dick Dastardly, he only has near-misses to show for a championship-barren time at Ferrari.
But what a racer.
9 JIM CLARK
Many devoted fans of ‘Jimmy’, the modest Borders farmer, would rate him highest on any list.
His death at Hockenheim in an F2 race in 1968 rocked the foundations of the sport, for, like ayrton senna a generation later, he had seemed invulnerable, and so blisteringly fast his peers were cowed. His win in Belgium in 1963 in pouring rain stands comparison with anything in the annals.
Through an eight-mile course past farmhouses, walls, pylons and trees, he lapped the field.
8 SIR JACKIE STEWART
An extraordinary figure in the history of motor racing. in an age when death might be a corner away and drivers’ faces were studies of terror as they prepared to race, stewart shut this out and kept his head while all around him lost theirs. ‘Mind management,’ he called it.
He fought with typical doggedness for safety improvements, saying that if he let the matter rest he would have been a more popular champion, but perhaps a dead one. Later a grand prix winner as owner of his eponymous team, he is now an elder statesman. Who else could say the late Queen was guest of honour at his 80th birthday party?
7 ALAIN PROST
TO watch The Professor, as he was called, sashay from corner to corner with minimal steering input was to witness serene driving at the most rarefied level.
Stewart esteemed Prost as better than senna, for being less brutal at the wheel and for driving within himself rather than on the edge. Ecclestone rated him the finest driver he ever saw until Max Verstappen came along.
He was denied his fourth title when senna rammed into him in suzuka in 1991, but was not to be denied while driving for Williams in 1993, aged 38.
6 SIR STIRLING MOSS
A national treasure, and the most famous sportsman in the world before Muhammad ali started playing to global TV audiences. never a world champion but he would have been had his abiding sense of sportsmanship not precluded it, when he campaigned for Mike Hawthorn to be reinstated in Portugal in 1958.
The appeal was successful, and Hawthorn became the first Briton
to win the title. By a single point from Moss. What worth had titles after that? Would one have made him Hawthorn’s equal? Ha. or two, twice as good? Laughable.
After Fangio’s retirement in 1958 and his own career-ending shunt in 1962, Moss was the best F1 exponent in the world, as well as the best all-round driver full stop. He remained a byword for a certain English style all his long life.
5 MAX VERSTAPPEN
UNQUESTIONABLY the greatest driver of today. yes, his Red Bull is dominant but so have other cars been, yet nobody has made the advantage count so emphatically. Why did nobody else ever win 10 successive races?
He was born with the right genes: his mother Sophie Kumpen was a star karter; his father Jos has F1 pedigree. He was then reared by Jos’s school- of-hardknocks, learning the nuts and bolts of karting. He is the perfect fusion of nature and nurture.
Brutally tough on track when he needs to be, he can conjure blinding speed with a flick of a switch. When his career is over, his name may lead all the rest.
4 MICHAEL SCHUMACHER
So good, he nearly killed the sport. After titles at Benetton, he drove Ferrari to their first championship for 21 years, the first of his five successively in red. A Maranello hero for ever.
He was loved by his team down to the last mechanic, despite a reputation for Teutonic cold. He fought his brother Ralf to win the 2003 San Marino Grand Prix only hours after their mother died.
Lightning quick, mould-breakingly fit, he gave no quarter. He could take this too far, famously punting Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in title deciders.
And parking his car in Monaco in 2006 to scupper Alonso’s final qualifying lap was a dark art.
3 AYRTON SENNA
A FIGURE of myth, a legend augmented by his untimely death at Imola 30 years ago this month.
Many acclaim him as the greatest of all time, for there was his aura as well as his ability.
That combination, and a rivalry with Prost that defined both their careers, caused his home city of Sao Paulo to turn up in their millions to line the streets for his last earthly journey. Fiercely competitive, he conjured feats of brilliance that defied logic. His opening lap in the wet at Donington in 1993, from fifth to first, was mesmeric. Has there ever been a better lap?
Perhaps his in qualifying in Monaco in 1988, when he said he drove it as if not conscious.
2 SIR LEWIS HAMILTON
IF he had never driven in Formula one again after his debut season he would still rank impossibly high in any imaginary pantheon.
The opening seconds of his career in Melbourne were a harbinger of the wonders that were to come, as he passed Alonso, his world champion McLaren team-mate. He was on his way to his first of nine podiums in a row.
His showpiece victory came in the wet at Silverstone in 2008, when he finished one minute ahead, like an amphibian.
That he never made a professional foul is greatly to his credit.
Hamilton is a trailblazer and statistically the greatest of them all. A crowning title at Ferrari would make him so, if Verstappen doesn’t press his own claims.
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1 JUAN MANUEL FANGIO
THE Argentine has won more plaudits for the brilliance of his driving than anyone. Even Hamilton calls him the ‘og’ — the original Gangster. Stewart is sure he was the best and Moss considered him beyond comparison.
A five-time world champion in a record four teams, he has another testament to his greatness that will surely never be eclipsed: he won 24 times, almost modest by modern standards, but did so in just 51 grands prix. That is a 47 per cent strike rate. He remained feted all his life, a dignified figure elevated to the status of a man with no racing equal.