Fastest Formula 1 Driver: Revised Edition

Mediaon August 24, 2020

Has Anyone Won Every Race In A F1 Season

Page Contents

When Formula 1 and AWS released their ‘Fastest Formula 1 Driver’ analysis, they broke the internet. Judging by the number of meltdowns in the comments on Facebook groups, if their goals were simply to get more people talking about F1 and to get more people taking notice of the sport, it was Mission Accomplished.

However, the results had a lot of people scratching their heads.

Heikki Kovalainen in eighth place?

Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen not on the list?

Thankfully, not everyone took the figures as gospel, and numbers began to get crunched…

So, to see how drivers stack up against each other and add some weight to the debate, the team at money.co.uk analysed the performance of drivers from the last 70 years to see how they performed across nine different factors including career win percentage, championship points per race (adjusted for the current scoring system), and 2nd and 3rd place podium finishes to rank, on balance, the best drivers of all time.

To account for manufacturer reliability and performance, they also included the percentage of races where drivers were forced to retire due to mechanical issues and the average number of points per race (adjusted) Vs teammates.

Here are the findings!

Top 10 Greatest Drivers Of All Time

Juan Manuel Fangio	88.6 points
Michael Schumacher	79.2 points
Lewis Hamilton	75.7 points
Jim Clark	65.5 points
Alberto Ascari	65.3 points
Alain Prost	64.2 points
Ayrton Senna	58.9 points
Jackie Stewart	58.3 points
Sebastian Vettel	57.9 points
Niki Lauda	50.9 points

See the full list of the Top 50 Fastest Formula 1 Drivers

Top 10 Drivers By Career Win %

Juan Manuel Fangio	47.1%
Alberto Ascari	40.6%
Jim Clark	34.7%
Lewis Hamilton	34.5%
Michael Schumacher	29.6%
Jackie Stewart	27.3%
Alain Prost	25.6%
Ayrton Senna	25.5%
Stirling Moss	24.2%
Sebastian Vettel	21.6%

Most Total Career Points (adjusted)

Michael Schumacher	3,961 (12.9 per start)
Lewis Hamilton	3952 (15.5 per start)
Sebastian Vettel	3,223 (13.1 per start)
Kimi Räikkönen	2,816 (8.8 per start)
Fernando Alonso	2,761 (8.8 per start)
Alain Prost	2,502 (12.6 per start)
Rubens Barrichello	1,906 (5.9 per start)
Ayrton Senna	1,875 (11.6 per start)
Jenson Button	1,844 (6 per start)
Nico Rosberg	1,757 (8.5 per start)

Most 2nd & 3rd Place Finishes

Kimi Räikkönen	82
Lewis Hamilton	68
Sebastian Vettel	67
Fernando Alonso	65
Michael Schumacher	64
Rubens Barrichello	57
Alain Prost	55
David Coulthard	49
Valtteri Bottas	42
Ayrton Senna	39

Least Races To First Win

Giuseppe 'Nino' Farina	1
Juan Manuel Fangio	2
Tony Brooks	3
Emerson Fittipaldi	4
Jacques Villeneuve	4
Clay Regazzoni	5
José Froilán González	5
Lewis Hamilton	6
Jacky Ickx	7
Bruce McLaren	7

The Methodology

The team analysed driver performance on a range of data points that are typically associated with success (detailed below) across the duration of their careers.

To mitigate manufacturer bias (i.e. cars with superior engineering) they took into consideration drivers average points per start vs their teammates.

They also looked at the % of races where drivers were forced to retire due to a mechanical fault to account for improved reliability.

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.

Win %, Championship Wins, Points Per Start, Podium %, Pole %, Fastest Laps, Mechanical DNF %, Average Points Vs Teammate