Top 20 F1 drivers ranked: Is Lewis Hamilton the greatest of all time?
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Six World Championships, 88 pole positions, 84 wins; there’s no denying that Lewis Hamilton is a Formula 1 great.
But is he the greatest?
It is often said how difficult it is to compare drivers from different eras but we’ve given it our best shot to form a conclusion about the greatest of all time to see where Britain’s greatest ever driver ranks amongst the best of all time.
#20: Damon Hill
Formula One Championship Wins: 1
Total Career Wins: 22
Damon Hill kick-starts our list as we’ve named him the 20th greatest F1 driver in history.
Hill won his only world championship in 1996 for the Williams team and was an extremely popular figure in the paddock.
#19: Gilles Villeneuve
Formula One Championship Wins: 0
Total Career Wins: 6
Villeneuve won only six of his 67 Grands Prix and failed to win a single world championship. However, his legacy goes beyond numbers and statistics.
This is highlighted by the current Canadian Grand Prix being named Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in his honour.
Villeneuve remains one of Canada’s greatest sportsmen and his name remains at the forefront of Formula 1 greats all these years on.
#18: Nigel Mansell
Formula One Championship Wins: 1
Total Career Wins: 31
After learning the ropes at Lotus, Mansell’s career sparked into life when he joined Williams in 1985.
However, after a couple of near misses including a couple of disappointing years at Ferrari, the British driver had to wait until 1992 before winning his solitary title.
Equipped with the dominant FW14B, Mansell was unstoppable in 1992, wrapping the title up by August. It was a record-breaking season, which only Michael Schumacher has surpassed.
#17: Graham Hill
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 14
The second Hill on this list is Damon’s father Graham who won one more championship than his son would go on to achieve.
#16: Emerson Fittipaldi
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 14
Fittipaldi became the youngest Grand Prix winner in 1970, and then the youngest world champion in 1972.
He transported this overwhelming ability to McLaren in 1973 and then gave the team its first world title a year later.
#15: Alberto Ascari
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 13
The first-ever multiple world champion was Alberto Ascari who won the title in 1951 and 1952.
In fact, Ascari’s triumph in 1952 is one of the most dominant in history having won six of the year’s eight races, this means that the Italian holds the record for the highest percentage of wins in a season.
His legacy is undeniable with the famous Monza circuit naming a chicane after him.
#14: Stirling Moss
Formula One Championship Wins: 0
Total Career Wins: 16
Regarded as the greatest Formula 1 driver never to win a world championship, Stirling Moss is a true Formula 1 great.
With only 16 drivers winning more races than Moss in F1 history, despite the fact that there were fewer races in a season during his time, how Moss never won a championship seems baffling.
In fact, Moss won more races than the three drivers who precede him on this list, all of whom won two championships each.
#13: Nelson Piquet
Formula One Championship Wins: 3
Total Career Wins: 23
Nelson Piquet burst onto the scene in 1979 with some stunning qualifying performances.
It wouldn’t take the Brazilian long to wait for his first world championship in 1981 for Brabham.
Piquet would the win another title with Brabham two years later before securing a third title with Williams.
#12: Jack Brabham
Formula One Championship Wins: 3
Total Career Wins: 14
Jack Brabham occupies a unique place in F1 history after becoming the only driver to be crowned champion in a car of his own making.
Brabham won his first two titles for the Cooper team before putting his designer skills to the test by not only forming the Brabham team but beating the entire competition in it.
#11: Mika Häkkinen
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 20
Mika Häkkinen is perhaps best known for being one of the few men to beat Michael Schumacher in a straight fight.
The Finnish driver won the final two championships of the 20th century for McLaren.
His greatest win came at Spa in 2000, when he defeated Schumacher with a brilliant pass a lap after the German had edged him onto the grass at 200mph.
#10: Fernando Alonso
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 32
Alonso’s biggest mistake as a Formula 1 driver was his career choices, and it is this reason why the modern-day great has been stuck on two world championships since 2006.
Always seeming to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, Alonso wasn’t able to showcase his true talent anyway near as much as he should have.
The Spaniard’s brightest quality was his ability to drag a car that lacked pace up to a position where it shouldn’t really belong.
Alonso could’ve easily had four championships to his name at least after coming narrowly close in 2010 and 2012, in a Ferrari that was far from the fastest car on the grid.
#9: Sebastian Vettel
Formula One Championship Wins: 4
Total Career Wins: 53
There’s little doubt that if this question was posed around five years ago, Sebastian Vettel would’ve been further up this list.
Vettel burst onto the scene with an extraordinary victory in the Torro Rosso at a wet Monza in 2008, becoming the youngest F1 winner in the process having just turned 21.
The German then went on to win four successive championships between 2010 and 2013 with Red Bull and looked best placed to challenge the records set by Michael Schumacher.
Vettel moved to Ferrari in 2015 with the aim of adding to his tally in the famous red car, but after a couple of impressive seasons, it all started to go wrong.
A combination of driver and team mistakes prevented him from challenging the all-mighty Mercedes harder and has culminated in his departure for the 2021 season with his legacy now questioned by many.
But there’s no denying that his career has still been impressive and he deserves to make our top 10.
#8: Jim Clark
Formula One Championship Wins: 2
Total Career Wins: 25
Jim Clark was a natural when put into an F1 car, as demonstrated by his two championships, 25 wins and 34.25% win percentage.
Clark also had raw pace which is illustrated by his 33 pole positions, only four drivers have achieved more.
The Scottish driver is often overlooked when discussions about the greatest F1 driver takes place but he more than deserves to be in the mix.
#7: Jackie Stewart
Formula One Championship Wins: 3
Total Career Wins: 27
Another Scottish driver comes in at number seven with Jackie Stewart winning one more championship than his fellow compatriot.
Stewart, who remains a firm fixture in the F1 paddock, won a third of the championships he competed in.
The Scot held the record for most wins by a British F1 driver for 19 years before Nigel Mansell overtook him, but Stewart remains in third for wins by British drivers.
#6: Niki Lauda
Formula One Championship Wins: 3
Total Career Wins: 25
The ultimate survivor, Niki Lauda’s story is one that should be told to anyone who thinks about giving up.
The Austrian suffered a near-fatal crash in 1976, but not only did he survive, but he would go on to win his second world championship just a year later.
Lauda is in his own league when it comes to courage and coupled with his unquestionable qualities in an F1 car, he is a true F1 great.
#5: Alain Prost
Formula One Championship Wins: 4
Total Career Wins: 51
Alain Prost, otherwise known as ‘The Professor’ won an impressive four world championships despite having to contend with competing against Ayrton Senna who is considered one of the greatest.
The smooth operator won just over a quarter of his 202 Grand Prix, with his first coming in his homeland at the 1981 French Grand Prix.
Having started his career winning races for the unreliable Renault, Prost moved to McLaren where he would enjoy most of his success in the famous red and white livery.
Prost would go on to win a final championship in 1993 with Williams, leaving behind an impressive legacy.
#4: Juan Manuel Fangio
Formula One Championship Wins: 5
Total Career Wins: 24
Only Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton have won more world championships than Juan Manuel Fangio who won five of them in the 1950s.
In fact, there were only three years that Fangio competed in Formula 1 but failed to win a championship.
He also has the highest win percentage of them all having won a remarkable 46.15% of his 52 races.
I suppose Fangio’s biggest drawback when ranking them is the effect of recency bias that has limited us to put him in 4th.
#3: Ayrton Senna
Formula One Championship Wins: 3
Total Career Wins: 41
This may be quite contentious to put someone as legendary as Ayrton Senna in 3rd, but that just illustrates the quality of our top two.
Senna was arguably faster than any other driver of his era, illustrated by his 65 pole positions and record-breaking haul of six Monaco Grand Prix victories.
He was known for his fierce rivalry with Alain Prost with one of the most famous F1 moments coming in the 1989 title decider which, after a collision between the pair, controversially went the way of Prost.
As with many of the top drivers, Senna was also supreme in the wet with memorable wins coming at Estoril and Donington Park.
#2: Lewis Hamilton
Formula One Championship Wins: 6
Total Career Wins: 84
He’s getting close, but for now, Lewis Hamilton will have to settle with second in our list.
The 35-year old had one of the most successful debut campaigns in history after challenging for the title in 2007 before becoming champion of the world just a year later.
After a handful of disappointing seasons followed with McLaren, Hamilton made the bold decision to move to the Mercedes team in 2013 with their long term project attracting the Englishman.
He would then go on to dominate the rest of that decade, winning five championships and counting with the Brackley-outfit.
Now, he has Michael Schumacher’s records in his sight in the hope of becoming the undisputed greatest of all time.
#1: Michael Schumacher
Formula One Championship Wins: 7
Total Career Wins: 91
It was a close run thing but we’ve gone for seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher as the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time.
From winning two championships in 1994 and 1995 with Benetton to dominating the early 2000s with Ferrari, Schumacher.
Give it a couple of years where Hamilton has the opportunity to overhaul Schumacher’s records and we may be looking at a new number one.
But for now, Schumacher’s legendary status as the best of all time remains intact and is still very much the driver to aim for.