Over the course of Hamilton's F1 career, the British driver has had the best car (i.e. By all accounts a humble and warm-hearted gentleman, Fangio nevertheless made sure he was always in the right car at the right time. Logos © 1996. And that guy won 91 of them, some of them in a class of one.”. Watch all of 2021 Formula 1 pre-season testing LIVE on F1 TV, Everything you need to know about 2021 pre-season testing, ‘Huge opportunity’ at Williams stopped me retiring, reveals team's new CEO Jost Capito, Haas boss Guenther Steiner expecting ‘a good step’ from all-new Ferrari power unit, WATCH: Incredible visor-cam footage of Yuki Tsunoda lapping Imola in the 2021 AlphaTauri. Little wonder Red Bull boss Christian Horner thinks he's the best driver in F1 right now, although the man at No.2 on this list might have something to say about that... 2. Why does my head hurt? The second least popular driver was Williams' Nicholas Latifi, and the third least was Alfa Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi. Finally, here's the dubious award for the drivers and team that faced the biggest drop in value over the season. In other words, if you prefer your racing drivers to do everything with an 18,000rpm sense of abandon, Prost probably wasn’t for you. In Formula One, he won the drivers’ championship three times, and was twice runner-up. A dominant force in F1 during the 1990s and 2000s, Schumacher arrived in the sport at the tail end of Ayrton Senna’s career, and established himself as one of the best young drivers. BBC is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Daniel Ricciardo – the 32nd best of all time! If there is a w*nker driver in there the whole thing collapses.”, Get Top Gear news and reviews in your inbox, Enter your email address to receive regular Top Gear newsletters. But then you talk to him about what he saw, and what he lived through, as I’ve been privileged to do a number of times. Another driver for whom merely listing the stats is only scratching the surface, but still: winning 212 of the 529 races he entered is a seriously good hit rate. As I got going again, the fitness came back, I went running while listening to some good music, and I thought: do I retire for good, or do I fight fear, fight the accident and go for it?”. © 2003-2021 Formula One World Championship Limited. The next-worst scorer was Magnussen's Haas team mate Romain Grosjean ($5.9m), who managed 68 points over the season, including replacement Pietro Fittipaldi's eight points. You ask me what it did to me as a man? Then there was a simple question: is the pleasure of driving still strong, or do I want to retire? “I don’t feel old at all. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. Famously the best driver never to win the F1 world championship, he could have done so in 1958 when his rival, Mike Hawthorn, was accused of reversing back onto the circuit during the Portuguese GP. Most assuredly, Lewis Hamilton merits the third spot in our rundown of the best F1 drivers ever. Daniel Ricciardo says picking the best driver of the 2020 Formula 1 season is not “obvious” as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have such similar characteristics and “seven drivers” could make a case for being number one. But, here's how we currently rank all of the F1 drivers competing in 2020, from worst to best. Lewis Hamilton scored 699 F1 Fantasy points in 2020, to Max Verstappen's 457 and Valtteri Bottas's 435 points. Prost won 51 GPs and four world championships – it could easily have been seven – and like Fangio, he was a genius at conserving his car in favour of a late-race assault. And the Racing Point man – now bound for Red Bull – was the most picked driver with 8,026,516 picks over 17 races in total. Dec 16 : Our verdict on the top 10 F1 drivers of 2020. The highest-profile driver of the time, a national hero in Brazil and the favourite for the title despite trailing Schumacher, Senna’s death rocked not just F1 and not just sport, but the world. Life after Ferrari: How have superstar drivers fared after leaving the Scuderia? Jim was a farmer from the Borders and I was a glorified mechanic from Dumbuck. But his hit rate is what’s most impressive: he won 27 of the 99 grands prix he contested. Highest scoring driver on track, highest scoring driver in the game. The list displays the all time F1 driver rankings for the most amount of races, victories, podiums, pole positions, fastest laps and the total amount of points for each F1 driver. Or that he possessed the Senna-like ability to drive his car right on the limit, while being physically fit and intelligent enough to keep a good chunk of his mental firepower in reserve to manage tricky pit-wall calls. We do the adding, subtracting, and other necessary arithmetic to find out the best and worst drivers from the 2020 F1 Fantasy season. Lauda won three world titles, two at Ferrari, one at McLaren, and 25 GPs. EXCLUSIVE: The Top 10 F1 drivers of 2020 - as chosen by the drivers. 25,3%. A racing driver, then, but so, so much more. By clicking below you agree to receive news, promotions and offers by email from Top Gear and BBC Studios. The second-most popular F1 Fantasy driver was Lando Norris, and the third most popular? Perhaps Cooper may be said to have had a lean year, but the fact remains that the New Zealander is a top-grade F1 driver, capable of being up in front with the leaders. “Death was something we all learned to live with. The 10 best F1 drivers of 2019 At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend Lewis Hamilton won a lights-to-flag victory, the 19 th in his career, equalling the record of his hero Ayrton Senna, Pierre Gasly lost sixth place in the drivers’ championship to Carlos Sainz Jr., Nico Hulkenberg’s F1 career came to an end and Valtteri Bottas pulled himself from the back of the grid to fourth. But Michael Schumacher remains an all-time great and not just because he won seven world championships, 91 races and smashed every record there was to smash. A double world champion and winner of 32 GPs, who could have won, oh, maybe five titles, if only the dice had fallen more favourably – and Alonso had chosen for whom he raced and when a little more astutely. That in itself would secure his place in this list, but Stewart is another winner who used his success as a launch-pad for so much more. More ruthless and cunning than you might think, you still sense that he would have been happier without all the drama. And that’s saying a lot because Hamilton is one of the very greatest grand prix drivers of all time. Other than the Mercedes group. Many of the details regarding F1 2020‘s MyTeam mode, including those related to your teammate, have … Prost is the thinking racing fan’s greatest ever driver. Third best constructors McLaren (516 points) also finished third in the F1 Fantasy standings – and fourth-placed constructors' Racing Point (492 points) scored the fourth-most points. And while those were different times and far fewer races were run, Fangio’s hit rate is still extraordinary: 29 pole positions, 48 front row starts, 24 victories, from 51 championship Grands Prix starts. He won five world championships in the 1950s, not an era renowned for safety. Still, if you had that 1955 Mille Miglia win – arguably the greatest competitive drive of all time, 1000 miles in 10 hours 7 mins and 48 seconds – on your CV, maybe it just didn’t matter so much. This is why … Famously the best driver never to win the F1 world championship, he could have done so in 1958 when his rival, Mike Hawthorn, was accused of reversing back onto the circuit during the Portuguese GP. That driver was Haas's now ex-driver Kevin Magnussen ($7.5m), who ended 2020 F1 Fantasy with just 35 points. Haas to modify fuel hatch and headrest as FIA release report into Grosjean's Bahrain GP crash, Alpine's Budkowski explains leadership split with new Racing Director Brivio, A hacker, a livery overhaul and a long-term plan – 5 takeaways from Williams’ 2021 launch, WATCH: The unmissable trailer for Season 3 of Netflix's Drive To Survive. Max Verstappen The latest entrant to the Formula One Wet Weather Specialist list, but in mere three wet race performances, Verstappen has shown us all that he is amongst the greats in F1 when it comes to wet … While there will always be a debate as to who is F1's GOAT, what cannot be dispelled is that statistically, Hamilton is the greatest after equalling Michael Schumacher's record of seven titles, surpassing the legendary German driver's wins landmark along the way which now stands at 95 and counting. In F1 2020‘s Driver Career mode, you can decide to jump straight to a … “I think he went about those results in a technically cleaner executed way, just by the way of wheel-to-wheel combat and no real trickery in his contact with the other drivers.” There are too many great drives to choose from, but the prodigious talent that produced such spectacular performances in the early part of his F1 career is now tempered by huge experience. Having crashed during the 1976 German GP, Lauda suffered terrible third degree burns to his head and face, and damaged his lungs so severely that a priest read him the last rites by his hospital bed. Formula One News -AUSTIN (AFP) - Already a great in his sport, Lewis Hamilton endorsed his claim to be the outright best of all time on Sunday (Nov 3) when he secured his sixth drivers' world And more human, too. To put it mildly. Highest scoring driver on track, highest scoring driver in the game. Need we say more? Mercedes. READ MORE: Ranking Sergio Perez's podiums from 10-1 ahead of his 2021 Red Bull move. A look at the best and worst of F1 2019, based on the average positions of our regular Power Rankings -- but do the numbers give a fair representation of each driver's season? The son of a Borders sheep farmer whose route to F1 was facilitated by Lotus and its founder Colin Chapman, he won two world championships, in 1963 and 1965, but was equally dazzling in sports cars, touring cars, and also managed to win the 1965 Indianapolis 500, driving the first mid-engined car to do so, and leading 190 of the 200 laps. Hopefully in 2021, Ferrari regain their legendary form. It did… nothing. Of the other current F1 drivers in the list, Lewis Hamilton is ranked 12th, with Daniel Ricciardo in 32nd and Nico Rosberg in 49th. Lewis Hamilton is one of the best drivers Formula One has ever seen, according to Red Bull star Max Verstappen. Vauxhall Insignia GSI review: a big, fast-ish hatch. Ferrari needs a lead driver they can look up to, someone they respect. Their drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc lost the most value out of the field – -$1.5m and -$1.0m respectively. No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. To be the total person at that time was a very big challenge.” Small in stature he may be, but JYS is a veritable giant of a man. A star driver, then, but also a genuine hero. Not only did Lauda defy the odds to survive, he was back in the cockpit of his Ferrari just six weeks later for the Italian Grand Prix. He loved Prost. “We weren’t jet set, like people thought. The ranking is sorted by default on total points. Lewis Hamilton is currently the best driver in Formula One and has seemingly gotten even better in his many years being part of the sport. It was a serious life, we were doing an intense amount of racing. Former British Formula One racing driver Jackie Stewart is one of the best F1 drivers from Scotland. “Jim Clark was everything I aspired to be, as a racing driver and as a man,” his great friend Sir Jackie Stewart said. The Big Interview: Cupra boss maps out the future, Chris Harris Drives: the new BMW M3 saloon. In nine seasons, he won 10 of his 123 races, finishing runner-up in the championship twice. You can sort the rankings by pushing the small arrows in the upper column to see the most f1 wins or any other F1 statistic.. This upset Enzo Ferrari, who prized total fealty to his team above all, but established a motor racing truism that still holds today. He presently has 84 race triumphs alongside 151 platforms completes under his name. He became arguably only the third driver – after Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher – to exert sufficient force of personality over Scuderia Ferrari to build the team convincingly around himself when he joined them in 2010. Valtteri Bottas. He was also the most Turbo Driver'd racer. Williams' George Russell was the third-worst performing F1 Fantasy driver with 74 points, though his season might have looked very different had he won the Sakhir Grand Prix on his sole Mercedes appearance... READ MORE: Our writers share their best moments, biggest shocks and top stories of 2020. “The secret of applying energy is to economise on effort – to win going as slowly as possible,” the late, great Clive James, a huge F1 fan, once wrote. He’s still winning races and breaking records, so it may seem a little premature to be venerating Lewis. Mark Alan Webber is a former professional racing driver who made his debut in F1 in the year 2002 with Minardi and spent a … Mathematics is the language of the universe, and given the exponential growth of computing power and advanced modeling techniques, it is beginning to make sense of even the most complex of problems. But was BMW the bigger fool for not putting it into production? Jim Clark was one of the most unassuming men ever to sit in an F1 cockpit, but also arguably the most singularly gifted driver of all time. Max Verstappen. Besides, Moss remains the quintessential English gentleman, a storyteller, adventurer and driver without compare, as anyone lucky enough to have spent time with him will attest. And one whose legend has only grown since his passing during the San Marino GP in 1994. He was also a fascinating and complex character, more complex than you might think. Being professorial clearly isn’t as sexy as Senna-style, hot-blooded Latin devilry, but he made it work for him. Talk about bang for buck: Sergio Perez hovered around $10m and hoovered in 318 points over the season, having missed two races. Then again, perhaps Fangio was the one driver who was actually bigger than Ferrari. Mercedes. He was 46 when he won his last title, in 1957, a testament to his immense physical strength. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1526810873155-0');}); Sakhir Grand Prix on his sole Mercedes appearance. Red Bull Racing. Moss actually defended him, and ended up losing that year’s title by a single point. This year was both his best performance to date and saw him at the wheel of the most dominant car he has driven relative to … We know the story, but its impact never diminishes in the telling. You can’t say Verstappen is outright the best driver in Formula 1 right now, but you can certainly make a strong case for him being equal best. But look at what Michael achieved, the speed at which he achieved it, and what he accomplished at two different teams. That was Red Bull's Max Verstappen. Bottas is a lot better than Perez too. When I finally had my accident, I was not surprised. Here are the 10 best ever Formula 1 drivers, 12 weird colours to spec your new BMW M3 or M4 in, This BMW M3 pickup was the best car-themed April Fool gag ever, Restomod of the week: Chieftain's 700bhp Range Rover Extreme, Celebrating some of the fastest women in motorsport, Meet F1’s new safety car, a bewinged Aston Martin Vantage, The one-off Bugatti Divo ‘Lady Bug’ took two years to finish. The chart below shows how Hamilton's 2015 compares to his other seasons in Formula One in terms of his performance as a driver as well as that of the various cars he has driven. Until then, subscribe to the F1 Fantasy end-of-season email by logging in to fantasy.formula1.com and ticking the box to opt in! The AlphaTauri driver scored a solid 158 points over the season, however – more than Esteban Ocon and Sebastian Vettel. Red Bull Racing. 20 Nicolas Latifi WATCH: Daniil Kvyat's most memorable moments in F1. Nor is it a shock to see … Lewis Hamilton Lewis Hamilton scored 699 F1 Fantasy points in 2020, to Max Verstappen's 457 and Valtteri Bottas's 435 points. Hamilton's final value was $31.4m, Verstappen's $26.3m, and Bottas's $29.5m, which means that Hamilton scored 22.26 points per $1m, and was the best value driver out of the top three scorers … Every year, someone was killed,” he told me in 2012. Perez got destroyed by Stroll for the first half of the 2020 season. F1 2020: Driver Career – The best Formula One team for you. This should come as no surprise to racing fans — Senna is regarded by many other champions as F1’s greatest driver. Follow your favourite F1 drivers on and off the track. “The majority of the sporting greats I’ve met drive themselves forwards because they are always dissatisfied. There’s not much to say about the Brazilian superstar that hasn’t been said many times, other than to note that he was the driver who was prepared to go further in pursuit of victory than anyone before him, who elevated the art of driving a Formula One car to a level that was almost spiritual, and who did so not just with a sublime skill but also weapons-grade charisma. Sergio Perez. But not just yet, and not so soon that he may well end up being the greatest, bar none. So I never moaned or bitched with myself. Which means that he may not yet have even reached his peak…. Mercedes, unsurprisingly, scored the most points with 1,014 over the season, while the next best constructors in F1 Fantasy were Red Bull, with 699 points. “He’s very clever. With Mercedes once again looking like the team to beat, we fully expect 2020 – whenever it actually starts – to be the season in which Lewis equals and most likely eclipses Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 GP wins. READ MORE: McLaren have found their way again – and more good times may be just around the corner. McLaren's Lando Norris was the second-biggest gainer, with a $1.3m swing in his favour over the season, and Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas gained $1.1m over the season. What’s coming next from the VW empire’s Spanish (soon-to-be-electrified) upstart? Was this chopped up Renault Trafic a lifestyle concept too far? A lot of airlines wouldn’t carry coffins on commercial flights. The "formula" in the name refers to a set of rules to which all participants and cars must conform. Hamilton's final value was $31.4m, Verstappen's $26.3m, and Bottas's $29.5m, which means that Hamilton scored 22.26 points per $1m, and was the best value driver out of the top three scorers as well!