After (almost) 75 seasons of Formula 1, it’s high time to rank the 25 greatest drivers to have raced in the series.
Barring a surprise in the final three races of the 2024 season, there have been 777 drivers to start 1,125 Grand Prix, with 34 countries hosting Grand Prix, while 41 countries have been represented in them.
With all of those drivers competing across all of those races, it was both hard and easy to narrow the list to just the top 25. Easy in that there have only been 115 drivers to win a Grand Prix and, furthermore, only 34 have been crowned World Champion.
Hard because, well, it was still difficult to rank them. It wouldn’t be fun to rank them by wins or championships or podiums or any kind of weird metric. Instead, I have ranked them based on my own opinion.
When determining the rankings, I looked at obvious stats (only one non-WDC driver is in the top 25), how they fared against teammates, how they performed relative to their equipment, general feats, and how they performed in their era. I tried not to punish drivers who had their careers cut short or passed away young, but at the same point, it’s unwise to try and read into what never happened.
With all of that being said, this week, we’re looking at numbers 25 to 21.
| The Top 25 Formula 1 Drivers of All Time | by Michael Finley | Bonus (Honorable Mentions) |
| Part 1 (25 to 21) | Part 2 (20 to 16) | Part 3 (15 to 11) |
| Part 4 (10 to 7) | Part 5 (6 to 4) | Part 6 (3 to 1) |
25. Damon Hill
Maybe the toughest driver to figure out, Hill had a very unusual career that included his being named to partner with Alain Prost at Williams in 1993 after a few starts as a 32-year-old rookie in 1992.
Hill spent four years in very competitive Williams cars, almost winning the championship in 1994 and 1995 following the unexpected death of his teammate Ayrton Senna. He was informed prior to the end of the year in 1996 that he was being replaced at Williams the next season, but that didn’t stop him from winning the drivers championship at the end of that year.
He performed fine at Arrows the next season, scoring seven of the team’s nine points with the highlight being a second place in Hungary. But he never really got into competitive equipment again, and after choosing Arrows over McLaren and Ferrari in 1997, never got the chance to again after this year.
His career would end with a whimper after two seasons at Jordan, with 1999 being particularly awful.
After his rookie year at Williams, Hill was fantastic and always a title contender. But that was only about half of a very short career, and he was unable to build Arrows or Jordan into anything notable.
24. John Surtees
Another driver with a very short career, Surtees, is still the only driver to ever win a world championship both on two and four wheels.
Surtees had a very strong career for a driver who did not enter single-seaters until age 26, winning the 1964 championship for Ferrari. Internal Ferrari politics drove the Brit away from the Scuderia midway through the 1966 season, blowing the championship for himself and Ferrari in constructors.
Surtees found success with Honda in the late 1960s, most notably stabbing Ferrari in the eye by winning the 1967 Italian Grand Prix. But he and Honda never found the success he had earlier in the decade, and Surtees retired in 1972 after some seasons driving for himself.
Surtees always had speed, and he ran lines around the track like few could because of his background as a world champion in motorbikes. Had this list been just a general racing list, no doubt he’d rank much higher among motorcycles and have a very good endurance career on top of single-seater success.
23. Nigel Mansell
In a lot of ways, Mansell seemed to come into F1 just a few years too early.
Had he arrived in the mid-1970s, there’s no doubt he’d have more success. But he got caught up in a very highly competitive era of F1, where he was the third banana in the Prost versus Senna rivalry that captivated the series in the late 1980s.
Mansell struggled with bad luck and uncompetitive cars throughout his career, but he was awarded a fantastic Williams drive near the end of his career in 1992. Active suspension, traction control, and the genius aerodynamics of Adrian Newey produced a car that was dramatically ahead of the competition.
His 14 poles in 1992, in just 16 races, is a mark that is still held percentage-wise and has only been literally broken once in 32 years since. “The Red 5” won 10 races that season, the first time any driver had won double-digit races in a season. And Mansell did it all at the age of 39.
Outside of that wonderful 1992 season, however, Mansell was beaten a little too much by teammates and was clearly not on the same level driving-wise as Senna and Prost were. These aspects are what place him fairly early in this countdown.
22. Stirling Moss
The lone non-champion in the top 25, Moss drew the misfortune of being paired up with the great Juan Manuel Fangio, who places high on this list.
Moss made only 66 starts but won 16 races. Even today, he holds the mark for most wins without a championship, in spite of finishing in the top three in the drivers standing for seven straight years, 1955 to 1961.
Moss was a legendary figure in British culture. For the Americans reading this, think of how in our culture, when the general public thinks of a race car driver, depending on the age and time, there’s generally only been three names mentioned – Barney Oldfield, Mario Andretti, and Jeff Gordon. The British equivalent to that list would probably be Moss, Jackie Stewart and Lewis Hamilton.
21. Jenson Button
Notably, five Brits start the list, and we end it with the only one of the five still active in motor racing outside of F1.
Button only really had half a season in truly top-tier equipment when driving for Brawn GP in 2009. But he made it count, winning the championship and constructors for Brawn on top of that.
When he joined McLaren the next season, it was obvious they were no longer a team that was head-and-shoulders ahead of most of the field. Still, Button paired well against Hamilton and even beat him to finish second in points in 2011. In a season dominated by Sebastian Vettel, Button put together the best race of the season, winning the Canadian Grand Prix on a last-lap pass at a very rainy Montreal.
Button’s trademark smooth driving style served him very well throughout his career, and he was also best-of-the-rest in third place in 2004. In a season absolutely dominated by Ferrari, Button had 10 podiums while his teammate Takuma Sato only had one.
Had he ended up driving for McLaren earlier or a top team like Red Bull, there’s no doubt in my mind Button would be further up. But it’s hard to place him much higher with so few career wins.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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Remember Indy Car fans picked Esteban Gutierrez as one the absolute best F1 drivers of all time…
Jim Clark better be number 1! He never had a chance to show how good he could have been. I would like to see how the current drivers could do in the cars his generation drove. And then there are the Auto Unions! Besides, it is apples and oranges.