For one final time, it’s time for a ranking.
It has all led to this. After hours of research, writing, and arguments, it’s time for the top three Formula 1 drivers of all time.
| 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) |
3. Jim Clark
There are probably a fair amount of people who don’t know who Jim Clark is. Considering he didn’t live to see the 1970s, and his only team, Lotus, is now truly dead and buried, the reasons are valid.
Some may remember the name as that of a two-time champion. But why is Clark this far up? Just ask his rivals.
“Outside of Juan Manuel Fangio, for me, he is the greatest racing driver in the manner in which he conducted his life, on the track as well as off the track,” Jackie Stewart said to Reuters back in 2018.
Fangio himself once said that Clark was the greatest driver ever. A.J. Foyt likes the guy, even though he wasn’t American.
Dan Gurney once said the greatest compliment he ever had was when Clark told him he was the only driver he feared. Teammate Graham Hill called Clark the best in the world.
When Clark died, he held the record for most wins, which Stewart broke in 1972. Clark’s 33 poles are still good enough for him to be ranked 6th of all time, his pole percentage success rate broken only by Fangio.
Clark tallied 11 hat tricks – pole, fastest lap, and win in a grand prix. No other driver even entered the double digits for 34 years after his final one in 1968.
His eight grand slams – pole, fastest lap, and leading every lap in the race – are still the most in history, almost 60 years after his death. This also means that 11% of his career Grands Prix starts ended with a grand slam – a record that only Alberto Ascari’s 16% will ever beat.
To add to his stunning success, 28 of Clark’s starts ended in retirements, meaning that 73% of Clark’s finished Grands Prix ended with him on the podium, another record only Fangio and Ascari beat among drivers in this ranking.
In his 1963 title season, Clark led 71% of all laps in the season. This record stood for 60 years. To put this statistic in a different perspective, almost half of the distance he drove on track, he led.
One of the remarkable aspects of Clark’s career is that he never got a big head about his accomplishments. Foyt was impressed with his driving, but what set him apart from a lot of the Brits flying in to race at Indianapolis in those days was his humility.
The only real knock that Clark has against him is that he never drove for any team but Lotus in his career. He benefitted by driving top-notch equipment, and nobody really knows how he would fare outside of Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s grasp.
It’s also unknowable just what Clark could have achieved further had he not died in an F2 crash at the Hockenheimring at just age 32. It’s a testament to both how well-regarded he was among his peers and just how incredible his stats were that he’s up this high.
2. Max Verstappen
It might seem a bit foolhardy to rank Verstappen this high already. But in just 10 years of racing in F1, he’s proven himself as one of the greats in series history.
He debuted in 2015 as a 17-year-old for the Red Bull secondary team, and after just a year of racing in single-seaters, showed that he had obvious pace but holes in his racecraft. That area of his career is something he needed to improve and obviously has.
The only teammate Verstappen lost to in his career was Daniel Ricciardo, who was at his peak when Verstappen was still a teenager. Otherwise, Verstappen has destroyed every teammate he’s come up against.
He sent a young Carlos Sainz packing from the Red Bull system in 2015, wiped his hands of Ricciardo after 2016, sent Danil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly back to the secondary team, sent Alexander Albon to a test driver role, and pretty much sent Sergio Perez into retirement.
What sets Verstappen apart from so many of his peers is that he doesn’t make many mistakes. This past season put that into the spotlight.
For at least half of the season, Verstappen did not have the fastest car. He won just two of the last 14 Grands Prix. But as Lando Norris messed up and struggled throughout the balance of the schedule – in spite of having a faster car – Verstappen stayed consistent and focused and clinched the title a couple of races early anyway.
At this point in his career, if you give Verstappen a third-place or second-place car, he will win in it. If you give him a first-place car, he will absolutely dominate.
Remember when I mentioned that Clark’s record for the percentage of laps led in a season stood for 60 years? Verstappen finally broke that in 2023, in spite of having way more Grand Prix and, therefore, racing laps on the schedule. That’s a mark neither Michael Schumacher nor Lewis Hamilton accomplished in their years of domination.
Verstappen already ranks third in victories with 63. He’s fifth in poles, yet he did not win one until his fifth season. He’s finished on the podium 63% of the time he has not suffered a DNF. These are percentages that put him right into Fangio and Clark territory, though he races against a more competitive field, sees more races in a season, and drove the first half of his career in equipment that wasn’t viable for a championship run.
Obviously, putting an active driver in second lends the question of if they can take the number one slot. The answer is yes; Verstappen only just turned 27 years old a few months ago.
All indications from Verstappen are that he doesn’t plan on being in F1 for long, but if he wanted to, we could well not even be at the halfway point of his career.
So what does he have to do, then? There are a couple of routes. One would be breaking Schumacher’s record for most consecutive championships. Doing so on his current run would have him winning the 2026 championship, with entirely new regulations he’d have to overcome.
That would also mean winning the 2025 championship, which is not a given right now based on how Red Bull ended the 2024 season. He’d have to overcome a fast McLaren team and a loaded Ferrari lineup.
The other most likely route would be to leave Red Bull and win the championship with another team. And Aston Martin wouldn’t really count due to car designer Adrian Newey already having moved over there.
Even if he doesn’t do either, it’s hard to argue that this ranking isn’t the most insane thing you’ve read today. If Verstappen woke up wrong tomorrow and announced a sudden retirement, the Dutchman has already left an incredible mark on history.
But he wouldn’t be the number one driver. That honor can, for now, only go to El Maestro…
1. Juan Manuel Fangio
The original GOAT is still my GOAT, and the GOAT of legions of Argentine fans.
In 52 F1 entries (1950-51, 1953-58), Fangio won 24 races. He won 29 pole positions. He had 13 second-place qualifying efforts, meaning he had a 21-26 ratio for front-row starts in his career.
He only had nine finishes outside of the podium and only 10 outside of the top two. That matches how many second-place finishes he had in his career at 10.
Fangio had 23 fastest laps in his career, which still puts him 12th all-time, with everybody ahead of him having at least double the number of career entries (except for Clark).
I can keep going on Fangio’s statistics, but three aspects about Fangio set him apart from so many other drivers.
The first was his adaptability. Fangio won the championship with Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, and Ferrari. No other driver has won with more than two teams.
Was Fangio a ride jumper, simply going to the fastest car every year? Yes. But that means he was going into entirely different environments every season. And with only a handful of races every season, he had to mesh well with the team and the car and had to do it fast.
The second was his age. Fangio was 39 in F1’s first season, meaning he won his first championship at age 40 and spent his peak in his 40s. If we want to play the what-if game, who even knows how much success Fangio would have had if F1 had existed before 1950 and World War II hadn’t disrupted most elements of life?
And when you remember races were much longer in those days, the feats Fangio was able to perform at his age is still incredible 70 years after the fact.
The third was his survivability. Watch that video above, and look at just how cartoonishly dangerous that looked. Look at all the drivers of that era that didn’t make it. Fangio did, making it all the way to the 1990s.
Someday, these rankings will be outdated. A new hotshot driver will enter the fabled GOAT conversation. Just remember who’s second here, after all. But motor racing, no matter the series, has always been a sport thinking in-the-now. And after 75 years of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, that’s about all for now.
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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