Formula One: Who is the greatest driver of all-time?

Asher Fair

SINGAPORE - SEPTEMBER 25: Michael Schumacher of Germany and Mercedes GP leads from Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and McLaren before crashing out during the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit on September 25, 2011 in Singapore. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

SINGAPORE – SEPTEMBER 25: Michael Schumacher of Germany and Mercedes GP leads from Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and McLaren (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

Similar debates go on in all sports but will never truly be decided in any of them. Who is the greatest Formula One driver of all-time?

Lewis Hamilton just secured his fourth career Formula One championship and third title in the last four years in last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix even though he finished in 9th place. Sebastian Vettel, a fellow four-time champion, sits in 2nd place in the standings and is no longer able to pass him in points over the final two races of the season.

Hamilton’s fourth championship has officially tossed him into the mix as far as the greatest driver of all-time goes in Formula One even though a lot of people pretty much saw him in that mix already. Now sitting alone atop the all-time poles list and trailing just one driver in career victories and two drivers in career championships, Hamilton is certainly a driver you could make the case for as the best.

But which driver is truly the greatest in the history of the sport? Here are five drivers that you could make the case for being the greatest in the history of Formula One. Note that they are not in any particular order nor ranked in any particular way; in fact, it doesn’t even necessarily mean that they are the top 5 drivers of all-time, either.

Lewis Hamilton

We’ll get Lewis Hamilton out of the way first since I already touched on him in the first slide of this article. At 32 years old, he is the most recent Formula One champion and is now a four-time champion in 11 seasons, with three of those titles having been won by him since the 2014 season. He has driven in 206 career races.

This season, he tied and then passed Michael Schumacher for the #1 spot on the all-time poles list with his 68th and 69th career pole positions in Belgium and Italy, respectively. He now sits alone atop the list with 72 career pole positions, and that number will more than likely continue to climb.

Hamilton sits 2nd on the all-time wins list behind only Schumacher with 62 victories, and that total will also likely continue to climb, perhaps even close to Schumacher’s record mark of 91 wins. With nine wins so far this season, he is one win away from his fourth consecutive season of double-digit victories, something no other driver has even done two seasons in a row in the history of the sport.

By winning his fourth career Formula One championship, Hamilton now trails only Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio on the all-time titles list. Schumacher holds the record with seven championships, while Fangio won five over the course of his career.

With Hamilton having won three of the last four titles, his championship total of four could continue to climb, and it may at least approach if not tie or even pass Schumacher’s record total. You could definitely make the case for him as the greatest Formula One driver of all-time.

Michael Schumacher

Next we’ll get Michael Schumacher, who started 306 career Formula One races, out of the way just to prove that the drivers mentioned in this article are in no particular order — and, of course, due to the fact that his appearance in this article is inevitable. Schumacher is the driver who most people consider the greatest Formula One driver of all-time, and for many great reasons.

Until this season when Lewis Hamilton broke it, Schumacher held the record for most career pole positions with 68. Schumacher still holds the all-time record for most career victories with 91, and 2nd on the list is Lewis Hamilton, who sits a whopping 29 victories behind him. Only two other drivers aside of Hamilton have won more than half as many races as Schumacher.

Schumacher is also the only driver who has won more than five Formula One championships, as he is a seven-time champion. Not only is he the only driver who has won more than five titles; he won five of his seven titles consecutively from the 2000 to the 2004 season in arguably the most dominant span that any driver has ever had in the history of the sport. It is easy to make the case for Schumacher as the sport’s greatest driver ever. Most have.

19th September 1956: Argentinian racing driver Juan Fangio (Photo by Express/Express/Getty Images)

Juan Manuel Fangio

Juan Manuel Fangio didn’t have a very long career in Formula One, driving in only 51 races. But it’s what he did in those 51 races that puts him in the conversation as perhaps the greatest Formula One driver of all-time.

In 51 career Formula One races, Fangio retired in 10 of them, giving him 41 races that he was actually able to finish. Of those 41 races, he won 24 of them, giving him a 58.54% win percentage in races that he finished and a 47.06% win percentage in races he competed in, both percentages of which are all-time Formula One records — by far.

Fangio only drove in Formula One as a full-time driver for seven seasons. In those seven seasons, however, he never finished lower than 2nd place in the championship standings, and he ended up as a five-time champion of the sport. To this day, he is one of only three drivers who have won the title in four straight seasons, as he won four straight titles in his final four full-time seasons in the sport.

Despite the fact that he drove in Formula One for just seven full-time seasons, he trails only Michael Schumacher on the all-time championships list with five titles to Schumacher’s seven. Also, even though he only drove in 51 career races, he still ranks just outside the top 10 in career victories in 11th as well. During his time in the sport, no one was better than Juan Manuel Fangio, and you could certainly make the case that he is the best driver ever.

Ayrton Senna

Ayrton Senna is the driver who most people who don’t consider Michael Schumacher to be the greatest Formula One driver of all-time consider to be the greatest driver of all-time. He was able to experience a great amount of success through his numerous accomplishments during his career before being killed in a crash during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at the young age of 34.

In 161 career Formula One races, Senna was victorious in 41 of them over the course of 10 full-time seasons. It was in the third race of his 11th full-time season that he was killed, leaving many to believe what could have been given the amazing amount of success he had experienced through his career up until his death.

Senna sits 3rd on the all-time poles list with 65, and his pole percentage of 40.37% in 161 races is far better than the pole percentages of the two drivers in front of him on that list, showing just how naturally talented and fast he was.

Like I mentioned above, people were and still are left wondering what might have been had Senna not been killed in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. After all, he had won at least one race in nine consecutive seasons up until that point and was attempting to tie and then pass Alain Prost’s record of 10 with a win in 1994. Those nine consecutive seasons rank 4th on the all-time list even over 23 years after his death.

While there are so many “what-ifs” surrounding the shortened career of Ayrton Senna, it is impossible to exclude him from a conversation revolving around some of the Formula One drivers who are possibly the greatest of all-time.

Fernando Alonso

To be the best, you have to beat the best, and that is exactly what Fernando Alonso did when he won his two career Formula One championships back in the 2005 and 2006 seasons in his third and fourth seasons driving for Renault.

Let me first address the elephant in the room. Do I even think Fernando Alonso is a top 5 driver in the sport’s history ahead of a number of great drivers not included in this article such as four-time champions Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost, both of whom have more career victories than Alonso does? I wouldn’t go that far.

I may not even go as far as to say he is better than three-time champions who he has more career wins than, such as Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet. But I would definitely say that there is an angle you could take to argue that Alonso is the best driver in the history of the sport. Here’s why.

To have a shot at being considered the best in any sport, you must have a historic number of wins and multiple championships. Right away, Alonso fits the bill, as his 32 career victories in 289 career Formula One races put him in 6th on the all-time wins list, and he has also won two championships, which ties him for 11th on the all-time titles list as one of only 16 drivers who have won more than one championship.

SHANGHAI, CHINA – OCTOBER 16: Fernando Alonso of Spain and Renault (Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images)

Fernando Alonso (continued)

In the 2005 season, Michael Schumacher, who many people consider the undisputed greatest Formula One driver of all time, as I already referenced in this article, was in his 10th season driving for Scuderia Ferrari. He had come to the team in the 1996 season after winning back-to-back championships driving for Benetton, and he won his first title with the team in 2000.

Heading into the 2005 season, he had won five titles in a row — an amount that only one other driver, Juan Manuel Fangio, has ever been able to accumulate over the course of his entire career. In fact, he had broken his previous record of 11 wins in a season with 13 victories in the 2004 season, making him the clear favorite to win it all yet again in 2005.