Top 25 Formula 1 drivers of all-time
By Asher Fair
Top Formula 1 drivers of all-time: #17 – Emerson Fittipaldi
Like both Mario Andretti and Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi would be ranked higher on this list if it were purely ranking the greatest race car drivers of all-time, and once again, that’s not to say that his Formula 1 achievements aren’t significant.
Fittipaldi’s stats match Hill’s exactly when it comes to wins and championships, and he won 14 races and two world titles, with his two titles coming in 1972 and 1974.
He did it in fewer races, 144 to Hill’s 176, to give him a slightly higher winning percentage (9.72% to 7.95%), but he never managed to win the Monaco Grand Prix, which Hill won five times.
He is in good company among multi-time world champions who never won Formula 1’s crown jewel race, however, along with three-time champion Nelson Piquet, two-time champion Jim Clark and two-time champion Alberto Ascari being the the only other three drivers in that category.
Fittipaldi’s crossover to American open-wheel racing for the 1980s and 1990s was arguably the most successful crossover that open-wheel racing has ever seen to this day.
Fittipaldi joined Andretti as an Indy 500 winner and an American open-wheel champion in 1989, when he won both the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” and then went on to win the CART championship. He then became the 13th driver to win the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” twice with his second win in 1993.
He also infamously became the first driver to drink orange juice in victory lane that year, an incident that some fans still hold against him to this day. To put that in perspective, his grandson Pietro has now competed in both Formula 1 and IndyCar.