Best F1 drivers of all time: titles, wins, poles and win rates

Who is the best driver by the numbers

It depends on what you count. By titles, Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher lead, with seven each as of the end of 2025. By wins and by poles, Hamilton is first. By the share of races won, among drivers with 50 or more starts as of the end of 2025, Juan Manuel Fangio is first: in the 1950s he won almost every other race he started.

There is no single list of the “best” here, just five counts: titles, wins, poles, win rate and pole rate. The table shows the eight drivers who are in the top five on at least two of them. The figures are as of the end of 2025, and the leader on each count is in bold.

As of the end of 2025, Hamilton is the only driver in the top five on all five counts. Schumacher and Verstappen are there on four: they miss the top five for pole rate. Fangio makes it on three of the five, titles and both rates, but by number of wins he is only 12th.

Who has the most titles and wins

As of the end of 2025, Hamilton and Schumacher have seven titles each, Fangio five, and Verstappen, Vettel and Prost four each. Every multiple champion, with years and teams, is in the article “Most F1 championships”.

On wins, Hamilton is first, followed by Schumacher and Verstappen. The table below is updated after every season.

Records for starts and podiums are on the Records page, and every driver since 1950 is in the list of drivers.

Who won most often

Juan Manuel Fangio: 24 wins from 51 starts in 1950–1958, or 47.1%. As of the end of 2025, that is the best rate among drivers with 50 or more starts. Jim Clark is second with 34.7%, and Max Verstappen third with 30.5%.

The threshold is there to leave out drivers with only one or two races. Without it, Lee Wallard would be first: he had two starts in the championship and won the 1951 Indianapolis 500, a rate of 50%. Two more drivers would also rank above Clark. Alberto Ascari, champion in 1952 and 1953, won 13 of his 32 starts, or 40.6%. Bill Vukovich, winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1953 and 1954, won 2 of his 5 starts, or 40%.

As of the end of 2025, Stirling Moss is ninth in the top ten by win rate, with 16 wins from 66 starts. He never became world champion.

Who took pole most often

Fangio again: pole in 29 of his 51 races in 1950–1958, or 56.9%. By number of poles, as of the end of 2025, Hamilton is first, followed by Schumacher and Ayrton Senna.

Pole rate for drivers with 50 or more starts, as of the end of 2025:

How pole is decided and how the record has changed is covered in the article “Pole position in F1”.

Why drivers of the 1950s have fewer wins

There were fewer races in a season: from 7 to 11 in 1950–1958, against 24 in 2025. Fangio started 51 times in 1950–1958, Hamilton 380 times in 2007–2025, and Fernando Alonso 426 times in 2001–2025, more than anyone.

That is why drivers of the past rank higher by rates than by number of wins. Of the drivers who made their debut before 1970, only Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark are in the top ten for wins. In the top ten for win rate there are four: Fangio, Clark, Stewart and Moss. The number of races year by year is in the article “How many races are in an F1 season”.

Who was the best driver of 2025

Max Verstappen, according to two votes whose results the Formula 1 website published in December 2025. The 2025 champion, though, was Lando Norris, with 423 points to Verstappen’s 421.

• The drivers, results published on 30 December 2025. Sixteen drivers each ranked their top ten, and the places were turned into points as in a race, from 25 for first to 1 for tenth. The top three were Verstappen, Norris and George Russell, and Verstappen was voted driver of the year for the fifth time in a row.
• The team bosses, results published on 24 December 2025. The site asked the bosses of all ten teams, and eight sent in their top tens, with no votes from Ferrari or Red Bull; the scoring was the same. The top three were Verstappen, Norris and Oscar Piastri, and for Verstappen this was also the fifth season in a row.

How the 2026 season is shaping up is in the championship standings.

Whom Formula 1 named the best for its 75th anniversary

For the championship’s 75th anniversary, in March 2025, the Formula 1 website picked the 75 best cars, drivers, innovations, teams and key figures in its history, “presented in no particular order”. The list includes 20 drivers.

They are Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Alain Prost, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Sebastian Vettel, Niki Lauda and Alberto Ascari. The same list also has Fernando Alonso, Graham Hill, Mario Andretti, Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Gilles Villeneuve, John Surtees, Nigel Mansell, Kimi Räikkönen and Stirling Moss.

Eighteen of the twenty are world champions; Moss and Gilles Villeneuve never won a title. Of the drivers with three or more titles, only Nelson Piquet is missing from the list. You can compare any two drivers year by year and by the numbers on a comparison page, for example Hamilton and Schumacher or Prost and Senna.

Who is the most famous F1 driver

There is no single measure of fame. One sign you can check is how many times readers opened a driver’s article on Wikipedia. By that count Michael Schumacher is first: his article on the Russian-language Wikipedia was viewed 705,000 times from September 2025 to August 2026. That is more than for any other world champion or 2026 driver.

We counted the articles on the 35 world champions and the 23 drivers who have started a race in 2026, and only views by people, according to Wikimedia. Sixth is Charles Leclerc, with 310,000. It is a measure of readers’ interest and says nothing about a driver’s skill. How Niki Lauda and James Hunt fought for the 1976 title is covered in a separate article.