The Last F1 Winners
Most of their cases hinge on what they did in sports cars or touring cars.
I have finally gone through and decided upon season ratings for all the remaining one-time F1 winners, as well as Patrick Tambay (a two-time winner who I accidentally skipped over). Most of these drivers did not have particularly great F1 careers, so whether I listed them or not mostly depended on what they did outside of F1, and many of them did quite a bit, including two-time French Touring Car Champion Jean-Pierre Beltoise, two-time Can-Am champion Tambay, Super GT champion Heikki Kovalainen, two-time European F5000/one-time Tasman Series champion Peter Gethin, and plenty of other prolific sports car/touring car winners. The drivers who tended to do not as well were those from later eras like the ‘70s and ‘80s who did less outside of F1. Next week, I’m going to try to release a column each weekday for the remaining NASCAR Cup Series winners: the first half of the two-time winners on Monday, the second half on Tuesday, and then splitting the one-time winners in thirds for Wednesday through Friday. I’ve already gone through the first half of the two-time winners, but I haven’t written the post yet.
About a month ago, I pitched my 1,000 greatest drivers book to Octane Press, who published John Oreovicz’s Indy Split book (which I just read) and they did express some interest, but they are looking for books that are more narrative-driven than reference books. I understand and I know very likely, I’m going to end up self-publishing this anyway since it’s going to be far too long for any conventional publisher to want to deal with it, but I thought I’d give it a shot.
I have also been continuing to update my master driver list, a text-based file, which is currently 4.54 MB with 166,771 lines and 27,839 drivers. I’m almost done and I would like to finish this before the summer’s out. I just finished entering all the national rally championships from Argentina to Zimbabwe a couple weeks ago There are only three more series on Wikipedia I have yet to enter: Argentine Turismo Nacional (I’m working on this), Japanese Super Taikyu, and the Spanish Touring Car Championship. Then I want to tie up some loose ends and go through the remaining series that are listed on World Sports Racing Prototypes, Racing Sports Cars, and touringcarracing.net (bookmark any of these if they interest you). There are some series I want to include like French GT that I don’t think I have yet. But once I’ve gone through every remaining series on those sites, then I am going to finally catch up on updating my models and finally collecting the data for this year’s statistical tables for various series. After that, I want to complete my rally model and that may be one of the last things I do, although that would still likely take years. Once I’ve finished archiving and updating my models, I may choose to release my massive text file to any of the people who were paid subscribers to me before I shut off payments in June.
Earlier this week, my mom got her phone stuck in the wheel of her wheelchair and it severed her phone line so now that is going to have to be replaced and who knows when that will happen. If she still had her cell phone, that would be no big deal but they lost her cell phone prior to that in addition to losing her dentures and they keep taking her blankets and clothes to the laundry on days when I’m not there and I have to fight to ever get them back. If I had controlled her hoarding so Adult Protective Services didn’t force her in there, none of this would have happened, but if I’d tried to control her hoarding, she likely would’ve screamed at me.
She has been a lot more pleasant since she’s been in the nursing home and I am enjoying seeing her more, maybe in an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” scenario. They have tons of concerts there in the afternoons and there are various guitarists and crooners who perform there every week or two. I’ve taken her to a bunch of them and I’ve probably been to more concerts this year than in the entire rest of my life. I do kind of like the community they have there, particularly when nothing like that exists for middle-aged people.
It looks like they finally might be getting ready to release her now that her Medicaid case looks like it’s about to be certified. They are going to have a meeting to determine whether she can come home. It is scheduled for August 5, the day before my colonoscopy. I’m still terrified about the colonoscopy and I don’t want to do it even though I know I should. I discussed this with the head nurse on my mom’s floor and she said I could attend the meeting over the phone if I needed to and she told me not to use this as an excuse not to get a colonoscopy, especially after I bailed the previous one I had scheduled in 2018. But I’m still dreading it. I hope my mom will be allowed to come home under some agency like Pace CNY. She had told me she’d rather be dead than in a nursing home and it felt like they tricked us by forcing her in there. I also want her home on a personal level, but I absolutely do not want her listening to the radio at it and screaming racist bullshit as she was wont to do before. I think she’s honestly forgotten about all that and wouldn’t do that now. Additionally, since we did not know that a Medicaid trust was something we had to do to protect the equity of our home until it was too late, Pace certainly would be a lot cheaper and we would lose less home equity, and I think she’d probably sleep better without the excess noise. Since Pace only operates on weekdays, it’s possible they might pay me for taking care of her on the weekends, which might also help my financial situation. And not having to take a bus an hour and a half both ways might free up some time for me to complete some other work, so fingers crossed. Here are the remaining career summaries.
Jean Alesi
1989: E-
1990: E-
1991: C+
1992: E
1993: E-
1994: C+
1995: C+
1996: E
1997: C+
1998: E-
1999: C+
2000: C-
2001: C
2002: C+
2003: C+
2004: C
2005: C-
2006: C
2008: C+
2009: C+
Cumulative points: 75
Most people in the general public would probably choose Alesi as the best one-time Formula One winner and that’s hard to argue with. I do have three other drivers with one win who technically scored more points than him. Three-time IndyCar champion/one-time Indy 500 winner Jimmy Bryan and two-time champion and 50 winner Rodger Ward scored more points and they technically count as World Championship winners since the Indy 500 was part of the World Championship schedule from 1950-1960, although pedants are clear to note that neither of them count as F1 winners since AAA and USAC had different specifications and the cars weren’t F1 cars. Additionally, Jochen Mass scored slightly more points, but that was because he had a highly productive career in sports cars and touring cars as opposed to his relatively lackluster F1 career. When looking at F1 races alone, I would agree it’s Alesi. He was extremely unlucky to only win one race when you consider that his most frequent teammate Gerhard Berger (who was his teammate every year from 1993-97) won 10 races while Alesi only won 1, yet Alesi has a slightly higher rating (.211) than Berger (.198) in my model and also in F1metrics’s model, where Alesi ranked 57th and Berger ranked 69th. Berger primarily got lucky to spend more time in championship-caliber cars, while Alesi was stuck with a Ferrari team that was kind of terrible by their standards until Michael Schumacher revived it. At least Alesi got the one win in 1995, but that probably wasn’t his most impressive race as he had TNL in four different seasons (1991, 1993, 1994, and 1997) and that wasn’t one of them. Alesi’s career did not end after leaving F1 in 2001. He immediately switched to the German DTM touring car series from 2002-2006, where he earned top ten points finishes every season and won five races in addition to winning the Nations Cup at the Race of Champions in 2004. After that, he then went on to compete in the short-lived Speedcar Series, which was sort of like a road course version of IROC. In that series, he won five races in 2008 and 2009 before he made one attempt at the Indy 500. I have no idea how he would’ve done if he had made a serious attempt at IndyCar because nobody would have been competitive in the Lotus shitbox he was forced to drive.
Jean-Pierre Beltoise
1965: C-
1966: C-
1967: C-
1968: C+
1969: C
1970: E-
1972: C+
1973: E-
1974: E
1975: C-
1976: E
1977: E
1979: E-
1982: C-
1983: C
1984: C+
1986: C+
1987: C-
Cumulative points: 67
As someone who wasn’t there at the time, I struggle not to confuse Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Jean-Pierre Jabouille because they were both F2 champions who won one race in the ‘70s (although Jabouille also won one in the ‘80s) and shared the same first name, both Formula 2 champions as well, and they even both competed in French touring cars after their F1 careers ended. They never actually competed against each other because Beltoise’s last race was in 1974 while Jabouille’s first was in 1975, but when you research both of their careers, it is abundantly clear that Beltoise was vastly superior. Beltoise won the F2 title in 1968 while simultaneously earning his first of four F1 top ten points finishes, which actually wasn’t that rare at the time because a lot of drivers competed in F1 and F2 simultaneously then and Patrick Depailler, Mike Hailwood, Ronnie Peterson, and Clay Regazzoni also got top ten points finishes in F1 during their F2 title seasons (Peterson even finished second in points!) Beltoise never had great equipment in F1, but scored an iconic win at Monaco in the rain in 1972 and is generally highly regarded by people who know their shit. He is 80th on F1metrics’s current list and he used to be 33rd on a previous iteration of that list. Although he only had two natural races led, he has an undefeated 2-0 lead change record. In 1973, he was teammates with Regazzoni and Niki Lauda, who would both become stars for Ferrari the next year and scored nine points while they combined for four. The next year, he led my open wheel model overall with a rating of .294, edging out Lauda’s .268. Although he left F1 after that season without becoming the level of star it seemed like he was destined to, he reemerged in the French Touring Car Championship where he won back to back titles in 1976 and 1977 and at least 23 wins through 1987 (there’s a lot of missing data for this series on touringcarracing.net, so he could have more). Beltoise was also one of the most eclectic drivers of his era as he won two rally races (a European Rally Championship race in 1970 and a French Rally Championship race in 1975) and nine sports car wins (including an overall win at the 1000 Kilometers of Buenos Aires in 1970 and a 24 Hours of Le Mans class win in 1976 and 24 Hours of Daytona class win in 1977). Because of the touring car/sports car crossover success, I actually think 1976 and 1977 are better than any of his F1 seasons, which raises the question of what he would have done then if he was still in F1. Perhaps because I was confusing him with Jabouille for too long, I didn’t have him as a lock. Now I’m wondering what I was thinking.
Alessandro Nannini
1987: C
1988: C
1989: E
1990: C+
1992: C+
1993: C-
1994: E-
1996: E
1997: C+
Cumulative points: 39
I didn’t have Nannini as a lock either until now, but this one is easier to understand. Although his win at the 1989 Japanese GP is certainly iconic because he inherited it after Ayrton Senna was disqualified for his illegal track reentry after his clash with Alain Prost, which is obviously still debated to this day. Since tons of people think Senna shouldn’t have been disqualified, Nannini’s win is looked down upon, and it doesn’t help that he only led three races and none of them naturally. He didn’t make F1metrics’s top 100 list either. And then his F1 career ended abruptly in 1990 when his arm was severed in a helicopter crash. Although I actually do think his 1989 season was pretty great as he ranked second overall to Senna in my open wheel model, it’s what he did after that that really impresses me. Despite the injury that could’ve inhibited him from ever racing again, Nannini returned to action in touring cars, where he won four races in the Italian Touring Car Championship in 1992, 15 in DTM from 1993-1996, and a race in FIA GT in 1997. DTM was briefly renamed the International Touring Car Championship in 1996, and it was that year that he arguably hit his peak as he had a season-high seven races while the champion Manual Reuter only had three. In his touring car years, his principal teammate was a driver whose name rhymed with Nannini’s: Nicola Larini, a great ‘90s driver who likewise did not get the F1 career he deserved. Larini was definitely better. He beat Nannini 41-18 in finishes and 26-15 in wins and he won the Italian Touring Car Championship in 1992 and the DTM title in 1993 in back-to-back years, winning 19 races to Nannini’s 6 in those years, but I’m still impressed Nannini achieved all that after his injury, and he did blow the crap out of Larini in his final touring car season in 1996.
Jarno Trulli
1996: C-
1997: C-
1998: C
1999: C+
2000: C-
2001: C+
2002: C+
2003: C
2004: E-
2005: C+
2006: C
2007: C+
2008: C+
2009: C+
2010: C-
Cumulative points: 36
Trulli is another driver I didn’t have as a lock until now, and I truly don’t understand why. Obviously he was a great driver and obviously he performs great in everybody’s F1 models including mine, especially because at his peak at Renault he came closer to Fernando Alonso than arguably any other teammate except Lewis Hamilton in Alonso’s prime (I would argue the Alpine years when Esteban Ocon was largely matching him were not Alonso’s prime). I think maybe the reason I held off is because Trulli has an absolutely atrocious overtake record of 164-398, although his lead change record of 3-1 is vastly better. This is, of course, consistent with Trulli’s reputation, as the “Trulli Train” meme of blocking faster drivers made him too much of a joke. It’s very similar to Ryan Newman in NASCAR really, except in Newman’s case, announcers erroneously used this as evidence for his greatness by arguing he was “hard to pass”, not realizing that the drivers who are hardest to pass are the drivers who pull away from you. Newman and Trulli had this in common, and that explains why I refused to give either of them any full E grades, but they both certainly had careers worthy of recognition based on how they performed in the context of the cars they had. And I’ve come slightly around on this sort of driver. Obviously drivers who qualify better than they race will tend to have bad passing numbers, but qualifying is part of the game and it’s not like they didn’t earn those qualifying positions.
Luigi Fagioli
1930: E-
1931: E
1932: E-
1933: E
1934: E
1935: 4
1936: C+
1950: C+
1951: C-
Cumulative points: 30
Fagioli was the oldest winner in F1 history when he won the French Grand Prix at age 53 in 1951, making him the only F1 winner born in the 19th century. However, that was certainly one of the cheapest wins in F1 history as he qualified 7th, fourth and last amongst the Alfa Romeo drivers seven seconds behind his teammate/polesitter Juan Manuel Fangio. Fagioli led no laps but Fangio took over his car for points and won after his own car encountered trouble. Maybe I shouldn’t have even rated that season at all, and maybe I’ll remove that someday. Nonetheless, he still had a rating above .1 when considering the post-World War II years only (since my open wheel model does not start until 1946), and he was obviously vastly better than that in the prewar years. From 1930-1935, he won 12 Grands Prix including the 1935 Monaco GP, two Italian GPs, a Spanish GP, and two Coppa Acerbos. At his peak in 1935, he also finished in the proto-F1 European Championship. Fagioli possibly lost many of what could have been his best years during the war, but admittedly, he fell off due to health problems including rheumatism in 1936, whih left him nearly unable to walk, so the fact that he came back from that and finished third in points in the inaugural F1 season in 1950 past the age of fifty is really impressive. And I think that’s why I will rate his 1951…
Patrick Tambay
1977: E-
1978: C-
1980: E
1982: C
1983: C+
1984: C
1985: C+
1986: C
1989: C
Cumulative points: 30
Tambay actually won two Formula One races, but I just glanced over him and forgot to do him in previous weeks. Despite his F1 wins, Tambay’s main legacy is that he is one of only three drivers along with Denny Hulme and Bruce McLaren to win two Can-Am titles. His first title came in 1977 after Can-Am had returned after a two-year absence, but that year did not have great competition while the competition level in 1980 was a lot stronger, since he had to beat Al Holbert, Geoff Brabham, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, Bobby Rahal, and Danny Sullivan, when Forbes-Robinson was the only one of those drivers competing against him in 1977. Tambay’s F1 career was kind of blandly generic as neither of his wins were natural and he had a 2-7 lead change record, but I still felt despite that, he had several seasons worth rating, even though nothing he did in F1 came close to his Can-Am accomplishments.
Jo Bonnier
1955: C-
1958: C
1959: C+
1960: E-
1962: C
1963: C+
1964: E-
1966: C-
1967: C
1970: C+
1971: C-
Cumulative points: 28
Just like how I used to confuse Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Jean-Pierre Jabouille all the time, I also used to confuse Jo Bonnier and Jo Siffert all the time. This one makes a bit more sense, as they were direct contemporaries with a ton of sports car wins and an F1 win or two, they both died in crashes in less than the span of a year, and they were even teammates for the Rob Walker Racing Team in 1964 and 1965. They were also relatively evenly matched as drivers. I ultimately awarded Siffert more points last week even though I think Bonnier was the better F1 driver because not only did Siffert win two races to Bonnier’s one, Siffert hit a much higher peak as a sports car racer. Bonnier did actually win more sports car races than Siffert (28 to Siffert’s 22) but Siffert had a much higher peak, with 13 wins from 1968-1970, and all of them were overall wins while Bonnier’s were mostly class wins. Besides his win in the 1959 Dutch Grand Prix, his career highlights include the 1970 European Sportscar Championship, overall wins in the 1960 Targa Florio, 1960 German Grand Prix (which was then a Formula 2 race), 1962 12 Hours of Sebring and 1964 12 Hours of Reims, and class wins at Sebring, the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio, the 3 Hours of Daytona and 2000 Kilometers of Daytona (before it beame a 24 Hour Race), and 1000 Kilometers of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, he was probably the most successful driver to die in a crash at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1972.
Ludovico Scarfiotti
1962: C
1963: E
1964: C+
1965: E-
1966: E-
1967: C
1968: C-
Cumulative points: 28
Primarily a sports car racer, Scarfiotti made only ten F1 starts, mostly for Ferrari, and won the 1966 Italian GP, but his true greatness came for Ferrari in sports cars, where he won the European Hill Climb Sports Car Championship twice in 1962 and 1965, swept the 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans overall in 1963 with different teammates (those being the two Ferrari F1 teammates John Surtees at Sebring and Lorenzo Bandini at Le Mans). Although those races were his only major overall wins, he won 10 overall World Sportscar Championship races and 7 more in class (including the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, and two more Le Mans class wins). I would probably take him over Bandini (who you will see below) because his sports car career was better and he also had a better winning percentage than Bandini, whose one win came in 42 starts.
Olivier Panis
1993: C-
1994: C+
1995: C
1996: E-
1997: E-
1998: C
1999: C-
2001: C
2002: C
2003: C-
2004: C
2010: C-
Cumulative points: 27
Panis’s only win came in the ridiculously attrition-heavy rain-drenched Monaco GP where everyone who could have possibly won the race other than him except for David Coulthard failed to finish. Panis had an explosive career early in the context of the early careers he had. After winning the 1993 minor league Formula 3000 title, he ranked fourth in my model globally in 1994 (although that would have been fifth if Michael Schumacher made enough starts). In 1996 and 1997, he utterly pummeled his teammates, beating Pedro Diniz by 24.34 percentage points and Shinji Nakano by 27.21 in terms of speed percentile. However, he broke both legs in a crash late at the 1997 Canadian GP, and although he was strong upon his return in 1997, he never seemed the same after that. He never had a top ten points finish after his three straight from 1995-1997 and he faded to mediocrity after that. He did win three sports car races including an overall win in the 12 Hours of Sebring and five races in the Andros Trophy ice racing championship from 2016-2019, but I didn’t feel any of those seasons were really worth rating. Nonetheless, I upgraded him to lock status.
Pierre Gasly
2016: C-
2017: E-
2018: C+
2019: C
2020: C+
2021: C+
2022: C
2023: C+
2024: C+
Cumulative points: 25
Another driver I upgraded to lock status, Gasly is definitely pretty boring but ultimately quite effective. What most impresses me are Gasly’s speed percentiles. Since his F1 career began, he has beaten every one of his teammates in speed percentile every season except for Max Verstappen in 2019, when he started at Red Bull before being demoted to Toro Rosso in mid-season. Not only that, he’s also beaten every single teammate by at least 10 percentage points in speed at least once. Although Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon kept his speed advantage to less than 10 percentage points in 2022 and 2023 respectively, he blew them out significantly worse in 2021 and 2024. Last year, I made a rant about Gasly being overrated because of that “Destructors’ Championship” meme, which is why I only rated him at C instead of C+ at the time, but given the benefit of hindsight, I’ve changed my mind. The extra point I gave him advanced him to lock status, but I actually like his 2017 Super Formula year more than any of his F1 years to date. As a Super Formula rookie, he was one of only two drivers to win two races that season. He finished only a half point behind the champion Hiroaki Ishiura, and he thrashed his vastly more experienced teammate, eventual three-time champion Naoki Yamamoto by over a 3-1 margin and Yamamoto would go on to win the following year’s title. That impresses me more than anything in his F1 career to date, but his F1 career still impresses me.
Innes Ireland
1959: C
1960: E
1961: E-
1962: C+
1963: C+
1964: C
Cumulative points: 25
Ireland has two main distinctions. He was the first driver to win the United States Grand Prix after it moved to Watkins Glen from Riverside the previous year in 1961 and he actually also outperformed Jim Clark at Lotus in 1960 and 1961, finishing fourth and sixth in points while Clark was tenth and seventh, respectively. Lotus boss Colin Chapman in a visionary move decided to keep Clark even though he hadn’t won a points race yet and dropped Ireland even though he had, although I’m not sure why he had to make that choice at all. Couldn’t he have just kept both of them? While I understand keeping Clark over Ireland, I don’t really understand why he replaced Ireland with Trevor Taylor. Must’ve been a ride-buyer thing? Taylor doesn’t seem to have been as good. Ireland’s career quickly spiraled after the Lotus firing, although he still won three non-championship Grands Prix from 1962-1964 in addition to the three he won as a Lotus driver. In 1962, he also scored an overall win at the RAC Tourist Trophy along with class wins at the British Saloon Car Championship (later British Touring Car Championship) and the USAC Road Racing Championship.
Heikki Kovalainen
2004: C+
2005: C
2007: C+
2008: C+
2009: C
2010: C
2011: C
2016: C+
2019: C
Cumulative points: 22
Kovalainen is remembered as an F1 bust mainly because he failed to live up to the extreme expectations many people had of him as a future F1 great. Those expectations largely stemmed from his win at the 2004 Race of Champions, where he upset both Michael Schumacher in the semifinals and Sébastien Loeb in the finals when you could argue both of them were at their absolute peaks in F1 and the World Rally Championship respectively. Beating the two best drivers in the world when he was still a minor league driver (although he did dominate the World Series by Nissan championship that year) impressed a lot of people. The next year, he finished a close second to Nico Rosberg in the inaugural GP2 championship and tied him in wins. As a result, he got a big opportunity to replace Fernando Alonso at Renault in 2007 after his back-to-back titles there. He did make the most of it, utterly decimating Giancarlo Fisichella almost to the same extent Alonso had done and he ranked third globally in my model in 2007 behind only Sébastien Bourdais and Alonso. However, when he replaced Alonso at McLaren, Lewis Hamilton won his first title while Kovalainen only lucked into a single win and he was quickly seen as a bust. He reemerged in Japan, where he won the Super GT sports car title in 2016 and the Japanese Rally Championship in 2022 and 2023. He had an impressive career, but it definitely wasn’t as impressive as people expected, and that’s probably why I don’t have him as a lock.
Peter Gethin
1969: C+
1970: E-
1971: C
1972: C-
1973: C
1974: C+
1975: C
1976: C-
1977: C
Cumulative points: 20
I originally though Gethin was going to be a driver I upgraded to lock status, but I decided not to. He famously won one of the weirdest F1 races of all time in the 1971 Italian GP, a race that had a mind-boggling 26 lead changes in 55 laps where the top three drivers were separated by less than a tenth of a second, the top four were separated by less than two tenths, and the top five were separated by less than a full second. Besides that, his F1 career was kind of terrible but he won lots of other things and was at his best in Formula 5000 races around the globe, winning back-to-back titles in 1969 and 1970 in the European F5000 series (where he would ultimately win 21 races) and the 1974 championship in the Australian-based Tasman Series. Although the Tasman Series was a highly-regarded series in the ‘60s when the F1 championship contenders were competing in it, by this point it was a much shallower and much more domestic series. Ultimately, the strongest of the Formula 5000 series in terms of competition was clearly the American one, where Gethin won only one race and went winless a couple of times, and I simply didn’t think the European and Australian series had enough competition to make him a lock (his -.227 open wheel rating is not good, although he didn’t have teammates in a lot of his best seasons). He did also win two Can-Am races and finished second in the revival season in 1977, but he wasn’t even close to Tambay who won 6 races to Gethin’s 1 that year. In 1971, he also won in the European-based Can-Am knockoff Interserie. He did a lot of impressive stuff, but somehow it just wasn’t adding up to me because I think the competition level in most of his wins was too bad and the F1 race he won seems to have basically been a restrictor plate race. Shrugging my shoulders…
Esteban Ocon
2014: C
2015: C-
2017: C
2018: C
2021: C+
2022: C+
2023: C+
2024: C-
Cumulative points: 17
He probably deserves to make the list if only because he’s one of the only teammates in Fernando Alonso’s career who came even close to matching him in speed. However, he’s kind of the anti-Gasly in that he had a slower speed percentile than literally every teammate he ever competed against. Sure, they are all locks on my list: Pascal Wehrlein, Sergio Pérez, Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, and Gasly. But it’s not that inspiring of a record. The weirdest part is that he actually came closest to Alonso in speed, losing to him in speed percentile by 3.77 in 2021 and 1.22 in 2024, while he lost to all other teammates by 6 or more points in speed percentile, and he even lost to Ricciardo by nearly 18 points in 2020. And yet you’ll still have the Alonso stans act like he’s still one of the best drivers in the world, lol. That performance against Alonso is probably enough to push him over the line, but if Gasly is only barely a lock and he was clearly better than Ocon, Ocon definitely shouldn’t be.
Piero Taruffi
1950: C-
1951: C+
1952: C+
1953: C-
1954: C+
1955: C
1956: C-
1957: C+
Cumulative points: 17
I’m gonna blast through most of these remaining drivers who I don’t think are worthy of as much discussion. Taruffi won one F1 race and two non-points events for Ferrari in 1952 and he had five major sports car wins including the 1951 Carrera Panamericana, the 1954 Targa Florio, the 1957 Mille Miglia, and a class win at the 1954 RAC Tourist Trophy. That specific combination of sports car wins around the world leads me to be more inclined to say yes than no and I’ll definitely take him over the inaugural Carrera Panamericana winner Hershel McGriff, but his F1 career was pretty mediocre with a below-average rating in my open wheel model, and unlike a lot of his contemporaries like Luigi Fagioli, he didn’t really do shit in cars in the prewar years, and I don’t consider motorcycle accomplishments for this list.
Lorenzo Bandini
1961: C
1962: C-
1963: C+
1964: C+
1965: C+
1966: C
1967: C
Cumulative points: 16
Bandini won the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans, 1967 24 Hours of Daytona, 1961 Coppa Acerbo, and 1965 Targa Florio overall along with one win for Ferrari in F1, but as far as these dual-use Ferrari F1/sports car drivers, I think I prefer both Scarfiotti and Taruffi to him. Bandini’s open wheel rating of -.075 was pretty bad and I think Scarfiotti was the team leader at Le Mans since he had the better sports car record in general, and I think Chris Amon probably played a bigger role in the Daytona win since he was more talented too. Bandini’s peak as an F1 driver was definitely in 1964. Even though he only finished fourth in the championship while John Surtees won the title, Bandini was still fast enough to set up the gross team orders move that won Surtees the championship, so that’s at least saying something.
François Cevert
1971: C+
1972: C+
1973: E
Cumulative points: 16
Jackie Stewart’s teammate at Tyrrell from 1971-1973 when Stewart won his last two championships, Cevert won one F1 race in 1971, one Can-Am race in 1972, and one World Sportscar Championship race in 1973. He also won three F2 races in that period when plenty of drivers competed in both series simultaneously. These included the 1973 Pau GP, the most prestigious F2 race at the time. What impresses me most about Cevert is his performances in the WSC where in addition to his win he set the fastest lap six times, which I think is the best evidence for his greatness. Although he was far from a match for Stewart, he did finish between third and sixth in all three of his F1 seasons. I’m leaning yes, but his career might not have been long enough.
Richie Ginther
1955: C-
1956: C-
1957: C
1959: C
1960: C-
1961: C-
1963: C+
1964: C
1965: C+
Cumulative points: 16
Paving the way for Scott Speed, Ginther got far more hype than he ever warranted just for being one of the first American drivers to win in F1 (although yes, I still think Ginther was probably better than Speed). He is also in my opinion one of the worst winners with an open wheel rating of -.168. Yes, he did earn six consecutive top ten points finishes from 1960-1965 including a third in 1963. However, he finished fifth in points in 1961 in a year when his teammates Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips, who were not exactly F1 legends, swept the top two. The next year, he switched from Ferrari to BRM, where his teammate Graham Hill won the title while he was only eighth in points. I give him props for 1963 when he tied Hill in points and actually outscored him if you count all races instead of only counting the best six races, but Hill won twice while Ginther went winless. He probably peaked in 1965 when he gave Honda their first win in F1, and as far as that goes, I’ll take him over André Ribeiro who gave them their first win in CART. But they were both unquestionably pretty lame winners and I think I’m probably overrating Ginther here, mainly because I probably gave him too many points for his early sports car seasons in the late ‘50s. I may remedy that later.
Luigi Musso
1954: C+
1955: C
1956: C-
1957: E-
1958: E-
Cumulative points: 16
Musso was a ferocious rival of Ferrari teammates Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins in Ferrari’s most tragic year of 1958 before both Musso and Collins died in separate crashes less than a month apart before Hawthorn went on to win the title, retire, and die in a road accident at the start of the next year. He was very fast but also very crash prone, but his open wheel rating of .223 was a lot better than most of the people he’s rubbing shoulders with here, which is why I bumped him up a little even though his career accomplishments don’t really match his ability. His only F1 win came in the 1956 Argentine Grand Prix where he led zero laps but Juan Manuel Fangio replaced him for points and won for him, just as in the case of Luigi Fagioli. If you want to call them the two worst winners on that basis, I certainly couldn’t argue with you, but I think the speed he showed at Ferrari makes him not one of the worst winners. Musso wasn’t as successful in sports cars as some of these other drivers, but he did earn overall wins at the 1000 Kilomters of Buenos Aires and Targa Florio in 1957 and 1958 respectively along with a class win at the 1954 RAC Tourist Trophy and three non-championship Grands Prix. I’m still leaning yes, but I could be easily talked out of it.
Carlos Pace
1972: C-
1973: C+
1974: C
1975: C+
1976: C+
1977: C-
Cumulative points: 13
I can see a case for Pace, but I can’t quite get there myself. He’s only barely above average in my open wheel model, but admittedly he wasn’t very far behind his fellow Carlos (Reutemann) when they were teammates at Brabham. Pace actually beat Reutemann in qualifying 18-14 but lost to him 15-12 in finishes, and 7-5 in shared finishes. He was also only barely above average in my model, but he was 71st in F1metrics’s, so I’m really on the fence. It’s possible I might be more generous here because he died young, but I also don’t feel like he was ever a really elite driver. He did also win one of the British F3 championships in 1970 when there were confusingly three dueling series, but he ran about the same as Dave Walker, a driver who ended up scoring zero points in 1972 when he was Emerson Fittipaldi’s teammate at Lotus when Fittipaldi won the title. I’m leaning no on Pace, but I could be persuaded.
Vittorio Brambilla
1974: C-
1975: C+
1976: C-
1977: E-
1978: C-
Cumulative points: 11
Brambilla won in the rain for a very shaky March team at the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix and crashed just as the checkered flag came out, but the race was shortened to less than an hour, which meant it was only worth half points. He peaked in the World Sportscar Championship in 1977, where he won four races and one more in class, but ultimately he had too short a run for consideration.
Giancarlo Baghetti
1961: C+
1962: C-
1964: C
1966: C+
Cumulative points: 9
In a tremendous upset, Baghetti beat Dan Gurney in a photo finish to become the only F1 driver ever to win his first Grand Prix. (Nino Farina and Johnnie Parsons, who did so in the first F1 race in 1950 and the Indy 500 when it counted for the World Championship don’t really count because they had entered Grands Prix and/or Indy 500s before.) However, he never finished on the podium again and was something of a flash in the pan; his -.265 rating in my model is atrocious. While most of these Italian Ferrari drivers of this era get a boost from their sports car accomplishments, Baghetti’s are nowhere near as impressive as Scarfiotti or Bandini’s. He did win Division 1 of the European Touring Car Championship in 1966 and won three races in that series and earned three class wins in the World Sportscar Championship including two Targa Florios, but he didn’t have any major overall wins. That’s not enough.
Pastor Maldonado
2010: C-
2011: C-
2012: C
2013: C-
2014: C
2019: C-
Cumulative points: 8
While I certainly wouldn’t rate him in my all-time top 100 like F1metrics did and he’s one of the worst F1 winners, I think he gets slightly too much shit, mainly because he did win Williams’s only win in the last 20 years when a lot of better drivers they had in their cars haven’t. He also wasn’t too bad in terms of speed as he beat Bruno Senna, rookie Valtteri Bottas, and Romain Grosjean in speed percentile three years in a row from 2012-2014. However, I still acknowledge he was nowhere near elite, and he was not around nearly long enough to potentially career-compile himself into lock status (like for instance Nico Hülkenberg or someone like that, who probably has never had an elite season but has had easily enough competitive seasons to push him over the line). What really sinks Maldonado is that he didn’t end up becoming a star in another discipline unlike many of these other drivers. He had a decent 2018-19 WEC season and also won a 24 Hours of Daytona in an extremely shallow class, but he didn’t become an enduring sports car star and his F1 career isn’t enough.
Gunnar Nilsson
1975: C-
1976: C
1977: C+
Cumulative points: 6
The F1 winner I am giving the fewest points to, Nilsson has possibly the worst rating of any F1 winner at -.303 because he was utterly decimated by his teammate Mario Andretti, but he did only have two full-time F1 seasons before his premature death. Andretti is also vastly underrated in my model because his late-period CART seasons when he was dominated by his son and Nigel Mansell ended up carrying too much weight and downgraded drivers like Nilsson who competed against him when he was stronger. Still, Andretti outqualified him 25-4 and a lot of people (not me) think Andretti’s F1 career was kind of shitty. Nilsson definitely had some potential as a British F3 champion, one-time World Sportscar Championship winner, and three-time European Touring Car Championship winner that I think if he hadn’t died young, he might have improved and become a star, but I can’t rate him based on something that didn’t happen.