Although Max Verstappen is currently leading Formula One, how does he stack up historically ?
It’s challenging to choose the best in any sport. The times are not the same. Views change. Nostalgia is deceptive. The present moment is really vivid.
Even more difficult is the challenge in motor racing. Formula One distinguishes between an era of immediate hazard and one of more distant peril, even though a football is still fundamentally a football (even if it is made of different materials). It is still and always will be risky, but the shift makes it difficult to make true comparisons across different historical periods.
It’s a private list. Please pardon me.
It’s tough to determine who the best athlete of all time is in any sport, but Max Verstappen’s supremacy with Red Bull in Formula One has JONATHAN McEVOY weighing in on the discussion.
Schumacher rejoices after taking home the 2004 German Grand Prix.
Over the course of seven years, Lewis Hamilton won six world championships while driving a Mercedes.
With seven Drivers’ Championships apiece, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton are the record holders, but that does not necessarily make them the greatest of all time.
20. Nigel Mansell
Was the driver more determined? Or did the British people love a great deal more?
The almost man who wore his heart on his sleeve seems to have spent his entire life going uphill. In the Adelaide final in 1986, his tire tragically blew, and he lost to Nelson Piquet in 1987. At the age of 39, he eventually won the race in 1992, though not without the help of an incredible Adrian Newey-designed Williams.
He was given the name Il Leone at Ferrari. The throngs of people that poured onto the Silverstone tarmac to applaud him were a striking reminder of his heyday: Mansell-mania.
Mansell rejoices after winning the 1992 Drivers’ Championship.
Mansell was a beloved driver who was known for having his heart on his sleeve.
Nigel Mansell, the 1992 world champion, was adored by the British public above all other drivers.
19. Mario Andretti
His accomplishments were astounding on both sides of the Atlantic. He had already won the Indianapolis and Daytona 500s when he traveled to Europe.
He was a charming, kind, and fiercely competitive man who embodied the American ideal. He arrived in the United States in 1955 after spending seven years in a dispersed people’s camp after his early World War II birth in Trieste. Exceptionally adaptable, he led Lotus to the 1978 world title.
Mario Andretti, the 1978 world champion with Lotus, represented the American ideal.
18. Nelson Piquet
He flourished under Bernie Ecclestone’s direction at Brabham, where he won two of his three world titles in close cooperation with illustrious chief designer Gordon Murray. Ecclestone was a master at getting a team to work around him.
He relocated to Williams, where he defeated legendary fighter Mansell with cunning. The British man was dubbed a blockhead with an ugly wife by Piquet. The arguments stopped short of a brawl.
In 1986, Nelson Piquet (right) and Sir Frank Williams (left), his former team principal, were together.
17. Sir Jack Brabham
A reserved, occasionally aggressive person who is still a royal in Australian sports. Brabham is still the only person to have ever won a world championship with a team that bears his name. He is the grandson of a Cockney greengrocer who immigrated to Australia in 1885.
At 40 years old, he achieved his third championship triumph. He sprinted forward to 44. The final champion from the 1950s, he passed away in 2014.
The only person to have ever won a world championship for a team named after him is Sir Jack Brabham.
16. Nico Rosberg
He will never forget being the one who used the same machinery to defeat Lewis Hamilton to win the title. After being consistently outperformed by his Mercedes teammate for years, the intellectual German, who was never as naturally gifted as his former comrade, dedicated himself fiercely to his task in 2016. Who else could have demonstrated such resilience?
In order to shed one kilogram of leg muscle, he even skipped riding over the summer holiday. He attributed this particular detail—by a hundredth of a second—to his pole in Japan. He knew he would never be able to win the title again, so he immediately announced his retirement.
In order to win the world championship in 2016, Nico Rosberg defeated Hamilton, his Mercedes teammate.
15. James Hunt
Once, the legendary playboy caused a line of British Airways stewardesses to form outside his bedroom door. In his title-deciding race against Niki Lauda in Fuji, he bravely persevered through blinding downpours to win the 1976 world championship.
Hunt was the best on the circuit for an all too short time, until his lifestyle diverted him. He passed away too soon at the age of 45 from a heart attack at home in Wimbledon, taking with him a carefree attitude but leaving a lasting legacy.
Hunt toasting to his 1976 victory
A line of British Airways stewardesses had once formed outside Hunt’s bedroom door after he made headlines off the grid.
James Hunt, the top playboy in Formula One, won the 1976 world championship.
14. Sebastian Vettel
a superb front-runner. His best years were spent at Red Bull, when he won four titles in a row starting in 2010. He fit in best during the blown diffuser era, when the car sank to the floor. He utilized it well, and Ferrari approached him with an annual salary of £50 million.
Sadly, he was unable to obtain the prize he desired throughout his stay in Italy. It seems like Hamilton might have gotten inside his brain, even if he might have won the title in fast red cars in 2017 and 2018, more so. Errors surfaced, and the once-sly youngster appeared more and more worn out near the end of a brilliant career.
After winning 53 Grands Prix and four world championships, Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement in 2022.
13. Graham Hill
The only guy to win the Indianapolis 500, Le Mans, and Monaco Triple Crown. Known for his well-groomed moustache and captivating demeanor, he was a prominent personality during the swinging sixties.
He was known as Mr. Monaco for his five victories in the principality and won two titles, despite spending a considerable amount of time in Jim Clark’s shadow.
Some thought he was too controlling. But according to Stewart, he’s the fairest man he’s ever encountered.
Graham Hill (left) poses casually alongside Jim Clark (right) and Jackie Stewart (center).
12. Lauda Niki
A sports icon identifiable by the burns he sustained in the Nurburgring fire in 1976. He was so scarred that to rebuild his face, flesh had to be removed from his thigh. However, he reappeared in his Ferrari at Monza six weeks later, his wounds leaking as he put on his balaclava.
As a three-time world champion, he was aware that his ability to motivate the team to succeed hinged as much on his driving prowess as it did on his own abilities. later, a pivotal executive chairman of Mercedes in the prime of Hamilton’s career. At the age of 70, he succumbed to lung failure and was ultimately engulfed by the fire.
Niki Lauda, a three-time world champion who competed for Ferrari twice and McLaren once, is a sporting legend known for his facial scars from the Nurburgring fire in 1976.
11. Alberto Ascari
After World War Two, he ignited the Italian motorsport wildfire. 1952 and 1953 saw Ferrari win its first world championship, both years with great dominance. He was considered speedier by many than Juan Manuel Fangio. Overall though, Moss refrained from making that judgment.
Fighting for the lead, Ascari crashed into the Monaco harbor in 1955 and passed away in Monza a week later. ‘I’ve lost my greatest opponent,’ declared Fangio.
Pictured in 1951 at Silverstone’s pits in his Ferrari 375, Alberto Ascari passed away at the age of thirty-six.
10. Fernando Alonso
Is there ever a bad day for Alonso? He hardly ever misses a session. He is enduringly smart and unwaveringly consistent. Redefining what is feasible in the modern day, he continues with Aston Martin until he is in his mid-40s.
He is greatly undervalued by two world titles, especially considering that the latest one was won almost 20 years ago.
His 2017 Indianapolis 500 debut stands out in particular. The other drivers in America were in awe of him as he drove like a god. If not for his Honda engine blowing, I’m positive he would have prevailed.
A Dick Dastardly, all he has to show for his championship-draining tenure at Ferrari are near-misses. But what a competitor.
At forty-two, Fernando Alonso is still going strong, demonstrating unwavering consistency and lasting brilliance.
9. Jim Clark
The modest Borders farmer known as “Jimmy” has many dedicated followers who would rank him at the top of any list.
His passing during an F2 race at Hockenheim in 1968 shocked the sport’s foundations because, similar to Ayrton Senna a generation later, he had appeared unflappable and so incredibly quick that his peers were intimidated by him.
His victory in the torrential rain at the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix is unmatched in racing history. He covered the entire field in eight miles, passing by barriers, pylons, farms, and forests.
Clark passed away in an F2 race in Hockenheim two years after being photographed at the 1966 Mexico Grand Prix.
8. Sir Jackie Stewart
a remarkable person in the annals of motor racing. Stewart had the capacity to block this out and maintain his composure as everyone around him lost theirs in an era when death might be just around the corner and drivers’ faces were expressions of panic as they got ready to race. He dubbed it “mind management.”
He battled for safety improvements with his usual tenacity, claiming that if he had given up he may have ended up a dead champion rather than a more well-liked one.
He is now an elderly statesman and was once the owner of his own team and a grand prix winner. Who else might claim that at his 80th birthday celebration, the late Queen was the honored guest?
Three-time champion and F1 great Sir Jackie Stewart chatting with Queen Elizabeth II
7. Alain Prost
Observing The Professor, as he was affectionately known, effortlessly go around corners with little steering input was an experience of supremely calm driving.
Because Prost drove more within himself and was less aggressive than Senna, Stewart thought Prost was superior to Senna. Before Max Verstappen appeared, Ecclestone considered him to be the best driver he had ever seen.
Senna’s 1991 collision with him at Suzuka cost him his fourth title, but in 1993, at the age of 38, he refused to give up while racing for Williams.
Alain Prost (right) and a youthful Schumacher (left) celebrate Prost’s victory in the race in Canada.
6. Sir Stirling Moss
A national treasure, and the world’s most well-known athlete prior to Muhammad Ali’s debut on television for a worldwide audience.
Never a world champion, but when he fought for Mike Hawthorn’s reinstatement in Portugal, he would have been if his ingrained sense of sportsmanship hadn’t prevented it. After the appeal was granted, Hawthorn went on to win the title in 1958, becoming the first British winner. By one point over Moss.
After that, what value had titles? Would one have raised him to the level of Hawthorn? Hehe. or twice as good, two? Silly.
Following Fangio’s 1958 retirement and his own career-ending accident in 1962, Moss was the world’s greatest Formula One driver and the best all-around driver overall.
Over his lengthy life, he remained a symbol of a particular English aesthetic.
Even though he was never the world champion, Sir Stirling Moss was revered as a national hero.
5. Max Verstappen
Without a doubt the best driver around these days. Though other vehicles have also been dominant, no one in history has made the advantage count so strongly as his Red Bull. Why hasn’t anyone else won ten races in a row?
His father, Jos, had F1 pedigree, and his mother, Sophie Kumpen, was a famous karter, thus he was born with the appropriate genes. After that, he was raised by Jos’s “school of hard knocks,” where he picked up the fundamentals of karting. He is the ideal combination of his upbringing and nature.
When it’s necessary, which it hasn’t been much lately, he can summon blinding speed with a flip of a switch. He is brutally tough on track. His name might be at the top when his career ends.
Verstappen is without a doubt the greatest driver of the modern era, having already won three championships.
4. Michael Schumacher
So good he almost put an end to the sport. Following his championship triumphs at Benetton, he led Ferrari to their first championship in twenty-one years, the first of his five consecutive championships in red. A forever Maranello hero.
In spite of his reputation for Teutonic cold, he was adored by every member of his crew, even the least technician. He demonstrated this by battling his brother Ralf mercilessly to win the 2003 San Marino Grand Prix just a few hours after their mother passed away.
Quick as a flash and incredibly fit, he showed no mercy. He might push things too far, having notoriously punted Jacques Villeneuve and Damon Hill in championship matches. It was a dark art, too, parking his car in Monaco in 2006 to ruin Alonso’s last qualifying run.
In the 2000s, seven-time champion Schumacher won five straight world championships with Ferrari.
3. Senna Ayrton
An iconic character whose tragic passing at Imola thirty years ago this month added to his mythology.
He is regarded by many as the greatest player of all time because of both his aura and his skill. His home city of Sao Paulo saw millions of people line the streets to witness the Brazilian’s final adventure on earth due to this combination and a rivalry with Prost that shaped both of their careers.
Severely competitive, he performed incredible feats of intelligence that defied reason. His first lap in the rain at Donington in 1993 was captivating as he moved up from fifth to first. Has any lap in history been better than this one?
Maybe during Monaco 1988 qualifying, when he claimed to have driven the car as though unconscious.
Ayrton Senna, a legend in Formula One racing, had a magnetic personality that matched his incredible talent.
2. Lewis Hamilton
Even if he hadn’t driven in Formula One since his first season, he would still be incredibly well regarded in any fictitious pantheon.
As he passed his world champion McLaren teammate Alonso in the first few seconds of his career in Melbourne, it was a sign of the things to come. He was headed for the first of nine podiums that would follow.
In 2008, he emerged victorious in the rain at Silverstone, finishing one minute ahead of schedule, akin to a reptile.
Hamilton is statistically the greatest of all time and will begin a new chapter with Ferrari next year.
To his great credit, he never committed a professional foul.
Statistically speaking, Hamilton is the best of them all and a pathfinder. At Ferrari, a championship would make him so. If Verstappen doesn’t shamelessly pursue his own claims.
1. Juan Manuel Fangio
More accolades than any other driver in Formula One history have been bestowed upon the Argentine for his exceptional driving. He’s referred to as the “OG” or the Original Gangster even by Hamilton.
Stewart feels he was the greatest. Furthermore, he thought Moss, his contemporaries, was unmatched.
With five world championships, Juan Manuel Fangio dominated the first ten years of Formula One.
A five-time world champion in a record four teams, he possesses another unquestionably indisputable evidence to his prowess. Almost modest by today’s standards, he won 24 times in just 51 grand prix. That represents a strike rate of 47%.
Throughout his life, he was regarded with great admiration, elevated to the rank of an exceptional man in the racing world.
