After (almost) 75 seasons of Formula 1, it’s high time to rank the 25 greatest drivers to have raced in the series.
Barring a surprise in the final three races of the 2024 season, there have been 777 drivers to start 1,125 Grand Prix, with 34 countries hosting Grand Prix, while 41 countries have been represented in them.
With all of those drivers competing across all of those races, it was both hard and easy to narrow the list to just the top 25. Easy in that there have only been 115 drivers to win a Grand Prix and, furthermore, only 34 have been crowned World Champion.
Hard because, well, it was still difficult to rank them. It wouldn’t be fun to rank them by wins or championships or podiums or any kind of weird metric. Instead, I have ranked them based on my own opinion.
When determining the rankings, I looked at obvious stats (only one non-WDC driver is in the top 25), how they fared against teammates, how they performed relative to their equipment, general feats, and how they performed in their era. I tried not to punish drivers who had their careers cut short or passed away young, but at the same point, it’s unwise to try and read into what never happened.
With all of that being said, this week, we’re looking at numbers 25 to 21.
Maybe the toughest driver to figure out, Hill had a very unusual career that included his being named to partner with Alain Prost at Williams in 1993 after a few starts as a 32-year-old rookie in 1992.
Hill spent four years in very competitive Williams cars, almost winning the championship in 1994 and 1995 following the unexpected death of his teammate Ayrton Senna. He was informed prior to the end of the year in 1996 that he was being replaced at Williams the next season, but that didn’t stop him from winning the drivers championship at the end of that year.
He performed fine at Arrows the next season, scoring seven of the team’s nine points with the highlight being a second place in Hungary. But he never really got into competitive equipment again, and after choosing Arrows over McLaren and Ferrari in 1997, never got the chance to again after this year.
His career would end with a whimper after two seasons at Jordan, with 1999 being particularly awful.
After his rookie year at Williams, Hill was fantastic and always a title contender. But that was only about half of a very short career, and he was unable to build Arrows or Jordan into anything notable.
Another…
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