The parade of drivers continues, this time counting down 20 to 16.
There have been 15 countries with drivers representing them to win the world championship. If you look at the top five by championships, there’s a fascinating outlier.
The United Kingdom (population per Wikipedia: 68 million) leads the field with 21 or 20 championships, depending on if Lando Norris could pull off a now very longshot championship this year. Germany (82 million) is second with 12, partly thanks to Michael Schumacher’s seven and Sebastian Vettel’s four.
Brazil (200+ million) is third with eight championships among three drivers, one of which will be in this week’s rankings. The great Juan Manuel Fangio’s five alone brings Argentina (46 million) to fourth.
Then there is Finland (5.6 million), with four championships among three drivers. And to add to this, one of the drivers ranked today who won the championship under the German flag had a father who won the championship under the Finnish flag and retains dual citizenship.
How in the world do the Finns produce so many exemplary drivers? We’ll be looking at their two most notable this week.
| The Top 25 Formula 1 Drivers of All Time | by Michael Finley | Bonus (Honorable Mentions) |
| Part 1 (25 to 21) | Part 2 (20 to 16) | Part 3 (15 to 11) |
| Part 4 (10 to 7) | Part 5 (6 to 4) | Part 6 (3 to 1) |
The lone posthumous world champion, Rindt’s best years were taken away far too soon, but he also just didn’t produce enough to put him higher than here.
Rindt performed well early in his career driving bad Cooper cars before moving on to Brabham. There, he was able to beat Jack Brabham near the end of the three-time champion’s career before getting into his dream car at Lotus.
Lotus fell behind in 1969, but Rindt was still able to win a race and finish fourth in points with the third-place constructor.
In 1970. Rindt had only five finishes in the first nine races but won all five. This included a legendary win at Monaco starting from eighth with a year-old car.
The Austrian passed away following a crash during practice for the Italian Grand Prix. Including that race at Monza, four races remained in the season. Jacky Ickx‘s valiant effort came up short, and Rindt clinched the championship with one race remaining.
It’s frustrating to put Rindt here because it seemed like his career was just getting when he started driving in top equipment. But it’s not fair to plenty of other drivers on this…
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