F1 News & Discussions > F1 History

Most dominant F1 driver ever

(1/2) > >>

cosworth151:
With all of the talk about Max being "the most dominant F1 driver ever," I did a little math.

Max has won 14 of 20 grands prix so far, or 70.0%
The best he can do, if he wins the 2 remaining races, is 72.7%

In 1954, Fangio won 7 of 9 grands prix, or 77.8%
If one deletes the Indy 500, it's 7 of 8 actual F1 races, for 87.5%

Max would have needed to win 20 race to better Fangio's 87.5%.

Jericoke:
As always, we get into the trope of comparing 'eras' of racing.

Modern F1 cars are far more reliable than those of Fangio's day (I don't know about '54, but I know that he won races by switching cars at least once), however Max was robbed of a couple of wins due to reliability issues as well in '22.

While I'm loathe to admit that Max is a 'great driver', he's in a field against 13 world championships (down from 14 in '21), something that Fangio never had to deal with.  I've always believed an important part of the championship puzzle was being able to be in the best possible car, and Max has done that.  RBR and Max is obviously a great pairing, although Fangio seems to have won in both Maserati and Mercedes?

lkjohnson1950:
Fangio won races and WDC's in Alfas, Maseratis, Ferraris and Mercedes. He won the "57 WDC in a Maserati 250F that was basically the same as the Maserati 250F he won with in '53.

John S:
Have to agree Lonny, Fangio is the GOAT for me too - closely followed by one J. Clark.  ;)  Depends what we talk about in records, ablities and acheivements, often Jimmy comes out top, well for me anyways.

Having said that it's early days for Max, until his career is finished it's rather hard to quantify just how his stats might work out. He's certainly the best of this present era.

cosworth151:
Fangio competed in 7 of the first 8 seasons of F1. He missed 1952 recovering from multiple injuries (including a broken neck) from a shunt at a non-points race at Monza. Of the 7, he won 5 WDC's. The other 2 years he was 2nd. Not bad considering he started F1 at the age of 39.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page