How British drivers have blazed F1 trail as Norris joins win list

Roll call

Norris, left, has previously shared the podium with compatriot Lewis Hamilton (David Davies/PA)

Britain’s seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton leads all drivers in F1 history with 103 race wins, more than three times as many as any of his compatriots despite a wait of over two years since his last victory at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Nigel Mansell won 31 races in a career stretching from 1980 to 1995, including nine on his way to the 1992 drivers’ title.

Fellow world champions Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark and Damon Hill won 27, 25 and 22 races respectively, with double figures also for Sir Stirling Moss (16), Jenson Button (15), Graham Hill (14), David Coulthard (13) and James Hunt (10). Graham and Damon Hill were the first father and son to both win world titles.

Tony Brooks and John Surtees won six grands prix apiece, John Watson five and Eddie Irvine four, with three each for Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Johnny Herbert.

Norris joins Innes Ireland, Peter Gethin and his fellow current driver George Russell, whose 2022 win in Sao Paulo was Britain’s most recent until Sunday, on one win.

Leading the way

Twenty-one British and Northern Irish drivers have won grands prix (PA graphic)

Those 309 total wins leave British drivers clear at the top of the all-time list.

Only three nations have even recorded three figures – indeed, were Hamilton a country in his own right he would rank third on the list behind Germany (179), with two wins more than Brazil (101).

French drivers rank next with 81 wins, with reigning three-time champion Max Verstappen contributing all of the Netherlands’ 58 victories – third among individual drivers behind Hamilton and Germany’s Michael Schumacher, who won 91.

Finland, on 57, is the only other country with a half-century. Twenty-two nations have had winning F1 drivers with Poland and Venezuela the last names on the list with a solitary win apiece, courtesy of Robert Kubica and Pastor Maldonado respectively.

Max Verstappen has single-handedly racked up a half-century of Dutch wins (Tim Goode/PA)

Britain is one of four nations in double figures for the number of different race winners, and six clear of the pack.

Italy and the United States have had 15 drivers apiece top the podium, though Italy’s most recent win came from Giancarlo Fisichella in 2006 while no American has taken the chequered flag since the last of Mario Andretti’s 12 victories in 1978.

France has had 14 winners, led by Alain Prost with 51 victories and including a pair of current drivers in Pierre Gasly at the 2020 Italian GP and Esteban Ocon in Hungary the following year.

There have been seven German winners, six from Brazil and five Finns.