Which current F1 drivers are race winners
After a shock victory at Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Esteban Ocon became the 11th driver to become a Grand Prix winner in 2021 – the most since 2012. But who are the 11 drivers who won F1 races, where and where and when did they become race champions?
Old guard still playing for two decades
There are four drivers competing in the 2021 season who won their first Formula 1 victory a decade ago in the mid-2000s – two of them less than 20 years after adding their names to the winners list.
Kimi Raikkonen is the most experienced driver in World Championship history with 340 starts and is the first driver in the current field to win a Grand Prix.
It showed up at the 2003 Malaysian Grand Prix, the Finn’s third season in F1, and he got to McLaren as a sophomore in ’02.
Moving quickly to second, he passed leader Fernando Alonso in the pit stop to go on to win by 39 seconds.
Photo by Clive Ross/Getty Images
Alonso won his first pole position at that Sepang race, and he didn’t have to wait long for his first victory – 11 races to follow in Hungary.
In the dominant performance of the Hungaroring, Alonso only led 70 laps and lost his position in only one pit stop.
Such was his pace, the great Michael Schumacher suffered the humiliation of being lapped by a Renault driver.
He became the first and so far the only Spanish driver to win an F1 race, with another 31 victories, as well as two F1 world titles.
Dominant forces take their first
With 99 F1 race victories, Lewis Hamilton could sleepwalk to the top of the podium.
The Briton smashed Schumacher’s record of 91 wins at the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix and is looking to create a final result that will stand the test of time.
His first win came in his rookie season in Canada in 2007, a tricky afternoon that included multiple safety car restarts and a massive accident.
On lap 26, BMW driver Robert Kubica was involved in an accident with a peak force of 75G after hitting a barrier and hitting a guardrail after being thrown over the track.
Fortunately, he was not seriously injured, and while Hamilton continued to cruise to victory, Kubica was forced to miss the next race in Indianapolis, USA.
Vettel and Hamilton have a combined 152 wins in F1. (Photo by Peter Kohalmi/AFP) (Photo by Peter Kohalmi/AFP via Getty Images)
This helped pave the way for his successor to start his F1 career.
BMW opted to put the very young Sebastian Vettel on board, and the German brought him home on his debut before joining Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri).
A year later, Vettel destroyed the field in an extremely wet 2008 Italian Grand Prix, becoming the youngest driver to win an F1 race at the age of 21 years and 74 days.
The youngest person to make history
With Alonso, Hamilton and Vettel cleaning the house early in the past decade, the current driver won’t join the championship until 2014.
Daniel Ricciardo’s first season at Red Bull benefited from Mercedes’ debacle in Canada, before being slipped by an ailing Nico Rosberg.
The fourth Australian to win the world title, Ricciardo added two more victories in 2014, and he has seven career victories so far, but not one since Monaco in 2018.
The next winner on the list may be the most controversial driver in F1 history.
Max Verstappen made his F1 debut in 2015 at the age of 17. He doesn’t even hold a highway driver’s license. But he was quick to silence the doubters.
Promoted to the senior Red Bull team in early 2016, he started his first race in Spain in fourth place.
The surprise victory was guaranteed as Hamilton and Rosberg opted for a clean sweep with their teammates on the first lap.
Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images
Verstappen became the youngest ever champion with a stunning first win at just 18 years old.
Valtteri Bottas joined Mercedes in ’17 after Rosberg won the title in 2016 and then retired, with a final victory in the race against fierce rival Hamilton.
The Finn defied a lot of pressure from Vettel in the fourth round of the season in Sochi, Russia – a track he has always excelled at for Williams.
He won two more that year and then another six over the next three-and-a-half years until a summer suspension in 2021.
From tragedy to victory
Charles Leclerc finally took his maiden victory in Belgium in 2019 after being brutally denied victory in Bahrain due to engine problems in his second race for Ferrari.
It was a day after his close friend, Formula 2 driver Antoine Hubert was killed the day before, but Leclerc took the lead from pole and fended off Hamilton’s late charges.
He became the first Monegasque to win an F1 race before becoming the first Ferrari driver in nine years to win next week’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
There is a lack of new winners due to Hamilton’s dominance in the second half of the past decade.
But over the past year, F1 has seen a relative surplus, with three new winners.
Mercedes misses to create three new winners
It’s all thanks to the omnipotent Mercedes team conceding the ball.
Pierre Gasly has endured a difficult year, being dropped from Red Bull’s senior squad and losing Hubert at Spa in the summer of 2019.
Victory at Monza in 2020, however, underscored strong momentum, becoming the first Frenchman to do so since 1996.
Just as the race was halted by a Leclerc crash, Gasly benefited when Hamilton was awarded a penalty and took the lead at the restart.
He held off the fast-approaching Carlos Sainz Jr in the final laps for a stunning victory, the first for AlphaTauri since the Toro Rosso and Vettel era…
Photo by Jenifer Lorenzini – Pool/Getty Images
Your first F1 victory is nothing like history and that’s what Sergio Perez has to offer at Sakhir 2020.
Contacts on the first lap left the Mexican at the bottom, but his Racing Point machine quickly rose to the field and ran into the standings.
However, Mercedes looked set to win again, with Hamilton’s replacement George Russell fitted on Bottas’ tyres before a disastrous pit stop ended.
Once Mercedes got things sorted out, Perez started to take the lead, something he would never lose.
At the end of the first lap, he became the first driver to win.
newest member of the club
With Hamilton and Verstappen locked in a white-hot title race, the remaining wins could prove crucial at the end of the season.
But in Sunday’s race, Hamilton dropped what could be a straight win, his 100th, because he didn’t pit for slick tires at the end of the restarted forming lap.
After a shrewd start, he avoided the chaos in front of him, and Ocon was always in the lead.
That’s thanks in part to the excellent defensive work of Alpine team-mate Alonso on a recovering Hamilton.
Ocon becomes the 111th driver to win a World Grand Prix, 18 years after Alonso’s first win at the same circuit…
Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Jack usually writes or reads anything related to motorsport – from Formula 1 to NASCAR to British truck racing. His work as a motorsport reporter has been published in prestigious outlets such as Autosport, Motorsport.com and Motorsport News. In addition to racing, he is an avid amateur astronomer, podcast listener, and enjoys walks in the park with his three dogs.
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