Top 10 F1 drivers of all time named and ranked ahead of 2026 season
The 2026 Formula 1 season gets underway on Friday - making it a good time to revisit our list of the top 10 F1 drivers of all-time.
McLaren's Lando Norris goes into the season as the defending champion, having won his first world title at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December.
In doing so, he became the third British champion this century, after Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.
Much like Hamilton's first title in 2008, Norris' battle went down to the final race and the final lap - though nothing could be as dramatic as the young McLaren driver overtaking Toyota's Timo Glock on the final corner of the season to secure the points he needed for the Drivers' Championship.
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Hamilton has since won six more world titles to position himself at the forefront of the debate when it comes to the greatest driver of all-time.
Statistically, there is little doubt that the Ferrari driver is the best, having won 105 races, taken 104 pole positions and stood on the podium on 202 occasions.
But how does his final ranking compare to the likes of Max Verstappen, Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna? Let's take a look:
10) Fernando Alonso
- Years active: 2001-present
- Race wins: 32
- Championships: 2 (2005, 2006)
The last time we compiled this list, back in 2024, Fernando Alonso sat narrowly outside the top 10 places. So what has changed?
The Spaniard will turn 45 this season and shows no signs of slowing down, having once again secured a top 10 finish in the Drivers' Championship last season in an Aston Martin that, realistically, performed slightly below that mark throughout the season.
There was talk of Alonso being in a position to challenge for a third Drivers' Championship this season, given the arrival of Adrian Newey and new Honda power units.
While that talk has cooled to below freezing temperatures after a series of car-related nightmares in testing, Alonso can still count himself as one of the greatest of all-time - and he has two world titles, won with Renault in 2005 and 2006, to prove it.
9) Sir Jackie Stewart
- Years active: 1965-1973
- Race wins: 27
- Championships: 3
Like in the modern day, Britain was blessed with a number of elite-level drivers in the F1 system throughout the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s - but Sir Jackie Stewart stood above many of them.
He won three Drivers' Championships with the Tyrell team in 1969, 1971 and 1973, and won 27 of the 99 Grands Prix he entered.
His 100th and final Grand Prix was due to be the season-ending United States Grand Prix in 1973, but Stewart was convinced to withdraw after team-mate Francois Cevert was killed in a practice crash at the previous race.
8) Niki Lauda
- Years active: 1971-1985
- Race wins: 25
- Championships: 3 (1975, 1977, 1984)
Niki Lauda won three world titles in Formula 1, but perhaps his finest accomplishment was winning two of them after recovering from a crash that nearly killed him.
The Austrian suffered life-changing burns and other injuries after a fireball crash at the fearsome Nordschleife circuit midway through the 1976 season - and it spoke volumes of his sheer determination to race that he only missed two Grands Prix before returning.
Lauda ultimately lost the 1976 championship to James Hunt after withdrawing from an exceptionally wet Japanese Grand Prix, where the effects of the burns had caused issues with his vision.
But he returned the following season to lift the title again, and did so again in 1984 before retiring for what was a second time.
7) Juan Manuel Fangio
- Years active: 1950-1958
- Race wins: 24
- Championships: 5 (1951, 1952, 1955, 1956, 1957)
Long before Hamilton, Schumacher, Senna, Prost and co came along, Argentina's Juan Manuel Fangio was a regular feature at the top of most of F1's records.
After competing in Formula 1's first-ever Grand Prix in 1950, Fangio dominated the first decade of the sport, winning five championships in an era where the structure of F1 was far different to what it is today.
Following his retirement, Fangio transitioned into sportscar racing and, unsurprisingly, kept on winning there too.
6) Alain Prost
- Years active: 1980-1993
- Race wins: 51
- Championships: 4 (1985, 1986, 1989, 1993)
Alain Prost once stated that his 'ideal' in Formula 1 was to 'get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible'.
Those aren't exactly words you'd expect from a four-time world champion but, certainly as far as the latter quote is concerned, shows that the Frenchman would probably have dominated F1 in the modern era as well.
Nicknamed 'The Professor', Prost was known for his strategic and analytical approach to racing - in perfect contrast to his McLaren team-mate Ayrton Senna, a true racing entertainer who essentially just drove as fast as he could.
The Frenchman ended his career in 1993 after winning his fourth and final championship. In retirement, he set up a team in his own name.
5) Ayrton Senna
- Years active: 1984-1994
- Race wins: 41
- Championships: 3 (1988, 1990, 1991)
When a 24-year-old Ayrton Senna dragged his Toleman car to second in the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix - he would have won, had the FIA not abandoned the race and reset the standings to the last completed lap - the F1 world knew it had someone special on its hands.
It was perhaps apt that Senna finished that Monaco race behind Prost, given the rivalry between the two dominated the sport for much of the next decade.
The Brazilian was capable of genius, and producing the sort of magical drives that only the most naturally talented of drivers can ever produce. He inspired Lewis Hamilton to get into motor racing, with the Brit having been transfixed by his driving style at a young age.
After three world titles, Senna moved to Williams for 1994, but was tragically killed at Imola after a high-speed crash at the Tamburello corner. The crash prompted significant safety enhancements to be brought into F1.
4) Jim Clark
- Years active: 1960-1968
- Race wins: 25
- Championships: 2 (1963, 1965)
Had Jim Clark's career not been cruelly cut short by a fatal crash at the age of 32, we could have been listing the Scotsman as the greatest F1 driver of all-time.
That's certainly what many of his competitors thought at the time, with Clark having held the record for most wins, most podiums and most pole positions at the time of his death.
He is also the only active F1 driver to win the Indianapolis 500, and also competed in endurance and sportscar racing.
Clark was leading the 1968 Drivers' Championship with Lotus when, while competing in a non-championship F2 race, he suffered a fatal accident at the since significantly modified Hockenheimring circuit. Four of the next six titles in F1 would be won by Lotus drivers.
3) Max Verstappen
- Years active: 2015-present
- Race wins: 71
- Championships: 4 (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
Just like Fernando Alonso, we've bumped Max Verstappen up by a few places since the last time we compiled this list.
At the end of 2024, Verstappen was closing in on his fourth consecutive world title - and while a fifth one evaded him last season, what he did was arguably as impressive.
After finishing in ninth place at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Dutchman was 97 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri and driving a Red Bull car which simply wasn't equipped to win races.
But Verstappen clicked into gear after the summer break, winning five of the next nine races - most with relative ease - to take the championship fight, somehow, to the last race of the season.
He did what he needed to do in winning the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to make it six wins out 10, but Lando Norris finished in third place to win the title by two points. Verstappen will be back in 2026.
2) Michael Schumacher
- Years active: 1991-2012
- Race wins: 91
- Championships: 7 (1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004)
Between 2000 and 2004, Michael Schumacher was a one-man winning machine at Ferrari, flanked by Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and Jean Todt behind-the-scenes.
Only McLaren and Kimi Raikkonen, in 2003, came even close to toppling the German during that time period.
In 2002, Schumacher finished on the podium in every single race. And in 2004, he won 12 out of the first 13 races in a ridiculous spell of dominance.
Ferrari struggled to adapt to regulation changes in 2005 before becoming contenders again in 2006, only for Schumacher's title hopes to end in the penultimate Grand Prix in Japan when his engine blew while leading.
The German had already announced his retirement at the end of that season, but made a comeback with Mercedes in 2010 and spent three further seasons in F1 before calling it quits for good.
1) Lewis Hamilton
- Years active: 2007-present
- Race wins: 105
- Championships: 7 (2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)
As Formula 1 enters a new regulation phase, it is worth remembering how Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes dominated the turbo-hybrid era from 2014 onwards.
After leaving McLaren in 2012 in search of a new challenge, Hamilton found it at Mercedes - a works team that were developing their own power units in time for the 2014 season.
What followed was an unparallelled stint of winning races and championships that has never been matched, and resulted in Hamilton becoming the holder of most of F1's biggest records.
Only team-mate Nico Rosberg in 2016 was able to topple Hamilton, who cast aside all comers and outperformed his car through his own unique driving style.
He is in pursuit of world title number eight in the 2026 season with Ferrari, which would finally take him past the record he jointly shares with Schumacher.
Topics: Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren
Ryan Smart