800 F1 Grands Prix in numbers

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Fernando Alonso won the 800th F1 championship race in Singapore

The Singapore Grand Prix marked the 800th round of the F1 world championship.

Here’s a breakdown of which countries and teams have won the most races and loads more statistics and facts to do with this landmark race.

Grand Prix wins by country

This graph shows which countries’ drivers have won the most Grands Prix.

Grand Prix wins by country (click to enlarge)

Britain is one win away from its 200th victory, or just under a quarter of all F1 races. All but 13 of Germany’s were scored by Michael Schumacher, and all 20 of Spain’s belong to Fernando Alonso.

Grand Prix wins by team

This graph shows which team has won the most Grands Prix.

Grand Prix wins by country (click to enlarge)

Ferrari scored their 200th F1 win in the Chinese Grand Prix last year. The 800 F1 races have been won by 32 different teams.

Teams with most starts

1 Ferrari 773
2 McLaren 645
3 Williams 514
4 Lotus 491
5 Tyrrell 430
6 Brabham 394
7 Minardi 340
8 Ligier 326
9 Arrows 291
10 Benetton 260

Other active teams: Renault 242, Toyota 119, Honda 85, Red Bull 68, BMW and Toro Rosso 50, Force India 15.

Wins by starting position

This graph shows how many Grands Prix have been won from each starting position:

Grand Prix wins by starting position (click to enlarge)

More Grands Prix have been won from pole position than any other starting position – 39.25%. The lowest grid position a race has been won from is 22nd (John Watson, Long Beach 1983) and there aren’t enough cars in F1 today for that record to be equalled or beaten.

Alonso became the first driver to win a race from 15th this weekend. Two other drivers in F1 today have won races from lower on the grid: Kimi Raikkonen (Suzuka 2005, 17th) and Rubens Barrichello (Hockenheim 2000, 18th).

Non-national Grands Prix

From time to time Grands Prix have adopted titles other than the country their race is held in.

Often this has been to capitalise on an appetite for F1 in a country because of the success of a local driver, such as Michael Schumacher (two German rounds from 1995-2006) and Fernando Alonso (two Spanish rounds as of this year). Several were also used in America in the 1970s and 1980s ad the country held up to three F1 races per year.

The non-national titles used are:

European Grand Prix (18 races)
United States Grand Prix West (eight races)*
United States Grand Prix East (eight races)*
Pacific Grand Prix (two races)
Pescara Grand Prix (one race)

*Also referred to as the USA Grand Prix (Dallas), USA Grand Prix (Detroit), USA Grand Prix (Las Vegas) and USA Grand Prix (Long Beach).

Two countries have leant their names to Grands Prix without ever holding an F1 race within their borders. The ‘San Marino Grand Prix’ was held at Imola in Italy from 1981-2006. And the ‘Luxembourg Grand Prix’ was held at the Nurburgring in Germany from 1997-8.

The Swiss Grand Prix was held at Dijon-Prenois in France in 1982. But that race had also been held at Bremgarten in the 1950s, before the Swiss outlawed motor racing following the 1955 Le Mans Disaster.

Car numbers

Unsurprisingly, the most common number to be found on the front of a Grand prix-winning car is ‘1’. Car number one has won 148 Grands Prix. The next most successful number is five – as demonstrated by Fernando Alonso last weekend – with 120 wins, followed by two (76)

The lowest number never to have been found on the front of winning car is 13, though that is largely because the number has hardly ever been used in F1 (it’s time someone tackled that nonsense superstition and raced number 13 I think).

The next lowest number not to have won a race is 29. The highest number to have won a world championship event is 101 – Alberto Ascari in the 1952 German Grand Prix.

The above data includes the 11 Indianapolis 500s from 1950-1960 which counted towards the world championship but were not official Grands Prix.

2008 Singapore GP stats and facts

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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25 comments on “800 F1 Grands Prix in numbers”

  1. Keith,

    As usual a huge amount of excellent data for us stat freaks!!

    Keep up the brilliant work

  2. Here’s a simple derived statistic – top 5 teams by winning efficiency (wins / races):

    Ferrari 27%
    McLaren 25%
    Williams 22%
    Lotus 16%
    Renault 14%

  3. Cars 1 and 5 have in recent history been the cars to win world championship, until Kimi won in #6 last year.
    This year its between #2 and #21 (unless Kimi can pull off a surprise like last year)

  4. > Teams with most starts
    > […]
    > 3 Williams 514
    I thought they were on 501, since the Singapore GP… ;)

  5. Cameron aka. SkinBintin
    30th September 2008, 10:00

    It makes me feel so proud to see a tiny nation like New Zealand on the list with 12 wins :)

  6. Right with ya there SkinBintin, as a Kiwi too, it makes me proud also.

  7. Interesting to see that rather small countries — inhabitants-wise — have gathered quite an impressive amount of victories. New Zealand stands out, indeed, but so do Belgium and Sweden, Austria and Finland.

    Sadly, the Netherlands have yet to score a Grand Prix win. But, like Skeletor said: “Everything comes to he who waits.”

  8. A point on Wins by starting position – has a race ever been won from starting in the pit lane? I remember Mansell got second in the 1989 French GP

  9. Amazing to think, that wins total by Lotus, will probably never be beaten.

  10. Of course Renault, who are the closest team currently running, are 291 wins behind. So based on the last 6 years, they have an average of 3ish wins a year. That means in 80 odd years, they could catch up……

  11. Actually, i f”£$$£ up…. I confused wins with starts….duppy

  12. “The lowest number never to have been found on the front of winning car is 13, though that is largely because the number has hardly ever been used in F1 (it’s time someone tackled that nonsense superstition and raced number 13 I think).”

    The person who would’ve been 13 is Bourdais, and I don’t think you could say that he’s been anything but unlucky this year. Before that, DC, and before him, Webber – A man reknowned for having appalling luck.
    I say bring back the number thirteen, it clearly makes no difference.

    But then again, some drivers do have a habit of being superstitious.

  13. Kimi should adopt unlucky number thirteen. Number one hasn’t helped him at all.

  14. Of love this type of post, thanks for the effort, great results.

  15. So Schumacher, the country, would be #3 on the list?

  16. Speechless again Keith! Fantastic

  17. Thank’s Keith. Great source this topic!

  18. @Cameron/Dorian

    I’m English but live in NZ and it’s good to hear of fellow F1 fans in the country! Racing fans here are usually only into Scott Dixon in the IRL or the Aussie V8s.

    NZ has good history in F1 with the likes of Hulme and Amon but it’s good to see they have a lasting legacy with McLaren.

  19. Absolutely brilliant facts, but Kimi started Suzuka 2005 from 17th, not 16th :) Even slightly better

  20. “Scootin159

    So Schumacher, the country, would be #3 on the list?”

    Without Schumacher the Germans would only have 13 wins, that’s a helluva way behind the 104 they have with him.

    Argentina also get 24 of their 38 wins from Fangio but would still beat Germany if they didn’t have their multiple world champions. (Had to check this a few times as I couldn’t believe he only won 24 races, it was 24 out of 51 though…).

    So Fangio would only make it into 10th, admittedly there are more rounds to a season these days but even so it makes Schumi look amazing, stats wise.

  21. Lustigson – good point about Williams. They marked their 500th race at Monza but as I wrote here you can count them up a couple of different ways. For example, do you count Indy ’05, when they were present but didn’t start? In this article I’ve used the data from Forix which does include weekends such as that where they participated but didn’t start the race.

    Scott Joslin – I don’t think so, no.

    Mr Soap – great point about Bourdais, Coulthard and Webber!

    Aidan – Fixed, thanks.

    And thanks to everyone for the compliments too :-)

  22. Does Honda’s 85 starts include their starts in the mid-60s?

  23. MrPippy – yes.

  24. I wonder how much longer before we see an Asian win – would Nakajima even be able to fluke one? Shame that given Japan’s long history in F1, for Asia, they’ve not been able to score a win…unless maybe there was a chart of Wins by Engine? ;-)

  25. If Hamilton wins the championship I wonder if we’ll have two Grand Prix’s in Britain. Somehow I doubt it.

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