Top 10: Rosberg tops list of F1’s long‑game racers

And the Mercedes man’s milestone moment got us thinking: just how long has it taken him to reach the top of the motorsport tree? The 2016 season was Rosberg’s 11^th in F1 and with more races than ever in a single year, we suspected there won’t have been many drivers who did more Grands Prix before striking gold. And, as a quick count-up proved, there weren’t any!

Here are the 10 drivers who notched up the most race starts before landing the big one. Our numbers include the race in which the title was won. 

10^th – Ayrton Senna, 77 races (Japanese GP 1988)

The Brazilian made his debut in 1984 with the tiny Toleman team. He raced 15 times with the British squad, famously troubling the frontrunners at a soaking Monaco, before moving up the grid with Lotus for 1985. In three seasons there, he won six times, but the title would have to wait. Not long, in fact, as he finally won it in his first year with McLaren in ’88 thanks to eight wins in the awesome lowline, Honda turbo-powered MP4-4.

9^th – Mario Andretti, 79 races (Italian GP 1978)

Appropriately, the Italo-American’s first and only title came in his 79^th race, aboard the incredible Lotus 79. Andretti, who had begun his F1 career with Lotus in 1968 and had raced for March, Ferrari (one win) and Parnelli before rejoining Colin Chapman’s squad for 1976, didn’t feel like celebrating a season in which he’d won six races in the black-and-gold wing car as his friend and team-mate Ronnie Peterson died the morning after a startline shunt in the Monza title decider. 

8^th – Alan Jones, 80 races (Canadian GP 1980)

The gritty Australian had battled hard in Hesketh, Hill, Surtees and Shadow machinery, before landing a dream gig at Williams for 1978. He made good use of Patrick Head’s first Didcot-built car, the FW06, with a second-place finish at Watkins Glen at the end of the year, but when the FW07 came on strong in mid-1979 he won four times to set himself up nicely for 1980. And with his fourth win that year he duly took the title in the penultimate race in Montreal. For good measure he capped his glorious season with a fifth win in the US GP at Watkins Glen.

7^th – Alain Prost, 87 races (European GP 1985)

The Frenchman began in F1 in 1980 with McLaren. The timing wasn’t good, the M29 and M30 worse, so he defected to Renault with which he won nine races and came within two points of the title in ’83. Back at McLaren for ’84, he lost out, to the wily Niki Lauda, by half a point, but came good 12 months later – on the day Nigel Mansell became a race winner at Brands Hatch. 

6^th – Jody Scheckter, 97 races (Italian GP 1979)

With a reputation for being a bit of a wildman, the South African calmed down for his 1974 move to Tyrrell, taking two wins and third in the points. More victories with Tyrrell in 1975/’76 and Wolf in ’77 paved the way for a Ferrari title challenge for 1979. Up against Gilles Villeneuve, Scheckter held his own and matched the French-Canadian’s three wins and bettered his reliability. He claimed his only title on Ferrari’s home ground at Monza, leading Villeneuve to a glorious one-two. 

5^th – Mika Häkkinen, 112 races (Japanese GP 1998)

Two trying but attention-grabbing years with a decaying Lotus squad helped the Finn onto McLaren’s radar. He joined the Woking team for the last three races of 1993, outqualifying Ayrton Senna for his debut in Portugal. After three years of struggle and no wins it all came good in late-1997 with a breakthrough win. Armed with Adrian Newey’s first McLaren, the MP4/13, for 1998, Häkkinen blew away the opposition, taking eight wins and a well-deserved title.

4^th – Kimi Räikkönen, 120 races (Brazilian GP 2007) 

The 21-year-old Formula Renault graduate arrived in F1 with Sauber in 2001 and immediately ruffled feathers. McLaren snapped him up for ’02 and in five years with the team he took nine wins and two runner-up spots. Replacing the retiring Michael Schumacher at Ferrari for 2007, he won on his debut and snatched the title from under the noses of McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in the Interlagos finale.

3^rd – Jenson Button, 169 races (Brazilian GP 2009)

After nine seasons – one with Williams, two with ‘Enstone’ (Benetton/Renault), three with BAR and another three with its take-over outfit Honda – it began to look as though it might not happen for Jenson. And then came the perfect storm of ‘Brawn’ – Ross Brawn’s rescue effort after Honda quit at the end of 2008. The superb BGP001 and Jenson’s deft touch secured six wins in the first half of ’09 and he held on to take a famous title win in the penultimate race in Brazil. 

2^nd – Nigel Mansell, 176 races (Hungarian GP 1992)

‘Our Nige’ bravely wrung the neck of various Lotus machines for five years in the early 1980s before landing a Williams seat for 1985. He came close to the title in 1986 and ’87, but in 1989 defected to Ferrari after a lacklustre Judd V8-powered ’88. Three wins for Maranello couldn’t keep him out of an Adrian Newey-penned Williams-Renault FW14 for 1991. It took the dominant FW14B of ’92 to finally give the Briton his crown, with 14 poles positions and nine wins to show for his efforts.

1^st – Nico Rosberg, 206 races

Keke’s lad took the GP2 title in 2005 and found himself with an F1 seat at Williams, the team that had run his old man to championship glory in 1982, the following year. After four ultimately frustrating seasons with Cosworth- and Toyota-motivated FWs, he joined Mercedes as it took over Ross Brawn’s title-winning squad for 2010. Ranged against a returning Michael Schumacher, Nico got the better of the seven-time champ in their three seasons together, finally taking his maiden GP win in China in 2012. And then along came Lewis Hamilton, who mostly outclassed his German team-mate across 2013-2014-2015. This year, however, Rosberg took the fight to Hamilton with improved speed and racecraft and better consistency (he started all bar one race from the front row and finished all but one of the 21 races) and joined Keke – and Graham and Damon Hill – in a special club for dad-and-lad-champions.

Photography courtesy of LAT