There have been a grand total of 782 drivers who have started at least one F1 race since the sports inception in 1950. The category's place as the pinnacle of motorsport has ensured that it has attracted the greatest driving talents in the world over this time, with 116 of these drivers ultimately going on to become a grand prix winner.
Kimi Antonelli was the latest to be added to this illustrious list of race winners at the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix. The Italian's rapid improvement since his debut year in 2025 combined with a much improved Mercedes package has seen the Italian add a further five wins to his tally since his inaugural triumph. At the age of just 19, it's highly likely that Antonelli still has plenty of room for improvement over the next decade, something which will surely strike fear into the mind of his rivals.
As we head into the summer break of the 2026 F1 season, we thought now might be a good time to take a look at the records the champion elect has to aim for if he is going to become the most successful F1 Driver of all time. We are primarily basing this on who has won the most F1 races, with the man he replaced at Mercedes currently looking unassailable for many years to come.
1. Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton's welcome return to form in 2026 has seen him finally take his first victory for the Ferrari team after a dismal 2025 season where he failed to even achieve a podium finish for the first time in his career. Remarkably this was the 106th win of his illustrious career and unquestionably one of the sweetest given the fierce criticism he faced last year.
Hamilton's latest win comes 19 years after his first victory in 2007 when he took the chequered flag at just the sixth attempt at that year's Canadian Grand Prix for the McLaren team. With a total win percentage of 27% at the time of right Hamilton has ripped up the record books and underlined his incredible natural talent.
While he has benefitted from having the best car for long periods of his career, the cream generally rises to the top with Mercedes always aiming to sign the best drivers available. Teaming up with the likes of Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg and George Russell has forced Hamilton to dig deep and improve his own abilities. It's unlikely he would be the driver he is today without these challenges.
Ever longer F1 calendars mean that Hamilton's records are going to be vulnerable in the future from young guns like Antonelli. However, his return to winning ways with Ferrari means that these records are a moving target.
2. Michael Schumacher
When Michael Schumacher retired for the first time in 2006 with 91 wins from 248 races, it felt his win tally would never be beaten. At this time he had almost as many victories as the next two most successful F1 drivers combined (Alain Prost 51 wins and Ayrton Senna 41 wins).
His subsequent return to F1 with Mercedes between 2010 and 2012 yielded just a single podium finish but this doesn't do the German justice. This was a period where Mercedes were someway off the winning pace and much of Lewis Hamilton's subsequent success may not have been possible had it not been for the groundwork the man he replaced at the time had put in place prior to his second retirement.
It is this ability to build and lead a team which set Schumacher apart throughout his career. Having won two championships with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, Schumacher took on the challenge of turning the chaotic Ferrari team into an unrelenting winning machine. Bringing in creative geniuses like Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, Schumacher did the impossible by not only helping the Italian squad achieve their first drivers title for 21 years in 2000, but by following that up with a further four back to back championships, achieving levels of domination which had previously never been achieved.
3. Max Verstappen
The son of a former F1 driver dad and a go-karting champion mum, Max Verstappen was always destined to become a racer. His dad Jos made his F1 debut in 1994 for Benetton having made waves in the junior formulas. Brought in alongside Michael Schumacher was always going to be a challenge in a team built around the German and Jos predictably struggled.
Jos soon realised his shortcomings and worked on ensuring that his son did not suffer from the same limitations. A controversially strict parenting style ultimate turned Max into a modern day Schumacher, with the Dutchman sharing not only a similar driving style to the German, but also a similar approach to team leadership, using his immense talents to convince Red Bull management to operate with a clear lead driver policy where the 2nd driver is simply there to support his championship bid.
This ruthless streak is part and parcel of Verstappen's mentality which is also reflected by his racing tactics which fully exploit any loopholes in the rulebook. Leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of excellence, Verstappen won a record 19 races out of 22 races in 2023 in what was the most dominant season in the history of F1.
At the age of just 28, Verstappen has notched up a total of 71 victories at the time of writing since his debut in 2015 at the age of 17. We named Max Verstappen the F1 GOAT in a recent blog post given his other worldly talents. His superiority over the other drivers means that he only needs to have a reasonable package from his chosen team/s to have a good chance of taking Hamilton's record for the most F1 wins by the end of his career. Perhaps the only way Verstappen won't ultimately go on to beat this record is if he decides to leave the sport sooner rather than later. This is a serious possibility with Verstappen having expressed a keen desire to race in other categories of motorsport while he is still in competitive form.
4. Sebastian Vettel
No one wins a world championship unless they are something really special. The fact that Sebastian Vettel achieved this four times, winning 53 races along the way, means that he must therefore stand out as one of the greatest and most successful F1 drivers of all time. However, there are many expert commentators who feel that Vettel was someway off his rivals when it comes to natural talent. The first to feel this way was BMW team boss Peter Sauber, who chose to hire Robert Kubica instead of Vettel when deciding on his team's driver line-up for the future in 2007.
Vettel won all four of his titles consecutively between 2010 and 2013 during Red Bull's first era of domination. This was an unusually stable period of technical regulations, with very few changes being required to the winning formula that legendary designer Adrian Newey had identified at the beginning of the era. Blown diffusers were a large part of this and Vettel's driving style was perfectly attuned to this, providing him with the stable rear end he needed to exploit his full potential.
The introduction of turbo engines in 2014 made this technology redundant and Vettel suddenly found himself a long way behind his new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. A move to Ferrari to emulate his hero Michael Schumacher provided much needed new motivation and the German was soon a race winner again with his incredible work ethic having enabled him to find a way to compete in this new era. However, his team-mate during this period was a version of Kimi Raikkonen who was a long way past his sell-by-date and many in the team felt that Vettel wasted having the best car in 2017 and 2018, losing out to the more naturally gifted Hamilton.
The arrival of Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2019 proved the doubters right within the team, with the Monegasque almost immediately emulating Daniel Ricciardo five years earlier. Losing confidence in himself and motivation led to a dismal 2020 season and his subsequent move to Aston Martin rarely saw him show the speed that had made him so successful at Red Bull.
5. Alain Prost
Alain Prost's career statistics have to be viewed in the context of the era in which he drove. The 1980s and early 1990s were a time when car reliability was nowhere near the levels it is at now. Prost quickly earned the nickname "The Professor" for his ability to nurse home these brutal machines and only take the performance out of the car that was absolutely necessary in order to win. That makes his 51 wins from 202 starts particularly impressive.
Unlike his arch-nemesis Ayrton Senna, Prost did not feel the need to consistently prove himself to be the fastest whenever he was on the circuit. During their bitter second season together as team-mates in 1989, Prost resigned himself to setting his car up to be as fast as possible for the Grand Prix rather than focusing on outright qualifying pace. Over their two seasons together at McLaren, Senna unqualified Prost 28 times in 32 weekends. This again does little to support arguments of Prost being the F1 GOAT, but it does again have to be viewed in the context of Prost's strategy. The race statistics are a little more favourable, with the Frenchman winning 11 times over that two year period compared to 14 wins for Senna.
With a career total of 41 wins, there's little doubt that Senna would have ultimately won more races than Prost had his career not been cut tragically short by his fatal accident at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. It must also be remembered that Prost's strategy of prioritising race performance over qualifying pace during their time together as team-mates was only chosen when he realised that he was outright slower than the Brazilian.
Nevertheless, it is still Prost who has made it onto our list of the top 5 most successful F1 drivers of all time in terms of race wins. In many ways he is more deserving of this position than Vettel given the era in which he drove and the fact that he missed out on a further 5 titles by such small margins. Being a record holding 9 times champion would surely have forced Prost's critics to view his career in an entirely different light.
See the Modern Day Greats in Action
You could have the opportunity to see two of the five most successful F1 drivers of all time when you book an F1 holiday package with Elegant Resorts. We'll get you the best seats in the house so you can have the best possible views of these record breaking drivers in action.
Alongside Hamilton and Verstappen, there are a number of younger drivers on the grid who may well appear on this list in the future. Prime candidate for this is unquestionably Kimi Antonelli who, at the time of writing, has a commanding lead in the drivers championship having won 6 of the 11 races so far in 2026 in just his second season in the sport. At the age of 19, Antonelli may have another two decades in F1, giving him plenty of time to rise up the ranks.