Formulast One: Statistics About the First Retirements of Grands Prix (1950-2023)

INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 2012, I decided to build on the success of LASTCAR, my website devoted to last-place finishers of NASCAR races, by creating a Formula One website called Formulast One. I compiled the statistics in the same way I did for LASTCAR, constructing a ranking of which drivers finished last in the most Formula One Grands Prix. However, after the site went online, I felt that the LASTCAR format didn’t fit as well as I had hoped. So, a few months later, I took down the site to continue my research.

In discussing the subject with other racing fans, I have since discovered that last-place finishers in Formula One are perceived quite differently than in NASCAR.

First of all, there is no classification of drivers who fail to finish, so most of the fans I talked to didn’t really care about which driver retired first. Any focus outside of the race winner is instead on the final driver to score points, or beyond that, the final driver to be classified as finishing under power. This is quite different from NASCAR, where even the last-place finisher is awarded points.

Second, standing starts make first-lap crashes and mechanical troubles are much more common, so there’s not often a long story behind each retirement. This first-lap carnage is so commonplace in the Formula One of today that the safety car rarely comes out to pick up the field. In NASCAR, first-lap crashes are unusual, but cautions are frequent.

Third, Formula One seasons have historically been much shorter, making repeat last-placers so rare that it became impossible to declare a Formulast One Champion. Even when trying to break ties based on Inverted Podiums, that is, the number of times the drivers finished in the final three positions (the LASTCAR equivalent were Bottom Fives), this often didn’t determine a clear winner. In NASCAR, the bigger schedule and rise of start-and-park teams have created more stability at the bottom of the field.

Finally, in extreme cases, it has sadly been more common that the last-place finisher either lost their life during the weekend’s events or was involved in a fatal accident. In NASCAR, this happened only once, when J.D. McDuffie crashed during the 1991 race at Watkins Glen. Driver fatalities in NASCAR practice and qualifying are not added to the official scoring sheet. In Formula One, however, there have been five times where a driver who suffered a fatal crash was given the final spot in the finishing order: Carl Godin de Beaufort at Nurburgring in 1964, Jochen Rindt at Monza in 1970, Francois Cevert at Watkins Glen in 1973, Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder in 1982, and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola in 1994.

Although these reasons, I feel, make a Fomulast One website unworkable, I do feel that the statistics I compiled, like those at LASTCAR, offer a unique view on a popular form of motorsport.

First of all, both Formula One and NASCAR have a much longer list of last-place finishers than race winners over nearly the same time span. In NASCAR, Richard Petty’s 200 NASCAR wins eclipse J.D. McDuffie and Joe Nemechek’s record 32 last-place runs. In Formula One, Michael Schumacher’s 91 wins dwarf Nico Hulkenberg’s 16 retirements. Since nearly six times as many drivers have finished last as have won a race, a book about last-place finishers becomes a way to both rediscover forgotten drivers while looking at the familiar ones in a different light.

Secondly, there are several interesting statistics among Formula One’s last-place finishers. Both Ayrton Senna (Brazil 1984) and Michael Schumacher (Belgium 1991) finished last in their first Grand Prix start. In 1973, three years before their epic face-off for the championship, Niki Lauda and James Hunt scored their first last-place finishes in consecutive races at the Osterreichring and Monza. And no driver finished last while remaining under power until 2005, when Narain Karthikeyan came home three laps down at Monza.

Because of this, I decided to publish this eBook, featuring the statistics I compiled in my research at racing-reference.info, among other sources. Here, as in LASTCAR, I have defined last place as the driver in the final position on the scoring sheet for any race. In short, it is the driver credited with being the first retirement from the race. This, I feel, says much more about the driver and the race itself than simply the last driver to be classified or score points. I always have a soft spot for drivers who are overlooked because of their performance, and Formula One’s last-place finishers seem to be the most overlooked of all.

This book is different from any of my previous LASTCAR volumes. Here, instead of offering my own view of Formula One history, I have provided all of the last-place statistics for each race run in the Formula One World Championship. This includes:

*A complete annotated season-by-season, race-by-race list of the last-place finishers of every Formula One event run from 1950 through the present, organized by date, listing the driver’s nation of origin, car number, chassis and engine manufacturer, and indicating how many last-place finishes each driver had scored to that point.

*Season-ending rankings showing which driver(s) scored the most last-place finishes at the end of each season.

*Rankings originally published on Formulast One, since updated, which rank the most finishes by driver, country, chassis manufacturer, and engine manufacturer.

This way, I feel that fans of the sport - and those interested in it - could find these statistics for themselves and interpret them however they desire. I have also annotated statistics of interest to myself, as well as those I feel others would like to see.

All statistics are current, and updates will be uploaded yearly, available for free download at the site you purchased this eBook.

Thank you for picking up this book and I hope you enjoy it!

Sincerely,

Brock Beard, LASTCAR

I.

RANKINGS BY DRIVER

(1950-2023)

Coming into 2017, the lead in the all-time Formulast One standings belonged to Jarno Trulli, who took the overall lead in 2011 at Hungary where his Lotus / Renault fell out after 17 laps. The year before, Trulli finished last at Albert Park, scoring the first last-place showing for the Lotus chassis since Johnny Herbert’s run at Adelaide in 1994.

Prior to 2011, the Formulast 1 record belonged to Pedro Diniz, whose 14th finish came in the 2000 finale at Sepang. That year, Diniz also set the single-season record of six last-place finishes.

However, 2017 saw Kimi Raikkonen, the active last-place record holder following the retirement of Mark Webber in 2013, score three last-place finishes, tying Trulli at season’s end. The next year, Nico Hulkenberg joined them, jumping from fifth to a tie for first in the rankings with four last-place finishes, including the season finale. Fernando Alonso jumped into a tie with Pedro Diniz for second-most all-time, trailing three races in 2018. Hulkenberg then took the overall lead in 2019, his final full-time season in F1, and extended it during his brief return in 2020. The next year, Kimi Raikkonen’s final season saw him finish last twice more, tying Hulkenburg following brake issues in the season finale. Hulkenburg retook the overall lead in 2023.

(18) Nico Hulkenberg

(17) Kimi Raikkonen

(15) Fernando Alonso, Romain Grosjean, Jarno Trulli

(14) Pedro Diniz

(13) Giancarlo Fisichella

(12) Johnny Herbert, Jean-Pierre Jarier

(11) Andrea de Cesaris, Carlos Sainz, Jr., Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber

(10) Vitantonio Liuzzi, Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, Michael Schumacher

(9) Jenson Button, Charles Leclerc, Nelson Piquet, Yuki Tsunoda

(8) Michele Alboreto, Jean Alesi, Chris Amon, Rubens Barrichello, Vittorio Brambilla, David Coulthard, Pierre Gasly, Piercarlo Ghinzani, Mika Hakkinen, Kevin Magnussen, Jackie Oliver, Adrian Sutil

(7) Philippe Alliot, Timo Glock, Innes Ireland, Pierluigi Martini, Riccardo Patrese, Hans-Joachim Stuck

(6) Christijan Albers, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Narain Karthikeyan, Pastor Maldonado, Satoru Nakajima, Pedro de la Rosa, Lance Stroll, John Surtees, Patrick Tambay, Alex Zanardi

(5) Jaime Alguersuari, Ivan Capelli, Emerson Fittipaldi, Lewis Hamilton, Eddie Irvine, Christian Klien, Daniil Kvyat, Nigel Mansell, Felipe Massa, Bruce McLaren, Allan McNish, Ronnie Peterson, Alain Prost, Ralf Schumacher, Trevor Taylor, Jean-Eric Vergne, Max Verstappen, Jacques Villeneuve, Pascal Wehrlein

(4) Bob Anderson, Mario Andretti, Valtteri Bottas, Jack Brabham, Marcus Ericcson, Horace Gould, Brendon Hartley, Damon Hill, Graham Hill, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Alan Jones, Rupert Keegan, Kamui Kobayashi, Heikki Kovalainen, Nicola Larini, Niki Lauda, Tarso Marques, Nikita Mazepin, Lando Norris, Esteban Ocon, Jonathon Palmer, Joylon Palmer, Olivier Panis, Luigi Piotti, Carlos Reutemann, Logan Sargeant, Takuma Sato, Ayrton Senna, Derek Warwick, Manfred Winkelhock

(3) Rene Arnoux, Ian Ashley, Joe Bonnier, Sebastien Bourdais, Martin Brundle, Sebastien Buemi, Eddie Cheever, Jr., Peter Collins, Teo Fabi, Bertrand Gachot, Peter Gethin, Bruno Giacomelli, Dan Gurney, Nick Heidfeld, James Hunt, Ukyo Katayama, Jan Magnussen, Jochen Mass, Roberto Moreno, Alessandro Nannini, Felipe Nasr, Charles Pic, Emanuele Pirro, Hector Rebague, Clay Regazzoni, Jochen Rindt, Nico Rosberg, Mika Salo, Alex Soler-Roig, Mike Spence, Marc Surer, Aguri Suzuki, Tora Takagi, Maurice Trintignant, Jos Verstappen, John Watson, Alexander Wurz

(2) Alexander Albon, Cliff Allison, Julian Bailey, Paolo Barilla, Elie Bayol, Jean Behra, Derek Bell, Tom Belso, Allen Berg, Jules Bianchi, Mark Blundell, Thierry Boutsen, Tony Brooks, Yves Giraud-Cabantous, Francois Cevert, Max Chilton, Louis Chiron, Jimmy Clark, Eric Comas, Piers Courage, Chuck Daigh, Patrick DePailler, Martin Donnelly, Guy Edwards, Harald Ertl, Jack Fairman, Nanni Galli, Giedo van der Garde, Marc Gene, Lucas di