If there were medals in F1, the British would be leading the way

The Summer Olympics in Paris are coming to an end and one of the important indicators is the number of medals. This is of course not the case in Formula 1, although Bernie Ecclestone, the former head of the World Championship management, once promoted the idea of ​​medals and we talked about it.

However, no one stops you from fantasizing about this topic, and journalists from the Italian publication Autosprint have collected statistics covering all the years of Formula 1’s existence, imagining that the World Championship is one big Olympic Games, stretching over decades, where gold medals are awarded for victories in the Grand Prix.

The result was an interesting picture: Britain would come out on top, and by a wide margin, having 313 such awards. Lewis Hamilton alone has stood on the podium 105 times during his career.

31 wins for Nigel Mansell, 27 for Jackie Stewart, 25 races won by Jim Clark, 22 by Damon Hill, 16 by Stirling Moss, 15 by Jenson Button, 14 by Graham Hill, 13 by David Coulthard. The rest of the British motorsport heroes have achieved fewer than ten victories.

Second place in this hypothetical ranking would be taken by Germany – German drivers have won 179 races in the entire history of the championship. The main contributors were of course Michael Schumacher with his 91st victory and Sebastian Vettel, who won 53 Grands Prix. Nico Rosberg, the last world champion who can be considered German, has 23 victories.

It is quite logical that Brazil would come in third place. Ayrton Senna won 41 races, Nelson Piquet – 23, Emerson Fittipaldi – 14, Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa each achieved 11 victories. In total, representatives of this Latin American country would have won 101 gold medals.

It is also worth noting that France, host of the 2024 Summer Olympics, would have finished fourth thanks to the performances of Alain Prost (51 victories), René Arnoux (7 victories), Jacques Laffite (7) and others who have reached the top of the Olympic Games. less often on the podium. Also Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, currently competing in the World Championship, have one victory each. But nowadays, Formula 1 races unfortunately do not take place on the territory of this automotive power.

But fifth place would be taken by the Netherlands, and this is worth a special mention: the entire Dutch harvest of gold medals, if they had been awarded for race victories, would have gone to Max Verstappen. He had 61 victories and there were no other Grand Prix winners from this country in the history of Formula 1.

Even a racing country like Finland lags behind the Netherlands: Keke Rosberg, Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, Heikki Kovalainen and Valtteri Bottas have achieved 57 victories together.