The Other Side of F1 Drivers

Not lap times. Not podiums. The stuff that actually makes them interesting — pets, passions, hobbies, and the weird things they get up to when they're not racing.

Current Drivers

Alexander Albon

The London-born Thai driver whose comeback from motorsport's scrapheap became one of F1's best stories

Andrea Kimi Antonelli

The Bologna teenager named after Kimi Räikkönen who replaced Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes

Red Bull's teenage prodigy with a Swedish name and a pace that made the junior categories feel too small

Carlos Sainz Jr.

The rally legend's son who also loves skiing and genuinely enjoys cooking Spanish food

Charles Leclerc

The piano-playing Monégasque who writes his own music and grew up on a Grand Prix circuit

The driver whose parents sold their house to fund his karting — and it worked

Fernando Alonso

The triathlete who treats every sport like he's trying to qualify for the Olympics

Franco Colapinto

The Argentine who crashed his way into the world's hearts and ended a 23-year national F1 drought

Gabriel Bortoleto

The São Paulo teenager keeping Brazil's F1 flame alive — while being managed by a McLaren rival

The GPDA director who is obsessive about data and once won a race in someone else's car

The Parisian with Algerian roots who came through Red Bull's junior ranks with unusual quietness

The billionaire's son who actually has real talent and skis like an Olympic candidate

The gaming streamer who turned up to a race dehydrated after playing video games all night

The fashion-forward vegan who gave his bulldog a social media empire

The Kiwi who grew up in a town famous for motorsport and had to move to the other side of the world to race in it

The man who races for real and then goes home to race in a simulator

Nico Hülkenberg

The man who won Le Mans and holds the record for most F1 starts without a podium — and keeps turning up

The teenager who stepped into a Ferrari with 30 minutes' notice and finished seventh

The dry-humoured Melbourne kid who denied his own F1 signing on Twitter

The Anthoine Hubert tribute driver who became an emotional leader in French motorsport

The Mexican national hero who turned F1 into a billion-dollar Mexican audience

Valtteri Bottas

The naked calendar cyclist who left Mercedes and started working on his personality

Legends & Past Champions

The Professor who played tennis, invested in football clubs, and calculated everything

The blunt 1980 world champion who spent decades afterward as Australia's most familiar F1 commentating voice

The mystic with a pilot's licence who prayed on the podium and cried watching rain

Founded the team that carries his name at 26 — and never lived to see it become one of the greatest in motorsport

The world champion who moonlights as a rock guitarist and rides motorcycles across remote continents

Daniel Ricciardo

The shoey-drinking wine enthusiast who can't stop smiling even when things are awful

David Coulthard

The quiet Scot who won thirteen Grands Prix and survived a plane crash

'The Bear' — 1967 world champion who helped steer McLaren forward after his close friend Bruce McLaren's death

Michael Schumacher's Ferrari teammate who came within two points of the 1999 world title, then became a shrewd property investor

Emerson Fittipaldi

The pioneer who left McLaren to race for Brazil

Lost the 2008 World Championship by half a point in the final seconds of his home race — and spent the following decade trying to get it back

Ayrton Senna's practical-joking McLaren teammate who later ran BMW's F1 programme and co-owned Toro Rosso

Giancarlo Fisichella

The Force India pole-sitter whose shock 2009 form earned him a call-up to Ferrari mid-season

Gilles Villeneuve

The helicopter-flying snowmobile champion who treated every lap like it might be his last

The only driver to win motorsport's Triple Crown — and the only World Champion whose son also became one

The only driver ever to win a world championship in a car bearing his own name

The son of a five-time MotoGP champion who chose four wheels over two

The safety crusader in a tartan cap who changed Formula 1 forever

The six-time Le Mans winner who protested a dangerous start format by walking to his car — then won the race anyway

Jacques Villeneuve

The 1997 world champion who fronted a rock band and never stopped saying exactly what he thought

The shaggy playboy world champion who kept a pet fox named Humbert

The one-time Monaco Grand Prix winner who went on to run his own vineyard in Italy

F1's most beloved nearly-man, who waited six years for his only win — and got it on his 31st birthday

The triathlete model-racer who moved to LA and became a property developer

The sheep farmer widely considered the fastest driver who ever lived — and who never seemed to notice

Formula 1's only posthumous World Champion, crowned five races after his death

Ferrari's last World Champion for twenty-one years, who swapped the pit lane for pasture and became an organic farmer

The only person ever to win world championships on both two wheels and four

The driver who won Le Mans outright the year after a crash doctors feared would end his ability to walk

Juan Manuel Fangio

The kidnapped world champion who once drove the most perfect lap in history — aged 46

Juan Pablo Montoya

The F1 race winner who left to become a two-time Indy 500 champion and a NASCAR regular

Won the 1982 title with just a single race victory all season — then spent his retirement managing his son to a championship of his own

Kevin Magnussen

The Dane who finished second on his debut and never filtered himself

Kimi Räikkönen

The man who told his team to leave him alone and became a legend for it

The only driver to win the Indy 500, the Daytona 500, and a Formula 1 World Championship

The man who won nine Grands Prix and never won the title — and doesn't pretend otherwise

Michael Schumacher

The devoted family man who trained like an athlete thirty years before it was standard practice

The Flying Finn who cried in the bushes, survived a skull fracture, and then retired to fish

The three-time champion who never cared what anyone thought of him

The trilingual world champion who retired five days after winning everything

The walrus-moustached golfing world champion who became an American legend overnight

The airline entrepreneur who borrowed money against his family's will to go racing

The first American World Champion, crowned in a race where his own teammate was killed

Ralf Schumacher

Michael Schumacher's younger brother, a six-time race winner who built his own identity in F1 and after it

Riccardo Patrese

The most experienced driver in F1 history at his retirement, with a championship near-miss alongside Nigel Mansell

The driver who nearly lost his arm in a 2011 rally crash and made it back to a Formula 1 grid anyway

2006–2010, 2019

Romain Grosjean

The man who walked out of a burning car and drove again six weeks later

Ronnie Peterson

'SuperSwede' — the spectacular, sideways fan favourite whose death overshadowed his Lotus teammate's title celebration

Rubens Barrichello

The most race-started driver in F1 history who cried at almost every one

Sebastian Vettel

The beekeeper who collected vintage cars and quit F1 to save the planet

The greatest driver never to win the world championship

The anime fan whose team radio messages have their own fan-edited compilation videos

China's first full-time Formula 1 driver — and a fashion enthusiast who survived a terrifying crash