Jacky Ickx
Jacky Ickx twice finished runner-up in the Formula 1 world championship, but is remembered as much for his extraordinary endurance racing career — six outright wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a record that stood for decades, plus a Paris-Dakar Rally victory. In 1969, he made a quiet protest against a dangerous element of the traditional Le Mans start, then went out and won the race that very year.
Jacky Ickx made his Formula 1 debut in 1966 and went on to win eight grands prix over a career spent with Cooper, Ferrari, Brabham, Lotus, Williams, and Ligier, finishing runner-up in the world championship in both 1969 and 1970 without ever quite winning the title. It was, by any normal measure, an outstanding F1 career — and yet it isn't even the primary reason he's remembered.
Alongside his F1 seasons, Ickx built one of the greatest endurance racing careers in motorsport history, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times between 1969 and 1982, a record that stood for decades. His first win, in 1969, came after he made a quiet protest against the traditional Le Mans running start — considered dangerous because drivers often didn't have time to properly fasten their seatbelts — by deliberately walking to his car instead. He won the race anyway, in one of its closest ever finishes, and the running start was abandoned in the years that followed.
Ickx added a further, very different achievement in 1983, winning the Paris-Dakar Rally outright for Mercedes-Benz — a discipline as far removed from circuit racing as motorsport gets. Across Formula 1, Le Mans, and rally-raid, few drivers in history have combined success across such different forms of racing at the very highest level.
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Ickx won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright six times between 1969 and 1982, a record that stood for decades before eventually being surpassed, and one that established him as one of the greatest endurance racers of all time, alongside his Formula 1 career rather than instead of it.
Traditional Le Mans starts required drivers to sprint across the track to their cars and set off immediately, often without properly fastening their seatbelts in the rush, a practice several drivers considered dangerous. In 1969, Ickx deliberately walked to his car rather than running, a quiet but pointed protest against the format. He fastened his belts properly, started last, and went on to win the race regardless, in one of the closest finishes in Le Mans history. The traditional running start was phased out not long afterward.
Beyond circuit racing, Ickx won the gruelling Paris-Dakar Rally outright in 1983, driving for Mercedes-Benz across thousands of kilometres of some of the most demanding terrain in motorsport — a discipline entirely different from F1 or Le Mans, adding a further dimension to an already unusually broad career.
Ickx finished second in the Formula 1 drivers' championship in both 1969 and 1970, driving for Brabham and Ferrari respectively, without ever winning the title outright despite eight grand prix victories across his F1 career — making his endurance racing achievements, if anything, an even bigger part of his legacy than his F1 results.