World Champions and Race Winners
There have been ten British Formula One World Drivers' Champions winning a total of fourteen titles between them. The first champion was Mike Hawthorn, who in 1958 became only the fourth different person to win the title. In the 15 seasons between 1962 and 1976 the title was won by a British driver nine times: Graham Hill (1962, 1968), Jim Clark (1963, 1965), John Surtees (1964), Jackie Stewart (1969, 1971, 1973), and James Hunt (1976). Despite these successes no British champion has ever retained their title. Hunt's victory was the last title until 1992 when Nigel Mansell's winning season. Graham Hill's son Damon won in 1996 before another lengthy period without a British world champion. Lewis Hamilton won by just one point in 2008 with the most recent British champion, Jenson Button, winning the following year, in 2009.
The British Grand Prix has been won by eleven British drivers: Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, John Watson, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Johnny Herbert, David Coulthard, and Lewis Hamilton. They have won the event 16 times between them. Eight other British men have also won Formula One races, but never the British Grand Prix. These are Mike Hawthorn, Tony Brooks, Innes Ireland, Graham Hill, John Surtees, Peter Gethin, Eddie Irvine and Jenson Button.
Read more about this topic: Scottish Formula One Drivers
Famous quotes containing the words world, champions, race and/or winners:
“Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“The complaint ... about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernes, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)