Since the end of the 1974 season only one man has driven a Formula 1 car with the number 1, without being the World Champion. Who was it? And how did it happen? In the early years of the FIA Formula One World Championship, there was no such thing as a numbering system. The race organisers would give out numbers based on whatever they wanted to do. This was why, for example, the highest number ever seen in F1 was 136, which was given to East Germany’s Rudolf Krause, who raced a Reif-BMW at the German GP in 1952. That race saw all the Grand Prix cars numbered above 100, a system which meant that each car in every race had a unique number. People may write in if I do not say that there was a Formula 1 car that carried the number 208 in 1974 when Lella Lombardi tried to qualify a Brabham BT42 in Radio Luxembourg colours (208 being the radio station’s wavelength). She failed to make the field.
The number 13 was never used because of racing tradition, dating back to the 1920s, although cars with that number did appear in Mexico in 1963 with Moises Solana using it for his BRM P57 and in 1976 when Divina Galica used the number for her Surtees TS16, but failed to qualify for the race.
The lowest Formula 1 number used was 0, which has only been used twice – when a World Champion moved from the team with which he won the title. This happened in 1993 and 1994 with Williams as Nigel Mansell and then Alain Prost both left Williams as World Champions. As a result, Williams had the right to use numbers 1-2 because it had won the Constructors title in the previous year, but the lead driver did not have the right to use number 1, because he was not the World Champion. Thus in 1993 Prost used number 2, while Damon Hill was given 0, and in 1994 Ayrton Senna (and his successors) used number 2, while Hill continued to use 0.
The lack of numbering system lasted only until 1973 when it was decided that it might be an idea to keep the same numbers. This began to happen in the second half of the season and the numbers were then set in stone from 1974 onwards, with the only change each year being the number 1 and 2 being given to the World Champion and his team-mate in the season after he won the title. It began in 1974 with Ronnie Peterson running with #1 and Jacky Ickx with #2 for Team Lotus as a result of the team having won the Constructors’ Championship in 1973. The 1973 World Champion Jackie Stewart had retired at the end of the season.
After that the previous World Champion would get the new World Champion’s old number. Thus, for example, Alain Jones switched from 27 to 1 in 1981, while Gilles Villeneuve went from 2 to 27 because Ferrari took over the Williams numbers (27 and 28) and Villeneuve stepped up to be team leader after Jody Scheckter (previously #1) retired at the end of a very disappointing season. This system remained unchanged until the end of 1995 when the FIA decided it needed to clean up the system as there were fewer teams and the new operations had not taken over the numbers that had been left by older teams disappearing. Thus the numbering system became such that the World Champion and his team-mate took 1 and 2 the following season, while the other teams took their numbers according to their finishing position in the Constructors’ Championship. This meant that teams could not easily use their numbers in marketing campaigns, because they would change year by year.
In the end, before the 2014 season the FIA agreed to allow the drivers to choose their own permanent numbers, with the #1 being left open for the World Champion, if he wanted to use it. The number 13 also appeared that year as Pastor Maldonado wanted to use it.
All of this means that since the start of 1975 only one driver has ever appeared in the #1 car who was not a World Champion. This was John Watson, who appeared at the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1985. He was standing in for Niki Lauda, who was out of action having suffered a wrist injury when he crashed in the Friday practice session at the Belgian Grand Prix. The steering wheel whipped around in the impact and Lauda’s wrist was strained. It was felt best that he miss the next race and Watson was called up to help.
joeblogsf1 
28 is always my favorite number after growing up watching Gerhard Berger driving with that number for Ferrari and a year with McLaren.
There was one other driver who used the number 0, this was Jody Scheckter who drove a third McLaren in the 1973 Canadian and US Grands Prix.
I knew someone would find fault with this post.
I might be mistaken, but didn’t you write an article a few years ago about Scheckter where you mentioned the fact that he had used No.0 in those two races when discussing his early years at McLaren?
No I don’t believe I did
I don’t set out to “find fault” with anyone, your posts are always very good! But I do like things to be accurate.
I work very hard to make them so
As we can see from Joe’s post, it was unusual to use the number 0 in F1. My guess is that in Scheckter’s case, the inspiration came from outside F1. Vasek Polak had for some time entered a Porsche 917 in the Can-Am with the number 0. His original driver was Milt Minter, but in 1973 Minter was replaced by Jody Scheckter. Jody made a considerable splash in the series. His response to the turbo lag was to start accelerating shortly after corner entry and rely on lock and reflexes to keep him out of trouble as the turbo kicked in. He did this corner after corner, lap after lap – believe me, it was unforgettable. Having thus forged himself a formidable reputation in Can-Am, he used the number 0 that year in F5000, and then again at season-end in the M23. And of course at Mosport and Watkins Glen, a lot of the fans would have seen him in the #0 917/10 earlier that season, so it seemed natural to see him again using that number.
Wow, he was making the suspension eat the steer by converting the impulse of the turbo against the suspension reaction (i like the word recoil, if only to add drama, and doff hat to springs), and while that is happening, because the suspension sends that transverse force, translated, back down the chassis, (the forward force wants to travel along the first path steered, but at lock, the only way is back) it counters the turbo spin up, increasing effective inertia that the turbo is going to overcome nicely, but in the split second all the forces meet, you have a nice translation directly forward.
I’m just sipping a nice glass, this moment, and I really want to get out a basic model, but a pretty sure this is a brute force game of loading sprung weight to give the turbo time to cut in and to align the car for exit. I think my use of the word inertia, would play into gearing, somehow.
Hey, stuff my suddenly tipsy (I blame the blog, not the glass) musings…
Ain’t that the darndest best ever argument to chuck all the fancy trickery from ca. 93 onwards, right out the window? (
I always thought the reason F1 cars never had “windows” was to make lousy ideas get ejected the easier..)
I think, looking back hazily.that by “eat the steer”, I meant this is kinda like a handbrake turn, you are putting the forces on a dime. If the suspension can take it, hurrah! If not, erm… but it would be like being a helicopter pilot… cool!
enough, joj, already!
Since the current system was put in place, I’ve wondered if Damon Hill’s son made it to F1 would he be allowed to choose the number ‘0’ despite it not being between 1-100?
Whether or not Hill was the only person to use the number, it is generally associated with Hill so allowing his son to use it would be a good thing.
Hi Joe,
I thought Maldanado used the number 13 as he did not believe the superstition..
He did
I can’t express how much i want to know if that decision was Pastor’s or some PR.
i wanted to wring his neck every weekend only to scream at him if he could only be a **** when not in a car, he’d maybe make friends. As it stands, his must have been the most epic fail at creating a misunderstood rogue character in F1 ever. But someone wanted to show a human… I thought he reminds me of a Columbian Merc i unfortunately shared my flat with once, Joe called PM a thug, condensing the complaint, and there PM was on a deck chair in the most extraordinary interview ever. I could write a book about just that interview.
But for all my interest good and bad, in PM, did i pay enough attention to know he drove under No.13? Hell no. What a PR back fire…
reflecting,
i think i rather liked the human, that was attempted to be shown.
maybe the only thing that interview did, was to belie how fragile the man was, to so grossly misapply bravado, even daring, and end up with inept offense.
Maybe I saw a young man, more acutely self conscious that he was a product that created two dimensionality by virtue of denuding development. A young man, whose national character, inclines to supplanting machismo, as a universal balm to bruised egos.
For all the reasons Pastor Maldonado failed, as a man about the paddock, I think he had potential.
But the cost to his racing, itself somewhat unfortunately a product of peculiar sponsorship, so a platform elevation one cannot readily compare, was terminal.
Especially when we had the real deal with almost the same initials, and much less pronounced, but equally tricky adjustment complications, in J-PM.
Whoever chooses 42 as his race number will instantly become my favourite driver…
Mine too!
OlPeculer
Ah – life, the universe and everything.
I think Fabio Leimer used 42 driving in FP1 for Manor at the Hungarian GP in 2015. But it might be one of those “temporary numbers” that the FIA dishes out for practice sessions.
The number rolled up in my seasonal tally, and fully lived up to all this once bewitched fan of H2G2 might desire. Vogon ships too, albeit metaphorical. And yeah, the plans to the destruction of my mother planet were indeed hidden away in a toilet, marked, in my case, beware of the shannon entropy horizon.
Just realised there’s gotta be a better place and time for my comments on how F1 data is collated and made available, but when I wa first exposed to the internet (not web, but gopher) it seemed so easy to get a roster of committed enthusiasm, also from credentialled folk, but that amateur spirit of collective creation is pretty much gone. No criticism of anyone here at all, it’s just a lost spirit to be expected in so commercial a world, reduced to valuing disappearing photo chat sites like this was real industry. Bottom line the economics matter too much, and are no longer clear. Another thing for that future day..
Yes, #42 (and #43) were Manor’s reserve numbers from the 2014 season till their recent demise; used by Rossi, Leimer, and King, though I couldn’t say who got a run in FP1 in it and who only used it in testing.
As for being “temporary”, somebody tell Red Bull (#15 & #16) that, as Rossi later said Red Bull denied him his first choice of #16 for his race number for 2015 as if it was theirs to keep (or maybe they paid him off on condition he’d make out they could and did deny him, to discourage the others from asking!? 😉 ) — ironically they don’t appear to have ever yet used it themselves at all.
I’ll be impressed, too,
I hadn’t gotten over my disappointment at discovering that Lewis Hamilton’s #44 -wasn’t- in homage to Bob Tullius…
To date no one has utilised their number for the purposes of marketing.
That, so far as I am aware, was the only logic ever given for the current system although it appears popular with those drivers who liked to pick and choose.
To my mind the previous hierarchical system was a fair reminder of where they had finished in the championship.
Yes they are.
How do you mean?
Every driver who ever brought attention to their running number, used it as marketing.
It’s practically the only part of the car a driver can claim to link to themselves.
So naturally drivers do lots to “own” a number, if they can.
But is what you mean, born out by what i just said?
Do you mean that sponsor money fails to claim the running number as marketing collateral too?
I think that is not ever on the cards. Because the running number reflects the driver ability more than the team can. If you start the season no. 1, and your team mate # 9, what does that say?
Joe’s article isn’t only a fun titbit but, as always, strikes at what’s fundamental in F1.
Not to say a clever tie in… Is that your thinking? Some number linking car to product? I mean off hand i don’t thinks it’s been tried. Because to make people think about something new,, is expensive, by the time you establish the link, probably your driver runs a new number or other priorities intervene (could restrict in a number of ways, team freedom in managing things) , would be picked to pieces by fans, drowning out passing curiosity in search results… Sound a headache in a already complicated world. But if it worked, sure, then cool. Everyone would respect that effort, as a unique home run. But just that.
It may be not so prominent however patience if a virtue here. Just look at how MotoGP riders have made certain numbers their own – Rossi (46), Crutchlow (35) and more recently Marquez (93).
Some race organisers assigned different numbers for practice and race days (allegedly) in order to boost sales of event programmes. One event that comes to mind is the Belgian GP at Spa. I suppose it makes it easier for historians to identify photographs taken on different days…
Re Red Bull’s allocated reserve #16 that they’ve never (?) used on track yet, but prevented / dissuaded Alex Rossi from choosing in 2015 despite there being nothing in the [published] rules about the teams retaining any rights to their 2014-allocated reserve numbers.
Just now looked it up on a hunch, and I suspect this was well publicized back whenever but I missed/forgot it; and/or it’s been mentioned in one of Joe’s FF1Fs that I’d read but somehow not quite absorbed… but Helmut Marko’s number at his F1 debut in the 1971 Austrian GP was: #16.
That was somewhat more than 2 complete seasons ago, Marko, let it go!
One could read a lot of things, into that observation of Marko and the number 16. But it could be total guff, just as equally. Nonetheless, that did make me go “Hmmm.”
Number 5 is an interesting number, second only to number 1 in terms of F1 race wins. A talismanic number for Nigel Mansell, scoring 27 of his 31 victories and the World Championship with this number, plus all of his Indycar wins (along with the title).
Between 1985 and 1997, there was only one winless season (1988) for number 5. Alberto Ascari and Stirling Moss used the number once each in the World Championship, and won with it. During the 1967 season, Jim Clark never lost a World Championship Grand Prix carrying this race number and never won without it. McLaren’s first race win (Belgium 1968) and their first drivers’ title (1974) came using number 5. Even the first proper racing event in Europe (Paris-Bordeaux-Paris in 1895) was won by number 5, with Émile Levassor at the tiller.
Sebastian Vettel has struggled of late…
Jacques Villeneuve has named his new race track in British Columbia, Canada as “Area 27” presumably in honour of his father. I would class that as marketing a drivers number.
Joe,
On the topic of numbers, am I right that the rules governing the minimum size of the displayed digits reduced them dramatically a while back, to increase side for sponsorship logos?
If that’s the reason, nite that so many cats have so few decals, think there’s any chance of going back to big numbers?
I went to a live race last year, and it was so hard to tell who was who. I really like the way it was in the late 60s, with the big white meatball with a big black number, and the white rectangle with the driver’s name in it as well.
Mike
It is sensible to do that
Hell, I prefer the old number scheme. Anyway, they should be make it required for the defending WC race with number 1#.
I’m impressed to read an article which mentions Divina and Lella, without the feature being about women drivers.
At some stage in 1985, Williams decided that it would make recognition much easier if they painted the number 5 on Mansell’s car red while leaving Rosberg’s number 6 in white (previously both had been white). When Nelson Piquet replaced Rosberg for the 1986 season, he inherited the white number 6.
Late in 1985, Mansell blossomed into a winner, taking victory at Brands Hatch and Kyalami. The editors of several British tabloids astutely assessed Mansell as a potential People’s Champion, which meant that the Media Centre suddenly gained half a dozen new denizens, brazenly swapping scoops, hangover cures and faked-up restaurant bills among themselves.
Simultaneously, good ol’ Murray Walker dubbed Mansell’s car ‘Red Five,’ a handle which resonated with the British media and with Mansell himself. The tabloid hacks, who hunted in a pack and assiduously never allowed their moustachioed meal ticket out of sight, generated a whiff of disgust with the lady PR officer at Team Willy. She dubbed them, ‘Brown Five.’
I wonder if someone at Williams got inspiration from the character Luke Skywalker in the first “Star Wars” epic movie (1977) , who pilots a spaceship fighter nicknamed ‘ Red Five ‘ .
Adding to curiosity , the Brunswick film production about the ’79 F1 season is entitled “Car Wars” , replicating the logo of the film series.