(Motorsport-Total.com) – In modern Formula 1, continuity is considered the highest good. Drivers like Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen shape an era over years, sometimes over a decade, with only a single team. But behind the glamour of long-term marriages lies a completely different species of racing driver: the nomads.
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Drivers whose careers read like an endless journey through the paddock and whose postal address changed almost as quickly as their tire sets.
But who stayed in one place for the shortest time? We ventured a statistical analysis and identified the drivers who changed teams most frequently in relation to their completed Grand Prix starts.
The result is a list of “efficiency hoppers” where one involuntarily wonders: Did these professionals ever even unpack their suitcases?
Of course, you have to draw a line somewhere, otherwise Jack Aitken would win in the end, who on average only drove one race per team – he only drove a single race in his career in Sakhir 2020.
For our photo gallery, we therefore stipulated that a driver must have changed teams at least three times to truly count as a wanderer. Furthermore, the requirement was that he must have made at least one start in this millennium – because, as is well known, Formula 1 statistics become diluted the further back you go.
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This also brought our number 1 onto this list, because the driver only competed in two Grands Prix in the 2000s – all others before that.
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If we had set the limit a bit lower, namely at two changes, Sakon Yamamoto would have won, who drove for three teams in 21 starts: Super Aguri, Spyker and HRT. This means the Japanese driver averaged only seven races per team – and he drove exactly that many as a substitute for each of the three racing stables.
But: For us, a wanderer needs more than just three teams.
The number of teams, by the way, was not decisive at all and would only have led to confusion, as shown by the example of tenth-placed Heikki Kovalainen: Renault, McLaren and Lotus are clear. And then?
Caterham was officially a different team from Lotus, but the Finn didn’t have to look for a new home. And does his stint for Lotus – i.e., the other Lotus, namely Lotus Renault – in 2013 count as a new team or still as Renault?
That’s why we made it simple: If a driver changed address, it counts as a new team, even if he had been there before.
You can find out who changed teams even more often than Kovalainen in the photo gallery.
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