Which country has produced the most F1 world champions?

This was the second time the Lotus 72 had won the championship, after Jochen Rindt in ’70, with Fittipaldi winning with two rounds to spare, proving to be a cut above the rest that year.

He then followed that up with a second title two years later, before Nelson Piquet won his first of three championships in the final race of 1981.

The fight that year was incredibly tight and the top five drivers were all within one race win of each other, with Piquet winning the championship by one point ahead of Carlos Reutemann, Alan Jones, Jacques Laffite and Prost.

Piquet won his second championship two years later, again in the final round, before claiming his last title win in ’87.

Piquet’s final championship was immediately followed up by the first title of fellow Brazilian Ayrton Senna, who managed to just beat McLaren team-mate Prost by three points that year in the celebrated MP4/4.

His second championship then came very controversially in 1990 at Suzuka in the penultimate round.

After claiming pole, Senna was upset that he still had to start the race on the dirty side of the track. The Brazilian persuaded authorities to switch to cleaner side, but FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre overruled them and had it changed back. Being on the racing line, Prost, now at Ferrari, managed to get off the line quicker.

However, neither driver saw the end of Turn 1 after Senna drove straight into the side of Prost which caused both to crash out, thus giving the Brazilian the title.

Senna was then crowned again the following year, winning his third and final championship once more at Suzuka in the penultimate round.

Since then, Brazil came close to a fourth champion with Felipe Massa in 2008, but while in front of his home crowd, he lost out by one point after Lewis Hamilton made a title-deciding overtake on Timo Glock for P5 in the final corner of the final lap.

Currently, Brazil’s biggest hope of its next champion is Felipe Drugovich who, at the time of writing, leads the Formula 2 championship but with many other drivers waiting for a shot at F1, his chances of breaking through into racing’s top tier are looking slim.

Fourth – Argentina (5 world championships)

There are a lot of world championships next to Argentina’s name, yet they all came through one driver – Juan Manuel Fangio.

Dubbed the ‘El Maestro’, Fangio became the second driver to win the world championship clinching the title at the final round of the 1951 season.

After a couple of years missing out, he then gave F1 its first era of true dominance by winning four straight titles between 1954 and 1957.

The first of that run has to be his most impressive after Fangio won six of the nine rounds that season, standing on the podium seven times in total, despite skipping the second ’round; of the season at the Indianapolis 500, which was then included on the F1 calendar but entered by few F1 drivers.

The closest Argentina has come to a champion since then is Reutemann, who was runner-up to Piquet in 1981.

Currently, however, the only Argentinian in the top categories of single seater racing is 19-year-old Franco Colapinto, who is ninth in the Formula 3 championship at the time of writing.

Joint-fifth – Finland, Australia, Austria and France (4 world championships each)

Australia was first of the four to produce a world champion with Jack Brabham claiming back-to-back titles in 1959 and ’60.

He then won a third in 1966 where four consecutive race wins in the core of the season, helping him to have it wrapped up with two rounds to spare.

14 years later, Alan Jones became the next Aussie to win the championship who in 1980, also becoming the first Williams driver to clinch the F1 title.

Jones is also the last Australian to become world champion but the country has still had great drivers since then with Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo both becoming race winners.

However, Australia also has hot prodigy Oscar Piastri who is touted, by many, as a future F1 champion after he won Formula Renault, F3 and F2 all in consecutive years.

After Australia, Austria then became the next country here to produce a world champion with Jochen Rindt winning in 1970.

However, that title win is also famous for the fact Rindt is the first and only driver to clinch the championship posthumously, after he died in a crash at Monza with three rounds to spare.

The ‘70s was a successful decade for Austria in F1 though, with Niki Lauda making his debut in the sport in ’71, before winning his first championship four years later.

The Austrian could have made it back-to-back titles had it not been for his infamous crash at the Nurburgring in ’76 – him leading the standings at that point – which caused him to miss the next two rounds, but he followed that up with a second championship in 1977.

After deciding to retire at the end of the 1979 season, Lauda came back in 1982, winning a third and final championship in ’84, which was his penultimate year in F1.

The year Lauda returned, though, was the season Finland had its first champion with Keke Rosberg clinching the title at the final round, despite only winning one race all season.

The Scandinavian country has since had two more world champions with Mika Häkkinen winning back-to-back for McLaren in 1998 and ’99, while still to this day, Kimi Räikkönen is the last driver to have won a championship for Ferrari in 2007.

The final country to produce world championships is France which, like Argentina, has a lot of titles but it’s all come via one driver.

Prost dominated the 1985 season to clinch his first title with two rounds to spare, while he then made it back-to-back championships after Mansell had a tyre blowout at Adelaide the following year.

He was caught up in the intense rivalry with new McLaren team-mate Senna, managing to pip the Brazilian to the championship in ’89 at the penultimate round in Japan.

It was decided in controversial circumstances at the final chicane in Suzuka, as Senna made a dive-bomb down the inside but with Prost still turning into him, causing them both to halt at the escape road.

Prost retired from the race while Senna continued with damage knowing if he stopped, Prost would have become champion.

After rejoining via the escape road and then pitting, Senna worked his way back up to win the race but immediately afterwards he was disqualified for allegedly missing the chicane.

McLaren and Senna furiously appealed the decision, but the FIA did not change its stance and Prost became world champion.

Prost then won his fourth and final championship in 1993, but became the sixth driver in F1 to not defend their crown as he retired immediately afterwards.

Despite not winning a title since, France still have race-winners on the current grid with Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, while Frenchman Theo Pourchaire, 18, is second in F2 and is tipped as a future F1 driver.

Ninth – Italy (3 world championships)

Despite its rich history in motorsport through Ferrari, Italy has been starved of recent success via a driver.

In the 21st century, only two Italians, Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli, have won a F1 race while one has to date all the way back to the ‘50s for the nation’s last champion.

In fact, three of the opening four F1 seasons were won by an Italian driver with Giuseppe Farina becoming the first-ever world champion in 1950.

He pipped Fangio to the title by three points, clinching the championship at the final round by winning in front of his home crowd at Monza

After Fangio managed to get his first the following year, Italian Alberto Ascari then won back-to-back championships in ’52 and ’53.

Both were done in a dominant fashion with the first being clinched with two rounds to spare, winning five of the eight races that year.

Ascari then sealed his second championship in ’53 by winning the Swiss Grand Prix in the penultimate round of the season.

With no Italian driver in F1 or F2, and none below that showing signs of getting to the top category, will there ever be another world champion from a country whose history is no entwined with motor sport?

Joint-tenth – United States and Spain (2 world championships each)

America has had a very inconsistent relationship with F1 through the years.

It produced a world champion early on, then went through various long stints without hosting a race, but from 2023 the country will have three Grands Prix on the calendar.

The first American to win the championship was Phil Hill in 1961, who won for Ferrari by just one point.

Mario Andretti was the next American win the title in 1978 who, at the time of writing, is its last to become world champion.

He did it driving for Lotus, where six wins in the first 14 races helped him clinch the title with two rounds to spare.

Currently, America has Logan Sargeant, 21, who is third in F2, while highly rated IndyCar star Colton Herta is looking for a way into F1.

With that in mind, will America end its 44-year stint without a F1 world championship anytime soon?

Alongside USA on this list is Spain, who has won two world titles thanks to Fernando Alonso.

He won his titles back-to-back for Renault in 2005 and ’06, which brought an end to the dominance of Schumacher and Ferrari.

Despite his immense talent, a series of bad luck and poor career choices means Alonso is yet to win a third world title.

He lost out by one point in 2007, while taking Vettel to the final race in 2010 and ’12 to eventually lose out both times.

A move to McLaren during the hybrid era brought great hope but that reunion was ultimately a disaster with the British outfit failing to produce a car nor Honda an engine capable of matching Alonso’s talent.

Now at the age of 41 and stuck fighting in the midfield, Spain’s biggest hope of another world championship is through Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who this year won his first race in F1.

Joint-twelfth – New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Netherlands (1 world championship each) 

Finally to the bottom of this list where four nations have all collected one world championship each.

New Zealand were the first here to do so with Denny Hulme winning the 1967 championship for Brabham.

Next was South Africa, who had Jody Scheckter winning the 1979 title for Ferrari, while Canada then finally had a world champion in 1997.

After a successful career in American open wheel racing, winning a title in 1995, Jacques Villeneuve then came to F1 for the 1996 season.

He finished runner up in his rookie season before going one better the following year, clinching the title at the final round after a long, intense battle against Schumacher.

But still to this day, Villeneuve is the last non-European driver to have won the F1 world championship.

In 2021, the Netherlands became the latest country to produce a world champion with Verstappen beating Hamilton in that remarkable championship fight.

After a long, hard battle, the two then entered the 22nd and final round level on points in a winner takes all matchup in Abu Dhabi.

It looked like Hamilton was cruising to a record-breaking eighth world title, as he had built up a 12-second advantage with five laps to go.

But then Nicholas Latifi crashed in the final sector, causing a safety car and Mercedes failed to pit Hamilton, while Red Bull brought Verstappen in for fresh tyres.

While the damage was being cleared, there were five lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen who initially got told that they weren’t allowed to unlap themselves under the safety car.

On the penultimate lap, the decision was reversed and those five were told that they could unlap themselves, but the lapped cars behind Verstappen could not do so – despite the rules stipulating if one does it, all have do it.

The race then restarted the next lap and, on fresher tyres, Verstappen was able to take advantage of the vulnerable Hamilton to win the championship on the final lap.

Now 13 rounds into the following season, Verstappen currently leads the championship by 82 points, so it is very likely the Netherlands will have its total added to very soon.