The Drivers with the Most F1 Wins, and What the List Omits

In this sport a list of career wins is the statistic most easily read and the most difficult to put in perspective. Lewis Hamilton has 106, which is more than any driver in history. The figure is verifiable and correct, yet also a little misleading.

That is a matter of arithmetic rather than opinion. Juan Manuel Fangio’s 24 victories from 52 starts gave him a forty-six percent strike rate that has not been come close to since. He was racing in seasons of seven or eight events. Hamilton has raced in seasons of twenty-four. Put them side by side on total wins and you get a true picture of both, but you are also told as much about the size of the calendar in their respective working lives.

The all-time list and what it conceals

The table above puts the top names in order of total victories as they stand after the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. There are three items of note.

Hamilton overtook Michael Schumacher in 2020 and has put fifteen between them since his latest win at Ferrari in Barcelona this June. Schumacher finished with 91 in a career spanning 1991 to 2012. Then there is Max Verstappen who made it 73 in Singapore this season. At twenty-nine he is third on the list and has a decade of driving left in him.

A word of caution on published lists. One site will have Schumacher down at 92, which is wrong. Reference pages can vary by thirty points when it comes to Hamilton’s tally. The statistics in F1 are kept by people and they do not always see eye to eye on whether to include a shared fastest lap or a half-point race from 1984.

Poles, podiums and points

Poles, podiums and career points are all in the table above, and Hamilton leads each of them. It is the part of his record that will be most stubborn to move.

It takes one perfect lap for a pole, an afternoon for a podium and a career of attendance for points. Hamilton has 104, 208 and over five thousand in those categories. The 208 podiums is the number that really defines him; in nineteen years he has been in the top three once every two races on average.

Schumacher has 68 poles and 155 podiums. Ayrton Senna put up 65 poles in 161 starts, the best rate anyone has put together in a full career. Verstappen got 50 at Singapore. In relation to his 73 wins it is a low figure and suggests a driver who gets more out of a race than a single lap.

What a season can yield

Single-season records are the purest form of comparison as everyone in a given year is on the same calendar.

Verstappen has the modern ones. In 2023 he put up 19 wins from 22 races and 21 podiums, along with ten straight victories and eight consecutive poles, the latter a mark he has in common with Senna. You will find those and the old ones in the table above.

For nineteen years the standard was set by Schumacher’s 13 wins from 18 in 2004. As a percentage Schumacher took 72 percent of that season to Verstappen’s 86 percent, so the new record is not just longer, it is bigger.

Which of these is next to go

Verstappen is the only one with a chance of altering the career totals, though the numbers are not as kind as they seem.

To get past Hamilton he requires 34 more wins. At his 2023 pace it would take two seasons. A typical dominant year makes it four or five. With a car that is only good it is not happening, and Red Bull have not been reliably supplied with the quickest in recent times.

The pole record is even further off. He is 54 short of Hamilton and qualifying is not where he extracts the most from a car. The single-season marks he has are the ones that will probably stand, as they need a car advantage the present regulations were designed to stymie.

Then there is the one at the head of this piece. No one is going to claim 46 percent of the races they enter over a career again because no one will do 52 Grands Prix and consider that done. Fangio’s is secure for the very reason it is hard to make a comparison: the sport that made it is gone.

Questions about F1 records

01

Who has the most wins in Formula 1?

Lewis Hamilton, with 106 as of the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. He passed Michael Schumacher, who stopped at 91, during the 2020 season.

02

Who holds the pole position record?

Hamilton again, with 104. Schumacher is second on 68 and Ayrton Senna third on 65, which Senna took from only 161 starts.

03

Who has the most wins in a single season?

Max Verstappen, with 19 from 22 races in 2023. The previous record was Schumacher’s 13 from 18 races in 2004.

04

Does Fangio still hold a win record?

Yes, the most important one by rate. He won 24 of his 52 starts, a strike rate of 46 percent that nobody has come close to since.

05

Can Verstappen pass Hamilton?

He needs 34 more wins. At his 2023 rate that is two seasons, but a season in a merely competitive car produces nothing toward it, and the car advantage that produced 2023 is what the current rules were written to prevent.

Jake Holloway is a club racer, track-day instructor, and motorsports editor based near Charlotte, North Carolina. He has raced karts, Legends cars, Spec Miatas, and amateur endurance cars, and he writes for GreenyCars about how racing actually works, from the rule book to the pit lane.