Top 10 Italian F1 drivers

Kimi Antonelli’s brilliant start to 2026 has raised the prospect of an Italian driver becoming world champion for the first time since 1953.

Given Italy’s rich history in the sport and Ferrari’s status as Formula 1’s biggest team, it seems incredible that only two Italians have been world champion.

Sixteen have won a world championship grand prix, seven of them more than once, and we’ve decided to select the best 10 Italian F1 drivers.

For this list, we have considered each driver’s level of success, their performance given the machinery at their disposal, longevity and how highly they were rated.

It should be noted that Italy had more than its fair share of top drivers prior to the start of the world championship in 1950. Pre-Second World War ace Tazio Nuvolari was the 1933 European champion (roughly equivalent to today’s world championship) and is still regarded as one of the greatest of all time, while Achile Varzi, Luigi Fagioli and Luigi Villoresi were multiple winners.

And finally, this list doesn’t include Mario Andretti. Yes, he was born in Italy, but it seemed much more appropriate to include him here.

10. Alessandro Nannini

Nannini's only F1 win was overshadowed by that clash between Senna and Prost

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Starts: 76
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Best championship: 6th (1989)

As usual, 10th place is one of the trickiest spots to select. Vittorio Brambilla, another one-time winner, was a strong contender, while there were some impressive non-victors, including Bruno Giacomelli, Ivan Capelli, Stefano Modena and Pierluigi Martini. But Nannini edges it, boosted by his performances alongside Nelson Piquet at Benetton in 1990.

Despite appalling reliability from his Minardi machinery across his first two F1 seasons, Nannini showed enough promise to get a foothold in F1 and earn a chance with better equipment. That came in 1988, when he joined Benetton.

He immediately looked at home racing further forward. There was the odd mistake and reliability was still a problem, but Nannini took a fine first podium in the wet at Silverstone despite a spin. He also put in charges after early problems at Hockenheim and Monza, for no reward, and added another podium at Jerez.

Nannini and highly rated team-mate Thierry Boutsen were evenly matched on raw pace in 1988 and, with the Belgian heading to Williams and then Emanuele Pirro replacing Johnny Herbert during 1989, Alessandro effectively became team leader.

His application was perhaps not as high as the benchmark drivers of the era and his performances were mixed, but there were still impressive moments. He was again third at the British GP and then came the infamous Japanese GP.

Nannini started sixth and gained two places at the start. When the gearbox on Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari failed, Nannini moved into third, meaning he was well-placed when McLaren duo Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost clashed at the chicane. While Senna later caught and passed the Benetton, Nannini inherited victory when the Brazilian was controversially disqualified.

Second place in the appallingly wet Australian GP secured Nannini a career-best sixth in the championship before Piquet arrived. The move revitalised the Brazilian’s career and Piquet usually led the way but Nannini wasn’t far behind.

Going through non-stop, Nannini put up a fine defence against Senna at the front of the 1990 German GP before finishing second, while he might have won the Hungarian GP had he not been unceremoniously removed in the closing stages by Senna.

Nannini was third in Spain – his ninth podium in F1 – but it would be his last GP. A helicopter crash severed his right forearm and, while he would make a successful comeback in touring cars, his promising single-seater career had come to an end.

“A talent which had at last blossomed forth to great, if tragically brief, effect,” concluded Autocourse when rating Nannini fifth at the end of 1990. 

9. Lorenzo Bandini

A star in sportscars, Bandini's efforts in F1 were undone by bad fortune before his tragic death

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Starts: 42
Wins: 1
Poles: 1
Best championship: 4th (1964)

Bandini was becoming a stronger contender for victories when he was killed in a horrific accident while running second at the 1967 Monaco GP. Bandini had made his first world championship starts in a Scuderia Centro Sud Cooper and drove a BRM for the team in three races, but most of his F1 career was spent at Ferrari.

He scored his first podium at the 1962 Monaco GP but didn’t get a full season until 1964, driving alongside John Surtees. Bandini assisted the Briton’s successful title challenge, most notably moving aside at the Mexican GP finale, and won a race of attrition in Austria.

A sportscar star – Bandini had won Le Mans in 1963 and the Targa Florio in 1965 – he became Ferrari’s F1 team leader when Surtees walked out following a rift with team manager Eugenio Dragoni after two 1966 GPs.

At that point Bandini had scored a second at Monaco (his third podium there) and a third at Spa and led the championship. He should have been a rival to Jack Brabham and Surtees (now at Cooper) but didn’t have the luck.

Bandini was comfortably ahead in the French GP when his throttle cable snapped. He grabbed an early lead in Italy, only to have fuel feed trouble, leaving the race to be won by team-mate Ludovico Scarfiotti (another candidate for this list), and was battling Brabham at the front of the US GP before his engine failed. All that, combined with Ferrari missing the British and Mexican GPs, left Bandini ninth in the standings.

Bandini won the Daytona 24 Hours at the start of 1967 and then finished second in the non-championship Brands Hatch Race of Champions in March before making his first points-paying start of the F1 season at Monaco in May. He qualified second and was chasing leader Denny Hulme when he crashed at the chicane, Bandini later succumbing to his injuries from the ensuing fire.

8. Elio de Angelis

Like Bandini, de Angelis had his F1 career cut short by a horrific accident

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Starts: 108
Wins: 2
Poles: 3
Best championship: 3rd (1984)

De Angelis showed his potential during his rookie campaign with Shadow in 1979, culminating in a fine fourth at a wet United States GP.

It’s his time at Lotus for which de Angelis is best remembered. He took his first podium at the 1980 Brazilian GP and generally had the better of team-mate Nigel Mansell, outscoring the future world champion in all but one of their four seasons together.

De Angelis took his first win in dramatic style, holding of the charging Williams of Keke Rosberg by 0.05s in the 1982 Austrian GP after the faster turbocars had hit trouble.

Lotus got Renault turbo power for 1983 and de Angelis took his first F1 pole at Brands Hatch. An appalling finishing record limited him to only one points finish, not representative of his performances, though Autocourse questioned his motivation.

A consistent 1984 season amid unreliability for rivals helped de Angelis to third in the championship, four podiums and a pole in Brazil among the highlights.

When Senna replaced Mansell at Lotus the atmosphere changed. De Angelis led the championship after four races in 1985, having inherited a fortunate second victory at Imola, but the young and intense Brazilian was already wresting control of the team.

After 90 races with Lotus, de Angelis joined Brabham for 1986. He soon became a popular figure in the team but had yet to score a point in the difficult BT55 when he lost his life in a testing accident at Paul Ricard. He was 28.

7. Kimi Antonelli

Antonelli sits seventh on this list, but how high can he climb?

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

Starts: 29
Wins: 4
Poles: 3
Best championship: 7th (2025), currently 1st in 2026

It’s not too bold a prediction to suggest that it won’t be long before Antonelli is higher up this list. If he keeps up his early 2026 form, he’ll soon be second, with only the great Ascari ahead.

A stellar junior single-seater career and Lewis Hamilton’s decision to head to Ferrari launched Antonelli into F1 with Mercedes at the age of 18. A combative rise from 16th to fourth in Australia was an impressive debut and pole for the sprint race in Miami also showed the raw material was there.

The pressures of F1 and a mid-season Mercedes upgrade contributed to a dip, but Antonelli recovered and finished the campaign with podiums in Brazil and Las Vegas. He was seventh in the final standings, three spots behind established star team-mate George Russell.

Unsurprisingly, Mercedes has started the new rules era on top. What has been more unexpected is Antonelli’s consistently strong challenge to usurp Russell, one of the outstanding performers of 2025. If Antonelli can maintain his current level, F1 could be in for one of its best intra-team championship contests.

Given his relatively short time in F1 so far, it’s hard to justify pushing the popular Antonelli further up our ranking. But he has the potential to be one of the sport’s greats.

6. Jarno Trulli

Trulli's talent deserved more success than his record reads

Starts: 252
Wins: 1
Poles: 4
Best championship: 6th (2004)

Forget the ‘Trulli Train’ nonsense that sometimes tarnished his career. That was usually because Trulli, one of the best qualifiers of his era, had cars higher up the field than they deserved to be and he ended up defending from drivers who should have been ahead of him anyway. A more genuine weakness was a lack of improvisation, Trulli often looking for a perfect set-up that was difficult to achieve.

After six races with Minardi in 1997, Trulli was called up to drive for Prost following Olivier Panis’s Canadian GP accident. He sensationally led in Austria, but it would be a while before Trulli got his hands on consistent frontrunning machinery.

The 1998 and 1999 Prosts were not competitive, though Trulli managed a fine second in the rain-hit European GP on a day many experienced drivers made errors. The Jordans of 2000-01 were at least points contenders and Trulli again showed flashes of class, including a brilliant second on the grid at the 2000 Monaco GP.

His best chance came when he joined Renault for 2003, alongside rising star Fernando Alonso. There were days when Alonso simply couldn’t live with Trulli’s qualifying pace but the Spaniard was usually better in the races, finishing ahead in the points and scooping the team’s only win.

Trulli started 2004 strongly and finally got his well-deserved first victory at the Monaco GP, taking pole and running ahead of Alonso before holding off Jenson Button’s late charge. But the relationship with team boss Flavio Briatore deteriorated and Trulli lost his drive before the end of the season, landing at Toyota.

The Japanese giant never quite delivered on its potential. Sometimes qualifying on lighter fuel loads (at a time cars had to start with fuel loads from qualifying) put them higher on the grid than they deserved, bolstering Trulli’s reputation as a driver better on Saturdays than Sundays.

Trulli scored his 11th and final F1 podium in the 2009 Japanese GP before joining the minnow Lotus squad for two last, uncompetitive years of F1 racing. His talents deserved more.

5. Giancarlo Fisichella

Good in bad cars but bad in good cars, Fisichella's time in F1 was a mixed bag

Photo by: Lorenzo Bellanca / Motorsport Images

Starts: 229
Wins: 3
Poles: 4
Best championship: 4th (2006)

Famously good at driving bad cars, Fisichella wasn’t quite as impressive when he got into frontrunning machinery. But he was still an F1 stalwart for over a decade and picked up 19 podiums.

After making eight starts for Minardi in 1996, Fisichella got a proper rookie campaign with Jordan the following year, alongside fellow newbie Ralf Schumacher. The 197 was a good car and both made an impact, Fisichella finishing ahead in the standings after scoring two podiums.

He joined Benetton for 1998, just as the team was on a downward slide. The next four seasons were largely spent with mediocre equipment, but Fisichella’s reputation remained intact. He took a first pole in Austria in 1998 and then outperformed highly rated team-mate Button in 2001, putting in one of the drives of the season to finish third in the Belgian GP.

Fisichella continued his fine record against team-mates at Jordan in 2002-03. He finally got his first F1 win in bizarre circumstances in the 2003 Brazilian GP, a clever strategy getting his awful EJ13 ahead just before a red flag – even though he didn’t get the winner’s trophy until two weeks later!

After a year at Sauber, Fisichella got his big chance at Renault for 2005. Things began well with victory in the Australian GP opener but thereafter the relentlessness of team-mate Alonso showed weaknesses in Fisichella’s race pace and racecraft.

He contributed to two constructors’ crowns but there was only one more victory – at the 2006 Malaysian GP – and finishes of fifth and fourth in the drivers’ championship were unimpressive when compared to Alonso’s title double.

Renault slipped back in 2007, Fisichella being outscored by new team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, and the 2008 Force India was uncompetitive. Things weren’t much better in 2009, one of the closest F1 seasons in terms of pace spread across the teams, but there was time for one more great day.

Fisichella took a surprise pole – his fourth – at Spa and led early on. He was unfortunate to be jumped at a restart by Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari, which featured a KERS system for extra power his Force India lacked. Fisichella still finished second and was called up by Ferrari but there were no more points finishes in his last F1 season before embarking on a successful career in GT racing.

4. Michele Alboreto

1985 was Alboreto's closest chance at F1 immortality as he narrowly missed out on the title for Ferrari

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Starts: 194
Wins: 5
Poles: 2
Best championship: 2nd (1985)

Alboreto burst onto the F1 scene with Tyrrell in the early 1980s, scoring his first win at the 1982 finale and marking himself out as one to watch. His following campaign was less impressive, but he still took victory in Detroit and signed for Ferrari.

Lining up against the mercurial Rene Arnoux, Alboreto won in Belgium and finished fourth, ahead of the Frenchman, in the final standings. Arnoux left after just one race of 1985 and the smooth Alboreto became Alain Prost’s closest challenger for the title.

He was brilliant in Monaco, where he should have won, and took two victories, including his personal favourite at the Nurburgring. After 10 rounds he had scored eight podiums and was tied with Prost at the top of the table. But Ferrari struggled to keep up with development and unreliability crept in, though Alboreto still finished as runner-up.

He would never reach such peaks again. The 1986 Ferrari was poor and, by the time team managed a mini-revival in the second half of 1987, it was new team-mate Berger who grabbed the headline results.

After finishing a distant fifth in the 1988 standings, Alboreto was replaced by Mansell and returned to Tyrrell. Things started well and he took a podium – his 23rd and last – in Mexico before a sponsorship disagreement forced a mid-season switch to the uncompetitive Larrousse Lola.

Thereafter, Alboreto saw out his F1 years largely in poor machinery, aside from being a consistent points threat in the 1992 Footwork FA13. His final F1 season came with Minardi in 1994 but he then began a successful sportscar career that was cut short when he was killed testing for Audi in 2001, aged 44.

3. Riccardo Patrese

Patrese's longevity in F1 puts him high up on this list

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Starts: 256
Wins: 6
Poles: 8
Best championship: 2nd (1992)

For a time, Patrese was the most experienced F1 driver in world championship history. Before him Jacques Laffite and Graham Hill shared the record on 176 starts but Patrese took that up to 256 in 1993.

But Patrese was more than just a mileage merchant, scoring 37 podiums, shared across four different teams. His first came after pipping Ronnie Peterson by less than a tenth of a second at the 1978 Swedish GP, while his last came 15 years late in Hungary at the wheel of a Benetton.

Regarded as something of a wildman in his early days, Patrese was unfairly maligned by some for his part in the multi-car Monza 1978 crash that ultimately claimed Peterson’s life. He’d already shown flashes of potential, leading the 1978 South African GP in his first full season, and matured into one of the most-respected drivers on the grid.

Rarely a match for Brabham team-mate Piquet across 1982-83, Patrese nevertheless picked up his first two wins, including after spinning during the chaotic final stages of the 1982 Monaco GP.

Finishes were scarce in the uncompetitive Alfa Romeos of 1984-85, though he scored a third place in a race of attrition in Italy in the former year, and things were little better when he rejoined Brabham for 1986.

He had to deal with the death of team-mate de Angelis and the team’s declining fortunes but found a home at Williams for 1988. Having got through the difficult Judd-engined season, Patrese was part of the growing challenge of the Williams-Renault combination.

Although it was team-mate Boutsen who scored two fine wins in 1989, Patrese was the more consistently impressive performer. He was third in the final table and Autocourse ranked him fourth at season’s end.

The following campaign was perhaps less stellar but did include victory in the San Marino GP, going some way to making up for Patrese throwing away the lead while almost half a minute ahead at Imola seven years before.

Patrese’s 1991 season was probably his best. He outqualified team leader Mansell in the first seven races and took wins in Mexico and Portugal as Williams really started to challenge McLaren. Though it was Mansell that led the charge in the second half of the season, Patrese still finished third in the table and took a career-high third in Autocourse’s analysis.

The gizmo-laden FW14B was not to Patrese’s liking in 1992. Although he finished second in the championship, he was blown away by a dominant Mansell and scored a single victory to his team-mate’s nine.

Benetton snapped up Patrese for 1993 but it became increasingly clear he was a spent force in the face of rising star team-mate Michael Schumacher. He scored fewer than half the points of the German and bowed out of F1 at the end of the season.

2. Giuseppe Farina

F1's first world champion, Farina's best years were perhaps pre-1950

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Starts: 33
Wins: 5
Poles: 5
Best championship: 1st (1950)

Farina was an established grand prix driver before the world championship began and his best years were behind him when he became F1’s first title winner, so he is hard to place here.

Farina had been a rising star in the 1930s and won GPs, some for ‘secondary’ voiturette cars, before the Second World War broke out. He was one of the top-liners when racing resumed after hostilities ended and was one of the drivers Alfa Romeo called upon to drive its dominant 158, which had become eligible for the newly formed F1.

Though team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio had the better results across the 1950 season, in the six points-paying GPs Farina’s better reliability gave him the crown.

He slipped back in 1951 as Fangio led the rearguard action against the Ferrari threat, and Farina was restricted to a win in the Belgian GP and fourth in the standings.

With Alfa Romeo withdrawing and the world championship being run for F2 machinery, Farina joined Ferrari for 1952. Utterly outclassed by team-mate Alberto Ascari, Farina took four second places on his way to runner-up spot in the standings.

It was a similar story in 1953, only now Fangio was back from injury to lead Maserati’s attack and he duly slotted in between Ascari and Farina in the championship. Farina did win the German GP on the fearsome Nurburgring – only after poleman Ascari lost a wheel, though Farina still had to beat team-mate Mike Hawthorn and Fangio.

Farina, whose career fizzled out over the next two seasons, could be a difficult character and had a dubious reputation in wheel-to-wheel combat in an era when clashes could be fatal. But he earns his place as one of the top drivers of the early days of F1.

1. Alberto Ascari

Ascari was the one driver to truly challenge Fangio in the 1950s but he was another to see his career cut short in a fatal crash

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Starts: 32
Wins: 13
Poles: 14
Best championship: 1st (1952-53)

There was only ever going to be one person topping this list. Ascari is not only Italy’s only multiple world champion, he was the one driver who could truly challenge Fangio for the status of greatest driver in the world in the first half of the 1950s.

Son of pre-Second World War racer Antonio Ascari, Alberto was a rising star in the second half of the 1940s and marked himself out as one of the best with multiple F1 victories in 1949 for Ferrari. The return of Alfa Romeo meant Ascari had to play second fiddle in the first year of the world championship, but Ferrari was a rising force.

After winning the 1951 German and Italian GPs, then taking a dominant pole in the Spanish finale, Ascari was favourite for the title. But Ferrari’s catastrophic switch to smaller wheels handed the crown to Alfa driver Fangio.

Ascari and the Ferrari 500 were almost unbeatable during the championship’s F2 era, the Milanese winning 11 of the 15 points-paying GPs and storming to two titles. Duels with Fangio were rare as the Argentinian missed most of 1952 due to an accident and then had inferior Maserati equipment.

Ascari then switched to Lancia but delays with the D50 meant he only made sporadic outings during 1954. Pole and an early lead in the final round in Spain suggested that Ascari and Lancia could take the challenge to benchmark Fangio’s Mercedes W196.

A potentially great contest between the era’s two finest drivers was prevented by Ascari’s death in a sportscar testing accident in May 1955.

Our series on the top 10 F1 drivers of each decade will continue next week with the 1980s.

Will Antonelli dethrone Ascari as Italy's greatest ever F1 driver in the years to come?

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