The 16 Best Qualifiers in Formula 1 History

Saturday is its own sport, and the drivers who owned it are not always the ones with the trophies. Pole-position machines, one-lap specialists, and a couple of champions who were quietly ordinary over a single flying lap.

1

Lewis Hamilton

Holds the all-time record with 104 pole positions, more than any driver in the sport's history.

2

Michael Schumacher

Took 68 poles, ten with Benetton and fifty-eight with Ferrari, and held the record before Hamilton.

3

Ayrton Senna

Took 65 poles and produced the most quoted single lap in the sport at Monaco in 1988.

4

Sebastian Vettel

Set 57 poles, including fifteen in the 2011 season alone with Red Bull.

5

Jim Clark

Took 33 poles from only 72 starts, the highest pole rate of any driver with a full career.

6

Juan Manuel Fangio

Started from pole 29 times in 51 races across the 1950s, driving for four different manufacturers.

7

Max Verstappen

Dutch four-time champion whose qualifying record improved sharply once Red Bull gave him a front-running car.

8

Nigel Mansell

Took 32 poles, fourteen of them in the dominant 1992 Williams season.

9

Alain Prost

Won four titles with 33 poles, a low count for his win total because he built races rather than laps.

10

Mika Hakkinen

Took 26 poles and was the only driver to consistently out-qualify Schumacher in his prime.

11

Charles Leclerc

Monegasque driver whose pole tally has repeatedly outrun what his Ferrari could do on Sunday.

12

Nico Rosberg

Took 30 poles, most of them against Hamilton in identical Mercedes machinery.

13

Ronnie Peterson

Swedish Lotus driver of the 1970s whose raw one-lap speed was rated above his race results.

14

Damon Hill

Took 20 poles in a short career, including nine in his 1996 title season.

15

Jackie Stewart

Took 17 poles across three championship seasons in an era when qualifying ran for hours, not minutes.

16

Fernando Alonso

Took 22 poles across two decades, several of them in cars with no business being on the front row.