Who is the most tactically intelligent Formula 1 driver of all time?

Championships get decided by drivers doing arithmetic at 300 km/h. This is a ranking of the ones who thought their way past people who were quicker.

1

Alain Prost

Nicknamed The Professor for winning championships on points arithmetic rather than lap records.

2

Ayrton Senna

Read races and rule books alike, and used both in the title fights of 1989 and 1990.

3

Niki Lauda

Austrian who built two careers on knowing exactly what a car and a season were worth.

4

Jackie Stewart

Approached each circuit as an engineering problem and changed the sport's safety standards doing it.

5

Michael Schumacher

Turned pit strategy into a weapon with Ross Brawn across the Benetton and Ferrari years.

6

Fernando Alonso

Two-time champion known for extracting results from cars that had no business scoring them.

7

Lewis Hamilton

Frequently calls his own strategy over the radio and has overruled the pit wall to win.

8

Juan Manuel Fangio

Chose his teams as carefully as his overtakes and won five titles doing it.

9

Sebastian Vettel

Managed tyres and fuel through the pirelli era better than anyone in the same machinery.

10

Nico Rosberg

Spent a full season engineering a title win over the fastest teammate available.

11

Jenson Button

Built a championship on tyre management and a feel for wet-to-dry crossovers.

12

Nelson Piquet

Three titles won with a calculating approach that his rivals underestimated.

13

Max Verstappen

Race pace and tyre calls that have turned qualifying deficits into wins.

14

Emerson Fittipaldi

Two-time champion who won the 1974 title by finishing races his rivals threw away.