Nico Rosberg is the first new winner since 2009. So I thought, how has the rate of drivers winning their inaugural races changed over the history of the Championship. Here's the graph:
Now, obviously there were going to be a few new winners in the opening couple of years, but the number was somewhat kept down by the short seasons. The white bars show Indy500 winners who won their first World Championship race, and I have tried to obscure them with the background in order to ignore them.
It is interesting that there is a definite split in the rate that appears at the end of 1982. There'd been at least one maiden winner in every season from 1959-82, and suddenly there were only 7 new winners in the next decade. What I would like to venture this is down to is a large turnover of drivers up to 1982.
1982 was the last year of regular Formula One driver deaths. This can somewhat explain a number of the 'new' winners; some previously uncompetitive drivers had been promoted to Championship winning cars - Patrick Tambay at Germany that year is an example as Villeneuve's replacement.
In addition, the reliability of the top packages improved at about this time too. On 1st January 1983, the record number of wins for a driver was 27 by Jackie Stewart. 11 years later it had been eclipsed by 3 frequent winners - Prost, Senna and Mansell who had won 122 Grand Prix between them in that time. With the ultra-modern reliability, the effect gets worse. There have only been 6 Grand Prix winners in the time between Mark Webber's first win and Nico Rosberg's - (Vettel, Webber himself, Barrichello, Button, Alonso and Hamlton). And of course Schumacher's win of 91 Grand Prix took its toll too.
This explains why the largest group of new winners followed the old guard clear-out of 1994, with Senna's death and the retirements of Prost and Mansell. From 1995-97 there were as many new winners as from 1983-94.
So maybe we don't want too many new winners. Certainly if it means going back to the high-turnover that was seen when there were many.
Now, obviously there were going to be a few new winners in the opening couple of years, but the number was somewhat kept down by the short seasons. The white bars show Indy500 winners who won their first World Championship race, and I have tried to obscure them with the background in order to ignore them.
It is interesting that there is a definite split in the rate that appears at the end of 1982. There'd been at least one maiden winner in every season from 1959-82, and suddenly there were only 7 new winners in the next decade. What I would like to venture this is down to is a large turnover of drivers up to 1982.
1982 was the last year of regular Formula One driver deaths. This can somewhat explain a number of the 'new' winners; some previously uncompetitive drivers had been promoted to Championship winning cars - Patrick Tambay at Germany that year is an example as Villeneuve's replacement.
In addition, the reliability of the top packages improved at about this time too. On 1st January 1983, the record number of wins for a driver was 27 by Jackie Stewart. 11 years later it had been eclipsed by 3 frequent winners - Prost, Senna and Mansell who had won 122 Grand Prix between them in that time. With the ultra-modern reliability, the effect gets worse. There have only been 6 Grand Prix winners in the time between Mark Webber's first win and Nico Rosberg's - (Vettel, Webber himself, Barrichello, Button, Alonso and Hamlton). And of course Schumacher's win of 91 Grand Prix took its toll too.
This explains why the largest group of new winners followed the old guard clear-out of 1994, with Senna's death and the retirements of Prost and Mansell. From 1995-97 there were as many new winners as from 1983-94.
So maybe we don't want too many new winners. Certainly if it means going back to the high-turnover that was seen when there were many.
