In 2023, there will be two drivers on the grid who have competed in over 300 races, translating to the fourth longest and longest careers in the history of the sport.
Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso have had exceptionally long and prosperous careers, experiencing several generations of motorsport gears, engines, aerodynamics and racing styles in the process. They even were teammates during one infamous season.
By contrast, there are many careers that last less than a single season, such as Japanese sports car driver Yuji Ide’s four infamous starts for Super Aguri or Marcus Winkelhock’s memorable lone race for Spyker where he started both last and first.
However, there are careers even shorter than these two. Take Marco Apicella, who piloted the Jordan 193 for a grand total of 800m before the steering arm broke coming to the first chicane at Monza. This is often seen as the shortest-ever F1 career, including by F1’s official media.
Ernst Loof had an even shorter career, however. Hoping to promote the Veritas sports car company and the tuned BMW 328s they manufactured and worked on, he entered himself into the 1953 German Grand Prix, where he lasted two metres before the fuel pump on his car broke and he would never race again.
Both of these careers are amazingly short, and by far the shortest careers if a pre-requisite is that you have to successfully start a Formula One race. Many drivers do not even reach that accolade, however.
In some cases, such as the incredibly unlucky Perry McCarthy, this is the result of failing to qualify a car run by a team whose owner was arrested that same year for a litany of financial crimes.
In other cases, such as Luis Razia, it is a case of running out of money. In 2013, Mr Razia tested for several teams but was officially one of Marussia’s drivers leading up to the Australian Grand Prix before the funding ran out. His entire F1 career consists of 112 pre-season test laps.
However, by this metric, no Formula One career could possibly be shorter than CART race winner Mario Dominguez, whose entire F1 career for Jordan consisted of one very slow lap of Silverstone in wet and foggy conditions in 2005 before he would never get another chance.
