In 2025, an Australian led the world championship for the first time since Mark Webber’s heartbreak in 2010, managed, fittingly, by Webber himself. Oscar Piastri didn’t get there in the end, but it was the closest an Australian has come to the title in 45 years, and the closest this country has to a driver still chasing it. This is the full account of every Australian who has ever raced in Formula 1, from a decorated wartime fighter pilot to the Melburnian trying to finish what his own manager couldn’t, sixteen drivers, two world champions, and a home race that’s never once gone to a local winner.
Australian F1 by the Numbers
Before getting into individual careers, it’s worth seeing the full scale of Australia’s Formula 1 history laid out in one place, sixteen drivers across more than seventy years of the sport. These are the aggregate figures across every Australian driver who’s ever taken part.
- Drivers who have started a race: 16 (19 have entered at least one championship weekend)
- World champions: 2 (4 titles between them)
- Race winners: 5
- Podium finishers: 6
- Total wins: 52
- Total podiums: 158
- Pole positions: 41
- First entry: Tony Gaze, 1952 Belgian Grand Prix
- First win: Jack Brabham, 1959 Monaco Grand Prix
- Latest win: Oscar Piastri, 2025 Dutch Grand Prix
Who Are the Current Australian F1 Drivers?
Oscar Piastri, driving for McLaren, is the only Australian on the 2026 grid, a fact that’s easy to overlook given how much of the current championship conversation runs through him.
The other name worth knowing is Jack Doohan, son of motorcycle racing legend Mick Doohan, and a driver whose own path into the sport shows just how much talent Australia has produced beyond its two world champions. Doohan made his F1 debut at the end of 2024 and started 2025 as Alpine’s full-time driver, but was replaced by Franco Colapinto just six rounds into the season after a difficult start. He stayed on as Alpine’s reserve driver for the rest of 2025, and the team parted ways with him entirely ahead of the 2026 season. It’s a tough way to lose a seat, and it means the pipeline behind Piastri is thinner than it’s been in some time, a reminder of just how unforgiving the modern grid can be for a young driver who doesn’t hit the ground running.
The Champions
Sir Jack Brabham remains Australia’s most successful Formula 1 driver by any measure. He won three world titles, in 1959, 1960 and 1966, and took 14 race wins along the way. The 1966 title stands alone in Formula 1 history. Brabham won it in a car built by his own team, wearing his own name, the only driver ever to do so. He’d come up through Cooper first, winning back-to-back titles there in 1959 and 1960, before setting up Brabham Racing Organisation and putting himself in the car that carried his name to the top. It’s a rare thing in any sport, the driver and the constructor being the same ambition. He was knighted in 1979 for his services to motorsport, a fitting honour for a driver who didn’t just race at the front of the field, he built the team that got him there, and kept building long after his own driving career had ended.
Alan Jones is Australia’s second and, so far, last world champion, and the answer to a trivia question that’s gone unchanged for over four decades. He won the title in 1980, Williams’s first, taking 12 wins and 24 podiums across a career that started with Graham Hill’s team and included a difficult spell alongside Carlos Reutemann as their rivalry intensified through 1980 and 1981, two teammates fighting for the same championship as hard as they fought anyone else on the grid. Jones also won the non-championship Australian Grand Prix at Calder that same year, the last Australian to win our home race in any form. It’s a detail that gets lost against the weight of his world title, but it means Jones is still, to this day, the answer to a question no other Australian driver since has been able to claim. Read the full story of that race, and every other Australian Grand Prix winner, in our History of the Australian Grand Prix article.
The Race Winners
Mark Webber raced from 2002 to 2013 and took 9 wins and 42 podiums, finishing third in the championship on three occasions (2010, 2011 and 2013), each time behind his Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel. His Formula 1 debut was the stuff of home-crowd dreams: fifth place for Minardi at Albert Park in 2002, on debut, in front of his own crowd, a result that instantly made him a fan favourite in a way few debuts manage. The 2010 title got away from him in the final race in Abu Dhabi, an outcome he’s spoken about candidly in the years since, without ever quite hiding how much it still stings. These days Webber’s second act is just as visible as his first: he’s a sharp F1 pundit, and since 2019 he’s managed the career of Oscar Piastri, the driver now trying to finish what Webber couldn’t.
Daniel Ricciardo raced from 2011 to 2024 and won 8 races with 32 podiums, becoming the first West Australian driver in Formula 1. His trademark late-braking overtakes and post-race “shoey” celebrations made him one of the most recognisable drivers of his generation, someone who managed to be both a serious racer and one of the paddock’s most likeable characters at the same time. His best-remembered win might be Monza 2021, when he ended McLaren’s nine-year victory drought in one of the great feel-good results of that season. His home race, however, carries a genuine sting. His 2014 Australian Grand Prix podium was struck from the record after his car was disqualified for exceeding the fuel-flow limit, a decision that still gets debated in Melbourne pubs today, usually with someone insisting he was robbed. His final seasons, in and out of the Red Bull family before departing the sport in 2024, were handled with the same good humour that defined his career, right down to his last race.
Oscar Piastri is the chapter still being written, and it’s a big one. He debuted in 2023, took his maiden win at the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix, and then delivered the best season any Australian driver has had in years. Six wins by the Belgian Grand Prix in 2025, a single-season record for an Australian driver, and eight consecutive podiums, matching Ayrton Senna’s 1988 McLaren streak. For much of 2025 he was the first Australian to lead the world championship since Webber in 2010, a stretch of racing that had the whole country paying attention in a way it hadn’t for well over a decade. He ultimately finished third, 13 points off the title, as teammate Lando Norris took the crown from Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi. Piastri’s win tally now sits at 9, level with Webber and ahead of Ricciardo’s 8, and he’s still adding to it. The Webber-as-manager story runs right through this: Piastri is trying to win the title his own manager never could, with the very man who came closest now working to help him get there.
Who Is Australia's Best F1 Driver Ever?
Ranking drivers across different eras always comes with a caveat, an eight-race 1960s season and a 24-race modern calendar aren’t really comparable, and the machinery gap between decades matters as much as the driver behind the wheel. A driver who won three titles when the field was smaller and less globally competitive isn’t automatically better than one racing against the deepest grid the sport has ever had, but the raw numbers still tell a story worth looking at honestly. Here’s how the numbers stack up:
| Rank | Driver | Titles | Wins | Podiums |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jack Brabham | 3 | 14 | 31 |
| 2 | Alan Jones | 1 | 12 | 24 |
| 3 | Mark Webber | 0 | 9 | 42 |
| 3 | Oscar Piastri | 0 | 9 | 28 |
| 5 | Daniel Ricciardo | 0 | 8 | 32 |
Brabham is first, and it’s not close. Three titles, built by a team carrying his own name, is an achievement no other Australian driver has come near, and it’s hard to imagine modern Formula 1 producing anything quite like it again, given how specialised and team-dependent the sport has become.
Below him, it’s genuinely close. Webber and Piastri are tied on nine wins apiece, with Webber’s 42 podiums giving him the edge on consistency for now. Piastri has passed Ricciardo’s tally, and unlike either of them, he’s still racing, still adding to his total, and still just 25 years old. Whether he ends up second on this list depends entirely on what he does from here, but he’s already the only driver in the conversation who could still change the answer, and every race he wins moves the conversation a little further in his favour.
The Pioneers and the Full Roster
Before Brabham, before Jones, there was Tony Gaze. Australia’s first Formula 1 driver made his championship debut at the 1952 Belgian Grand Prix, a few years after finishing the Second World War as one of the country’s most decorated fighter pilots, credited with 12.5 confirmed aerial victories flying Spitfires over occupied Europe. He entered four championship rounds across the 1952 season, starting three of them, and later helped establish Kangaroo Stable, Australia’s first all-Australian international racing team, a genuine link between the sport’s earliest Australian days and the generation who would go on to dominate it.
Tim Schenken is the sixth and least-known name on Australia’s podium list, scoring third place at the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix. He left Brabham’s team not long after, reportedly uneasy about the direction of the outfit under its new owner, one Bernie Ecclestone, a decision that looks different in hindsight given how the sport eventually turned out under Ecclestone’s control.
The full list of Australians to start a Formula 1 race runs to 16 names, and it includes some genuinely good stories along the way. Dave Walker had a difficult 1972 season at Lotus, driving alongside Emerson Fittipaldi, who would take the world championship that year, and never quite finding the same form in the same machinery. Two Brabhams beyond Jack himself made it to a Formula 1 grid, with David racing across two seasons and Gary failing to qualify on both his attempts, a reminder that even a famous surname doesn’t guarantee results. Larry Perkins came and went across three seasons before finding his true home in Australian touring cars, where he became a Bathurst great. And Warwick Brown made his sole Formula 1 start at Long Beach in 1976 and never returned to the grid, a one-race career that still counts among the sixteen.
Every Australian to start a Formula 1 race
| Driver | Years active | Entries (starts) | Wins | Podiums |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tony Gaze | 1952 | 4 (3) | 0 | 0 |
| Jack Brabham | 1955 to 1970 | 128 (126) | 14 | 31 |
| Paul England | 1957 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Frank Gardner | 1964 to 1965, 1968 | 9 (8) | 0 | 0 |
| Paul Hawkins | 1965 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Tim Schenken | 1970 to 1974 | 36 (34) | 0 | 1 |
| David Walker | 1971 to 1972 | 11 | 0 | 0 |
| Vern Schuppan | 1972, 1974 to 1975, 1977 | 13 (9) | 0 | 0 |
| Larry Perkins | 1974, 1976 to 1977 | 15 (11) | 0 | 0 |
| Alan Jones | 1975 to 1981, 1983, 1985 to 1986 | 117 (116) | 12 | 24 |
| Warwick Brown | 1976 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| David Brabham | 1990, 1994 | 30 (24) | 0 | 0 |
| Mark Webber | 2002 to 2013 | 217 (215) | 9 | 42 |
| Daniel Ricciardo | 2011 to 2024 | 258 (257) | 8 | 32 |
| Oscar Piastri | 2023 to present | 81 (79) | 9 | 28 |
| Jack Doohan | 2024 to 2025 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
Three more Australians entered a championship weekend without ever starting a race: Ken Kavanagh in 1958, Brian McGuire in 1977, and Gary Brabham in 1990. That’s the difference between the 19 who have entered and the 16 who have started.
Australians at Their Home Race
No Australian has ever won a championship-era Australian Grand Prix, at Adelaide or at Melbourne. It’s become known simply as the curse, and it’s one of the more painful running stories in Australian sport, made worse by how often an Australian driver has come close without quite getting there, close enough each time to keep the hope alive for another year. Ricciardo’s closest brush with breaking it, that 2014 podium, was erased by disqualification. Piastri has come closer than anyone since, without yet getting there, and every season he doesn’t manage it adds another chapter to a story Australian fans know all too well.
But here’s the thing this article gets to say that no other circuit guide can: at Albert Park, the drivers themselves are part of the venue, built permanently into the fabric of the place they race. Grandstands named for Jones, Brabham, Piastri and Ricciardo stand around the lap, meaning you can watch Piastri chase the curse from a stand carrying his own name, or watch the corners the way the champions once did from theirs. It’s a strange, genuinely Australian kind of tribute, honouring the drivers in stone and steel even as the race itself keeps refusing to hand them the result they want most. You can see the full grandstand and hospitality options on our Australian Grand Prix packages and tickets page, and for what each stand actually watches, see our Albert Park Circuit Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Australian drivers have been in F1?
19 have entered at least one championship weekend; 16 have gone on to start a race, a distinction that matters if you’re trying to reconcile different numbers you might see quoted elsewhere.
Where is Oscar Piastri from?
Melbourne, the same city hosting the Australian Grand Prix he’s chasing his home win at, which only adds to the pressure and the storyline every March.
Who was the first Australian F1 driver?
Tony Gaze, who made his debut at the 1952 Belgian Grand Prix, having spent the war years as a fighter pilot rather than a racing driver.
Has an Australian won the F1 world championship?
Yes, twice: Jack Brabham (1959, 1960, 1966) and Alan Jones (1980).
Who has won the most races for Australia?
Jack Brabham, with 14. Piastri is the only Australian driver still adding to his win total, and the only one who could realistically catch him one day.
The Next Australian World Champion?
Whether Piastri becomes Australia’s third world champion is still an open question, and it’s the storyline worth following all season. Every race weekend adds another data point to a story that’s already come closer than most Australians expected it would this soon. Formula 1’s next chapter is being written by a broader cast than ever, on and off the pit wall, as our Women in Formula 1 article explores. View our Australian Grand Prix 2027 packages to watch the next chapter unfold from Albert Park.
