Fernando Alonso
Stirling Moss
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Fernando Alonso leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Fernando Alonso at #9 and Stirling Moss at #12.
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The case for Fernando Alonso
Two titles in 2005 and 2006 that broke Ferrari and Schumacher's five-year stranglehold, won at 24 and 25 in a Renault that was rarely the fastest car — followed by eighteen further seasons that turned Alonso into the sport's benchmark for extracting the impossible from ordinary machinery. He holds the record for Grand Prix starts, passing 400 in 2024, with 32 wins, 22 poles and 106 podiums, but his reputation rests on races the totals miss: dragging a Ferrari to within a handful of points of the 2010 and 2012 titles, and a 2012 European Grand Prix win from eleventh that many rate the finest drive of the decade. Peerless wheel-to-wheel and metronomically consistent, he also won Le Mans twice and the World Endurance Championship during an F1 sabbatical. The knock is a career of catastrophic team choices — leaving or arriving one season too early almost every time — that left an all-time talent stranded on only two crowns.
The case for Stirling Moss
The greatest driver never to win the world championship, and it was not for want of speed. Moss finished runner-up four consecutive years from 1955 to 1958 and third three times, losing the 1958 title by a single point to Mike Hawthorn — after Moss himself testified in Hawthorn's defence at a stewards' hearing, a stroke of sportsmanship that very likely cost him the crown. He won 16 Grands Prix and 16 poles from 66 starts, frequently in privateer or British cars he chose over faster machinery out of patriotism. His 1961 Monaco victory in an outdated Lotus, holding off quicker Ferraris for two hours, remains a masterclass in defensive driving, as does his 1955 Mille Miglia won at an average near 100 mph. So synonymous was he with velocity that British police reputedly asked speeders, who do you think you are, Stirling Moss? Only the title itself eluded him.