Rubens Barrichello

Rubens Barrichello holds a record that says a lot about his career and little about his talent: he is the driver who has started the most Grands Prix without winning a title. That is 326 starts across nineteen seasons, and the reason the number is so big is the same reason there is no championship on his CV.

He joined Ferrari in 2000 alongside Michael Schumacher, at the most dominant team of the era and the one with the clearest hierarchy. He won eleven races, finished runner-up in 2002 and 2004 and was the number two in a project built around somebody else. Austria 2002, when the team ordered him to hand over the win at the final corner, became the defining image of those years and forced a rule change.

His second life came in 2009 with Brawn GP, aged thirty-seven, at a team born from the ashes of Honda. He won two races and finished third in the championship, proving the speed was still there when the car allowed it. He retired in 2011 after two seasons at Williams, with the unanimous respect of the paddock and a career spanning three decades of Formula 1.