10 totally true F1 facts that sound completely fake

Twenty drivers competing at high speed in some of the greatest automotive technologies that exist today, traveling the world in search of a world championship: Formula 1’s very premise sounds too good to be true, but the nature of the sport lends itself to unbelievable stories!

We’re combing through the history books to pull out some of the wildest F1 facts and stories that sound fake but are completely true!

Wild but totally true F1 facts

A championship won on foot?

Formula 1 is a sport all about fast cars and the daredevil drivers who pilot them — but back in 1959, Jack Brabham won the World Drivers’ Championship on foot!

Heading into the season finale, the United States Grand Prix at Sebring International Raceway, three drivers were in contention for the title: Jack Brabham, with 31 points; Stirling Moss, with 25.5 points; and Tony Brooks, with 23 points.

Brabham looked set to win from the lead when, on the last lap, his Coooper began to sputter. It came to a halt 400 yards from the finish line, completely out of gas; rather than give up, Brabham got out of his car and began to shove it to the finish line. Teammate Bruce McLaren went on to snatch the win, while Brabham crossed the finish line in fourth place — good enough to net him the title by four points.

F1’s first megastar was kidnapped by the Cuban Revolution

Ask anyone to name the first truly legendary driver in Formula 1, and the answer is simple: Juan Manuel Fangio, the driver who ascended from humble beginnings in Argentina to become a superstar, winning five World Championships before he retired.

Such was Fangio’s popularity, though, that he became a pawn in a plot hatched by members of the Cuban Revolution in 1958!

It’s true: The night before the 1958 Havana Grand Prix, armed freedom fighters kidnapped Fangio from his hotel at gunpoint, kicking off a failed manhunt that lasted overnight and well past the green flag.

Fangio befriended his captors and was ultimately delivered safely to the apartment of Argentina’s ambassador to Cuba — but the full story is one you have to read to believe.

One driver earned a DNQ, DSQ, and DNF in the same race

His name was Hans Heyer, and at the 1977 German Grand Prix, he achieved a truly spectacular feat: He became the first — and only — man in all of F1 history to fail to qualify and finish a race, while also being disqualified!

Here’s how it happened: competing with ATS Racing, Hans Heyer attempted to qualify for the German GP at Hockenheim, and he failed to make the grid, therefore earning the DNQ badge.

But on race day morning, amid plenty of commotion regarding the starting lights, Heyer was able to slip out of his pit box unnoticed and join the race. He lasted nine laps before his gearbox failed, thus earning him the DNF badge.

It was only at that point that officials realized he was racing despite failing to qualify, which meant he was disqualified from the event — and banned from five Formula 1 races in the future.

Quite the record!

The Indianapolis 500 counted for F1 championship points

America’s biggest open-wheel race of the year, the Indianapolis 500, has been running since 1911 — but for 11 years, it also counted toward the Formula 1 championship!

If that sounds strange, well, it was: The Indy 500 was run to a whole different set of rules, using entirely different cars, when compared to European Grand Prix racing. In fact, the only reason it ended up on the Formula 1 calendar was to justify calling the series a ‘World’ Championship!

In 1950, F1 organizers had a schedule composed of the British, Monaco, Swiss, Belgian, French, and Italian Grands Prix, but all those events took place in the same continent. In order to claim ‘World’ Championship status, the FIA in Europe and the AAA in the United States agreed to include the Indy 500 on the calendar through the 1960 season.

Only one Grand Prix driver ever attempted the Indy 500 when it was part of the championship: Alberto Ascari.

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Slim Borgudd: ABBA drummer, F1 driver

Swedish pop band ABBA rocketed to the big leagues after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest — and one of the band’s session drummers who was close friends with ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson.

That drummer’s name was Slim Borgudd, a Grammy award-winning drummer from Sweden who also did some racing on the side. Though his career on four wheels was a bit less fruitful than his musical career, Borgudd gained permission from ABBA to use the band’s name in order to attract sponsorships and potential rides.

He managed to start 10 Grands Prix between 1981 and 1982, starting with Team ATS and ending with Team Tyrrell. Unfortunately, he only scored one championship point during his brief career, and the ABBA branding on the sidepod of his race cars failed to attract additional sponsorship.

Borgudd continued racing well into the late 1990s.

One driver was crowned World Champion after his death

When the 1970 Formula 1 season came to a close, Austrian racer Jochen Rindt was crowned World Driver Champion with a total of 45 points to second-placed Jacky Ickx’s 40.

There was just one problem: Rindt was dead.

The 13-race 1970 Formula 1 season saw four different winners in the first four races before Team Lotus’ Jochen Rindt hit his stride. The team unveiled the Lotus 72C at the Dutch Grand Prix, and from that moment on, Rindt dominated.

The Austrian won five races and held a decisive lead over the championship (45 points to Jack Brabham’s 25) coming into the Italian Grand Prix, the 10th race of the season. During practice, Rindt crashed and was killed; his throat was slit by his lap belt.

Jacky Ickx of Ferrari emerged as a strong contender for the championship in those closing races, but he wasn’t able to usurp Rindt’s points total. His widow, Nina Rindt, accepted the World Championship trophy at the end of the year.

The first year with no mid-season driver changes was 2018

In modern Formula 1, each team must field two cars at each Grand Prix; those rules have been baked into the sport for several decades, but things didn’t always used to be that way.

In the earliest years of F1, teams were allowed to enter as many cars as they wanted in a race, and could skip races or swap drivers around if they felt the need. When the series codified the rule that teams must have two cars, then the car count remained the same each year, but teams could swap drivers in and out of those seats.

Every single Formula 1 season in history has featured some kind of mid-season driver swap, except for one: The 2018 season. That was the only year in the sport’s impressive 75-year history that every driver who started the season in one car remained in that car for the entire year.

The only caveat to that is the fact that Force India underwent a name change midway through the season; despite that, the team structure remained the same, as did the drivers.

The first season to start with the same grid as the end of the previous season was 2024

Much like how driver line-ups are subject to change midway through the year, Formula 1 has often been characterized by its “silly season,” which sees drivers swap teams, retire (or get fired), or make their debut in the sport.

Every single season in F1 history has featured a change in lineup from the last race of one season to the first race of the next — every season, that is, except for one: The 2023 to 2024 season.

While there were plenty of mid-season driver swaps in both 2023 and 2024, there were no swaps during the off-season for the first time in F1 history. That meant that every driver started the 2024 season in Bahrain with the team they’d finished the 2023 season in Abu Dhabi.

It raised some concerns about stagnating grids, but there were plenty of line-up changes all throughout 2024, and the 2025 season debuted with plenty of alterations!

Two 1997 title rivals never shared a podium all year

In 1997, Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher emerged as title rivals — and yet they never actually shared a podium all season!

It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Schumacher took podiums in Australia, San Marino, Monaco, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, and Japan.

Villeneuve, by contrast, secured podiums in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, England, Hungary, Austria, Luxembourg, and Jerez. Neither driver finished on the podium at Monza.

The season also ended on a controversial note when second-placed championship finisher Schumacher was disqualified from the entire season after he and Villeneuve made contact on Lap 48; the FIA had warned drivers that any attempt to manipulate the outcome of the championship during the race would be met with punishment.

Though the stewards determined the collision to be a racing incident, an FIA investigation resulted in Schumacher’s disqualification.

Only two World Champions have not witnessed a fatal accident during their racing career

Formula 1 is a dangerous sport, though in recent years, it has grown significantly safer thanks to constant innovations in race circuits, trackside facilities, and car improvements.

Still, it’s quite shocking to learn that only two of Formula 1’s 34 different World Champions have not witnessed a compatriot die during a Grand Prix weekend: Jacques Villeneuve and Max Verstappen.

Villeneuve’s F1 career lasted between 1996 and 2006, which means he entered F1 shortly after Ayrton Senna was killed at Imola but retired well before Jules Bianchi’s 2014 accident at the Japanese Grand Prix ultimately resulted in his death.

Verstappen, meanwhile, entered Formula 1 in 2015, the year that Bianchi succumbed to his 2014 injuries; that said, the Dutch champion was not racing in F1 when the actual crash happened.

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