Boy racers! Top 10 youngest drivers in F1

Much fanfare was made of Red Bull’s move to promote Verstappen into F1 with Toro Rosso after just one year in single seater racing but it proved a masterstroke. The Dutch starlet scored points in 10 out of 19 races despite continual reliability woes with his Renault power unit along with two fourth place finishes. Verstappen’s meteoric rise continued in 2016, after replacing Daniil Kvyat in the Red Bull team after just four rounds he won on debut for the top team in the Spanish Grand Prix and has collected five further rostrums this season while putting the established order under the cosh.

Alguersuari’s fast-tracked F1 career was followed by a speedy retirement from racing aged 25, to pursue his career as a DJ. Last seen as a race pundit for Formula E, the Spaniard broke into F1 with Toro Rosso (a key player in the most recent youngest drivers) by replacing Sebastien Bourdais and despite underwhelming results remained with the team until the end of 2011. Alongside doing F1 commentary for the BBC, Alguersuari went into the racing wilderness competing in the ADAC GT Masters before landing at Virgin Racing for the inaugural Formula E world championship but after poor results missed the final round and stepped away from racing completely at just 25.

Billed a teenage sensation in 1980, New Zealander Mike Thackwell’s varied racing career was stunted in F1 to just five races and he failed to finish all of them. After not qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix for Warsteiner Arrows, a few weeks later Thackwell became F1’s youngest driver to start a race at the Canadian Grand Prix for Candy Tyrell. After a second failure to qualify in the US, Thackwell didn’t return to F1 until 1984 with two unsuccessful efforts for Skoal Bandit and Tyrell.

A potential F1 world champion who never had his chance to shine due to his tragic death in the 1962 non-championship Mexican Grand Prix. Having become the youngest-ever driver to stand on the Le Mans 24 Hours podium in 1960 by finishing second with Andre Pilette, the Mexican was given a guest drive by Ferrari for the 1961 Italian Grand Prix when a qualified a shock second on the grid. He battled for the lead on debut until a fuel pump failure ended his race. Further Ferrari outings followed until upon switching to Rob Walker’s Lotus 24 team he was killed on the first day of practice in Mexico in a crash at the Peraltada corner, aged just 20.

After catching the eye as Euro Open Nissan champion and an impressive rookie campaign in the International Formula 3000 series, Fernando Alonso broke into F1 at the time the third-youngest driver in history with Paul Stoddard’s European Minardi in 2001. Despite failing to score a single point that year in an unreliable and slow car, Alonso demonstrated his world championship potential and was signed as Renault test driver in 2002 before being promoted to a race seat a year later. The rest is history with Alonso successfully defending his F1 world title in 2006 to become the youngest back-to-back world champion - until another member of this list took that record away from him.

An intriguingly short F1 career, at the time Tuero became the third-youngest driver in F1 history when he made his debut with Minardi at Melbourne but less than 12 months later the Argentinean driver announced his retirement from F1 aged 20. With reliability issues and crashes plaguing his only year in F1, Tuero recorded just four finishes in 16 races with a best result of eighth place at the San Marino Grand Prix. Tuero is arguably most famous for his crash at the Japanese Grand Prix, when he accidentally hit the throttle rather than brakes and vaulted on Toranosuke Takagi’s Tyrell and upon landing he broke a number of vertebrae in his neck. Tuero’s damaged Minardi scattered broken carbon fibre across the track which is believed to have caused Michael Schumacher’s dramatic rear tyre failure that handed Mika Hakkinen the F1 world title.

Chis Amon is considered to many the best F1 driver never to win a Grand Prix after coming so close on multiple occasions during his time with Ferrari, March and Equipe Matra. After breaking into the sport in 1963 a couple of months before his 20th birthday, the New Zealander driver enjoyed a 13-year career in which he notched up 11 podium appearances and four pole positions in championship races but unluckily zero wins as reliability and timing never fell Amon’s way. Despite his misfortune, Amon did win eight non-championship GP races plus the prestigious Daytona and Le Mans 24 hour races.

Much like Stroll, Daniil Kvyat blitzed his way through the junior categories which culminated in him winning the Formula Renault 2.0 Alps (with a 50% win record) in 2012 followed up by claiming the GP3 Series title a year later while also acting as Toro Rosso test driver. As a result, Kvyat secured a race seat at the Italian squad as Daniel Ricciardo stepped up to Red Bull to replace the departing Mark Webber. After a solid rookie year, the Russian was called to move up again with Sebastian Vettel leaving Red Bull for Ferrari in 2015 and he appeared to be progressing consistently until he was reshuffled back to Toro Rosso in the rise of Max Verstappen.

Esteban Ocon moved into F1 with an almost flawless record having claimed the 2014 FIA European Formula 3 championship which was quickly followed by the 2015 GP3 Series title. Having caught the eye during his Formula 2.0 stints, Ocon began his affiliation with F1 back in 2014 with Lotus before being signed as a Mercedes junior driver, to become Force India’s test driver a year later. Curiously, Ocon acted as test driver for both Renault and Mercedes in F1 in 2016 – such is Ocon’s reputation as a potential future world champion – but spent the first half of the year in DTM awaiting his shot. It duly arrived in August as he replaced Rio Haryanto in the Manor line-up alongside Pascal Wehrlein.

The four-time F1 world champion is set to be bumped off this top 10 list when Stroll makes his debut next year but Sebastian Vettel stands out as the most accomplished driver on the list. After claiming a Formula BMW ADAC title in just his second season in single seater racing, Vettel became BMW’s F1 test driver a year later in 2005 alongside his European Formula 3 commitments. The German driver had to wait until 2006 for a couple of FP1 outings but a year later Vettel got his race shot after Robert Kubica was forced to sit out the United States Grand Prix following a serious crash in Canada the race earlier. Vettel finished eighth to become the youngest F1 driver to score a point before being taken on by Toro Rosso with a race seat a couple of months later. Despite being set to be kicked off this list he will hold on to plenty of 'youngest' records for many years including youngest pole sitter and youngest F1 world drivers’ champion.