The Monegasque racer was 55 when he started the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix and he only narrowly missed the cut for the same race three years later at the tender age of 58… Meanwhile, Fangio’s shared victory with Luigi Fagioli at the 1951 French Grand Prix made the Italian the oldest winner in F1 history, Fagioli being a spritely 53 at the time.īut the granddaddy of them all was Louis Chiron who is unlikely to ever be surpassed as the oldest man to start a Grand Prix. Nino Farina was only a couple of months away from his 44th birthday when he clinched the inaugural world title in 1950, whilst legendary Argentine racer Juan Manuel Fangio won his fifth and final drivers’ crown at 46 and his last victory aged 47. It’s all a far cry from the early years of the world championship when, somewhat surprisingly by today’s sporting standards, the majority of the leading drivers were in their forties.

Marko’s continued faith in youth is one of the major reasons why the Formula One grid is currently at an all-time low in terms of average driver age, though the downward trend has been going on since the early 1990s when, thanks to the arrival of drivers such as Rubens Barrichello (who made his debut in 1993 aged 20), the average age began to dip below 30. The Austrian, who oversees Red Bull’s prestigious junior team, helped Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat graduate to F1 aged 19, 22, 21, and 19 respectively, and only recently he was instrumental in 2015 Toro Rosso driver Max Verstappen making his practice debut in Japan just three days after the Dutchman had blown out the 17 candles on his birthday cake. This phrase was coined by fabled Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby in the 1950s in reference to his unusually young but (ultimately) incredibly successful team, but it could just have easily have been uttered by Red Bull’s motor sport consultant Helmut Marko.

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