Top podium comebacks

The biggest comeback from starting grid to a position on podium in Formula1 took place at the 1954 Silverstone race when Onofre Marimon, who started from position 28, finished the race in 3rd place, his second and last podium, having the fastest lap in the race, along with seven other drivers.

In second place we have two drivers, the first is Don Freeland who at Indianapolis 1956 starts from position 26 and finishes in 3rd place. Also at Indianapolis in 1960 Paul Goldsmith repeats what Freeland did by also starting from 26th and finishing 3rd .

In the top first drivers finish on 3rd position. John Watson is the first driver on the list to finish on the 1st place, starting from 22nd at the Long Beach race in 1983. In same race Niki Lauda is the first driver from the list to finish on 2nd position starting the race from position 23, both driving for McLaren.

To find out which are the F1 drivers, teams and circuits that had the most comebacks, we will make a ranking with the cases when the drivers reached the podium and started at least from the 10th position.

We have a tie for first place, in 9 different races Setafan Johansson and Kimi Raikkonen started at least from the 10th position and finished on the podium.

In second place we have three drivers who managed the performance in 8 races, Jacques Laffite, John Watson and Bruce McLaren. Rubens Barrichello and Lewis Hamilton achieved the same performance in 7 races.

In terms of Formula1 teams, Ferrari leads the way with 42 races, followed by McLaren with 37 and Lotus with 21. Out of the top 10, only McLaren and Ligier have races in which they have two drivers who passed the criteria in the same race.

McLaren in 1983 at Long Beach, John Watson and Niki Lauda get the first two places in the race after starting from the 22nd and 23rd place. In 2003 Melbourne, David Coulthard wins starting from the 10th position, and Kimi Raikkonen starts the race from the 15th position and finish on 3.

Ligier in 1985 at Adelaide finished 2nd, 3rd with Jacques Laffite and Philippe Streiff after starting from 20th and 18th. The second case is in the Hockenheim race in 1994 when Olivier Panis finished 2nd, starting from 12th and Eric Bernard starts from 14th and finishes 3rd.

Apart from McLaren and Ligier, only Stewart in 1999 at Nurburging had two drivers on the podium starting from position 10 and up.

* For McLaren and Ligier, 1 was added for each race that met the conditions, even if in some races two drivers succeeded.

Most frequently we find this case at Monza with 17 races, followed by Spa-Francochamps and Hockenheim. There are three races where all the drivers on the podium started at least from the 10th position:

• 1975 Montjuic Park
• 1978 Kyalami
• 1999 Nurburgring

The most races in a season with the chosen criterion, were in the 1978 and 2005 seasons, the imposed criterion is found at 9 races.

To finish the race on the podium is not necessarily a positioning at the front on the starting grid, considering that including the Jeddah race in 2023, pilots who started at least from the 10th position managed to reach the podium in 22.1% of races.