Piastri hits rare milestone shared by Brabham and Jones

Only two other Australians have ever won five races in a single F1 season, Sir Jack Brabham in 1960 and Alan Jones in 1980.

On both occasions, they went on to win the World Championship that same year.

Brabham’s five wins in 1960 came in succession, dominating mid-season between the Dutch and Portuguese Grands Prix to clinch his second consecutive title.

Jones’ 1980 campaign was more spread out. Victories in Argentina, France and Britain were bookended by back-to-back wins in Canada and the USA to seal his sole World Championship.

It was the peak of both drivers’ careers in terms of races won in a single season, with no Australian F1 driver ever winning more than five in a single year.

But the company Piastri now joins goes further than both Brabham and Jones.

Between 1950 and 2024, a total of 26 different drivers achieved five or more race wins in a single season.

This feat has been accomplished 73 times, with 16 drivers doing it on multiple occasions.

Sixty-nine percent of those seasons where a driver won five or more races ended with that driver winning the championship, with Michael Schumacher holding the record for most 5+ win seasons with 10.

Niki Lauda was the first driver to win five or more races in a season and not win the title, taking five wins in 1976 before narrowly losing the title to James Hunt in one of F1’s most famous finales.

Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Schumacher share the record for the most seasons with five or more wins without securing the title that year, each doing so three times.

Among the 12 drivers who failed to convert a 5+ win season into a title, only one never became World Champion: Felipe Massa, who won six races in 2008 and lost the crown to Lewis Hamilton by a single point.

If history is any guide, that gives Oscar Piastri a remarkable 96 percent chance of becoming World Champion at some point in his career.

And while there’s still a long road ahead in the 2025 season, and in Piastri’s F1 career, the numbers and the weight of history are firmly on his side as he chases Australia’s first F1 title in 45 years.