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The German Grand Prix, to be held at the Nürburgring on Sunday, will be the home Grand Prix for five drivers.

There are more Germans on the Formula One grid than any other nationality and this got me wondering how successful different countries have been in Formula One.  Which country has produced the most World Champions and which nationality has won the most races?

If we look at the number of Drivers’ Championships won then Britain tops the list with thirteen Championships won by nine different drivers.  Brazil comes a distant second with eight Championships split between Nelson Piquet (3), Ayrton Senna (3) and Emerson Fittipaldi (2).

Third and fourth places are each the result of a single driver that dominated their time in the sport.  Juan Manel Fangio won the Drivers’ Championship five times between 1951 and 1957, a record that stood until Michael Schumacher broke it on the way to his seven World Championships.

Drivers’ Championships won by nationality

Looking at the total number of races won, the Brits are even more dominant with almost twice the number of Grand Prix wins than the Germans in second place.

France moves up into fourth place and many more countries make the list, including Mexico.

Races won by nationality

This Mexican racing car driver was Pedro Rodríguez. His brother, Ricardo, also raced motorbikes and cars and the two of them were known as “The Little Mexicans”.

Pedro’s first F1 victory came in only his ninth race, in South Africa in 1967 and he went on to win again in Belgium in 1970.  He was a great all-round driver, competing in CanAm, NASCAR, rallies and even ice racing.  He won at Le Mans in 1968 in a Wyer-Gulf Ford GT40.

In 1971, when he was just 31 years old he was killed in a Ferrari 512M at the Norisring in Nuremberg, Germany.

The first hairpin at Daytona International Speedway is named the Pedro Rodriguez curve, and the Mexico City autodrome is named after him and his brother, who was also killed while practicing for the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix.

Last week, Keith Collantine at F1 Fanatic wrote a nice post about one of my favourite London buildings, the beautiful art-deco Michelin House on Fulham Road.

That building was the UK headquarters of Michelin from 1909 to 1985 before Sir Terence Conran bought it and turned it into the Bibendum Restaurant, named after the cigar-smoking, bicycle-riding, rubbery mascot of the Michelin Tyre Co.

But only a short walk away is another historic art-deco automotive building that Conran has converted into a restaurant; the Bluebird Garage on Kings Road.

When the garage was built in the early 1920’s, it was Europe’s largest motor car facility at some 50,000 sq ft.  As well as selling petrol and servicing automobiles, it also provided overnight accommodation for lady motorists and their chauffeurs in the two wings on either side of the main building.

The land speed record holder Sir Malcolm Campbell had a connection with the garage although it is hard to determine what it was exactly.  Some say the garage was where he built his famous ‘Blue Bird’ cars, others that he just sold cars there when he took over the Itala and Ballot concessions in London.

Campbell competed in Grand Prix racing, winning the 1927 and 1928 Boulogne Grands Prix but he is best known for breaking the world speed record on land and water several times in the 1920’s and 30’s.

His first land speed record was in 1924 when he piloted a V12 Sunbeam 350HP to 146.16 mph at Pendine Sands in Wales.  Between 1924 and 1935 he broke the land speed record nine times and on September 3 1935 he became the first person to drive a car over 300 mph when he hit 301.337 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

Campbell drove four Blue Bird cars (his son Donald drove a jet-powered Bluebird in the 1950’s) culminating in the 1935 Campbell-Railton Blue Bird.  This car had a 36.7 litre supercharged Rolls-Royce R V12 engine producing 2,300hp.  The car was so powerful that double rear wheels had to be fitted to stop the wheels spinning.

Here’s a video of Campbell driving Blue Bird at Daytona Beach.

Below are some pictures of the Bluebird Garage.  The tennis balls are a Wimbledon thing. 🙂

Images: Conran & Partners, David Keen

It’s been a while but I knew that it was impossible for Bernie to go more than a couple of months without saying something completely outrageous.  And boy was it worth the wait.

He’s called Ferrari idiots, he’s insulted black, Jewish women drivers and now he’s expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In his latest interview in the Times, Bernie suggests that perhaps Adolf Hitler was misunderstood; he didn’t really want to dominate Europe and exterminate the Jews.  He just wanted to get things done.

A bit like an über-David Allen:

In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.

He also thinks the Iraq war was a bad idea:

We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban].

Like the nose of a WWII bomber, the welcome sign at the Brawn GP factory in Brackley has a tally of victories the team has notched up so far this season.

They’re not being overconfident, though — there are nine races left this year but only space on the board for another six wins, at least not without adding a second row.

But Brawn GP are not the only Formula One team with a connection to airplane nose art.

In World War I, Francesco Baracca was Italy’s top fighter ace scoring 34 kills. In recognition of his former cavalry regiment, Baracca adopted the embem of a prancing stallion — the Cavallino Rampante — and he became known as ‘The Cavalier of the Skies’.

After the war, Enzo Ferrari won a race in Ravenna where he met Baracca’s mother, the Countess Paolina.  Legend has it that the Countess asked Ferrari to use the prancing horse on his cars saying it would bring him good luck, as Enzo himself explains:

The horse was painted on the fuselage of the fighter plane flown by Francesco Baracca, a heroic Italian pilot who died on Mount Montello: the Italian ace of aces of the First World War. In 1923 … I met Count Enrico Baracca, the pilot’s father, and subsequently his mother, Countess Paolina. One day she said to me, “Ferrari, why don’t you put my son’s prancing horse on your cars; it would bring you luck.” … The horse was black and has remained so; I added the canary yellow background because it is the colour of Modena.

Ever since then the Cavallino Rampante has been the symbol of the Scuderia.

Continuing the tradition of drivers wearing special helmet designs for their home Grands Prix, Nick Heidfeld has chosen one of over 9000 designs fans submitted to his website to wear at the German Grand Prix next week.

At the British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button both commissioned special helmet designs for their home race, although it didn’t seem to bring either of them much luck on the day.

The design by Hungarian fan Tamás Simon is made up entirely of circles and impressed Heidfeld and his helmet designer Jens Munser.  Heidfeld said:

This helmet stood out from all the rest. In fact, as soon as I saw it, I thought that it was a likely winner. My immediate impression was…’Wow!’

You can see Nick’s top 11 here.  As Heidfeld explains:

In the end, it was very difficult to limit the finalists to ten. That’s why we decided to go for a shortlist of eleven.

Thank god he didn’t choose the one with ears or the one with the big picture of his bearded face on the side.

After the race, the helmet will be donated to German television station RTL who will auction it off with proceeds going to the ‘Wir helfen Kindern’ charity.

You can submit bids by e-mail to auktion@spendenmarathon.de.