Winning a Formula 1 (F1) race is really hard. But what happens to a driver after they win? Sometimes a driver wins a race, and then their team stops building fast cars, or the driver moves somewhere new that isn’t competitive yet, and then they have to wait.
In this article, we will learn about exactly that, the longest amount of time between any one Grand Prix win and the very next win that same driver managed to get.
Here we will know about the gap between two wins that came right after each other in a driver’s career, with nothing in between.
Top 10 Longest Gaps Between Back-to-Back Wins
| Rank | Driver | Gap | From | To |
| 1 | Riccardo Patrese | 6 years, 6 months, 28 days | 1983 South African GP | 1990 San Marino GP |
| 2 | Bruce McLaren | 6 years, 6 days | 1962 Monaco GP | 1968 Belgian GP |
| 3 | Jack Brabham | 5 years, 10 months, 19 days | 1960 Portuguese GP | 1966 French GP |
| 4 | Mario Andretti | 5 years, 7 months, 18 days | 1971 South African GP | 1976 Japanese GP |
| 5 | Kimi Räikkönen | 5 years, 7 months, 4 days | 2013 Australian GP | 2018 United States GP |
| 6 | John Watson | Just under 5 years | 1976 Austrian GP | 1981 British GP |
| 7 | Rubens Barrichello | About 4 years, 10 months | 2004 Chinese GP | 2009 European GP |
| 8 | Niki Lauda | 3 years, 6 months, 25 days | 1978 Italian GP | 1982 Long Beach GP (USA West) |
| 9 | Nelson Piquet | About 3 years, 17 days | 1987 Italian GP | 1990 Japanese GP |
| 10 | Gerhard Berger | Just under 3 years | 1994 German GP | 1997 German GP |
1. Riccardo Patrese
Riccardo Patrese won the chaotic 1982 Monaco GP and followed it up with a win at the 1983 South African GP. Then everything went quiet. He struggled through underpowered cars at Alfa Romeo and a difficult second stint at Brabham, finishing on the podium only twice in the next four years.
It wasn’t until the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix, driving for Williams, that he won again, ending a wait of 6 years and nearly 7 months.
2. Bruce McLaren
Bruce McLaren won his last race for the Cooper team at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix. Rather than stay with Cooper, he decided to build and race his own cars, founding McLaren Racing. It took over six years of building and testing before his own team finally became competitive enough to win, which they did at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix.
3. Jack Brabham
Jack Brabham won the 1960 Portuguese GP, then, just like McLaren, left his existing team to start his own, Brabham Racing. It took almost six years for the fledgling team to become race-winning, with that breakthrough finally coming at the 1966 French Grand Prix. That win kicked off a streak of four wins in a row, and Brabham went on to win his third World Championship that same season.
4. Mario Andretti
Mario Andretti’s first-ever F1 win came dramatically; he won at the 1971 South African GP in his very first race driving for Ferrari. Strangely, it would be his only win with the team. He didn’t win again until 1976, driving for Lotus, at the Japanese Grand Prix.
5. Kimi Räikkönen
Kimi Raikkonen won the 2013 Australian GP with Lotus, then didn’t win again until the 2018 United States Grand Prix with Ferrari. In terms of actual time, his gap is slightly shorter than Andretti’s, but because F1 now holds so many more races per year than it did in the 1970s, Räikkönen’s gap actually covers 114 Grands Prix.
6. John Watson
John Watson won his first Grand Prix driving for the American Penske team at the 1976 Austrian GP and famously shaved off his beard afterwards to win a bet with team owner Roger Penske. He then spent years struggling with an underperforming Brabham before joining a McLaren team that was, at the time, also struggling. It wasn’t until 1981, in McLaren’s revolutionary all-carbon-fibre MP4/1 car, that Watson finally won again, at his home race, the British Grand Prix.
7. Rubens Barrichello
Rubens Barrichello’s first F1 win, at the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix, came during his most successful spell as Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari teammate. His next win didn’t arrive until nearly five years later, in 2009, when he drove for the newly formed Brawn GP team to victory at the European Grand Prix.
8. Niki Lauda
Niki Lauda won the 1978 Italian Grand Prix for Brabham and then, famously, walked away from F1 entirely partway through the following season, saying he was ‘tired of driving around in circles.’
He came out of retirement in 1982 after McLaren boss Ron Dennis offered him a large contract, and it took until the Long Beach Grand Prix in the United States that same year for Lauda to win again, over three and a half years after his last victory.
9. Nelson Piquet
Nelson Piquet’s last win for Williams came at the 1987 Italian Grand Prix, the same year he claimed his third World Championship. He then endured a rough two years at Lotus, where the car simply wasn’t competitive.
After joining Benetton in 1990, Nelson Piquet finally won again at that year’s Japanese Grand Prix.
10. Gerhard Berger
Gerhard Berger’s career had several wins scattered throughout the late 1980s and early ’90s, but his longest single gap between two of them came between the 1994 and 1997 F1 German Grands Prix, both, coincidentally, at the same track, Hockenheim.
In between, Berger even missed several races in 1997 due to illness and the death of his father, making his final win an emotional one.
Also Read: Top 10 F1 Drivers With Most Pole Positions
