Someone has worked out how a list of F1 world champions might look if everyone retired after winning their first title.
Reddit user DaveyMN has gone right back to the start of the World Championship in 1950 and come up with a list of who the champions would have been in an alternate universe where ever champion ‘did a Rosberg‘.
For each given year the champion (and anyone else who would previously have won a championship in this system) is removed from the final championship standings, with the highest ranked driver becoming the new champion. It makes for some pretty interesting reading!
Under this system plenty of drivers widely regarded as being the best to have never won the title would win one, such as Stirling Moss, Gilles Villeneuve, Robert Kubica and…Ralf Schumacher.
Other interesting champions include Lewis Hamilton and Juan Pablo Montoya, who would both have won titles in their rookie season and then retired. Can you imagine if someone actually did that?! Michael Schumacher also would have won the title in his first full season, 1992, meaning no years of dreary Ferrari dominance in the 2000s.
Of course none of this takes into account new drivers joining the sport or other drivers moving teams to take the places of the retired champions. It doesn’t adjust the race results (and therefore the points scored) either. It’s fun to imagine though!