Alonso set to break Patrese’s record of 100 starts

This Sunday in Abu Dhabi, barring any unforeseen circumstances, Fernando Alonso will start his 356th Formula 1 race, a figure that would seem even more legendary if past records were not now so far removed from the podiums they once dominated. With this race, the two-time world champion will be 100 starts ahead of Riccardo Patrese, whose 256 starts were long considered unbeatable.

The modern Formula 1 calendar not only fills the summer with races, it is rewriting the sport's longevity records. When Riccardo Patrese left the starting grid at the end of 1993, his number of Grand Prix starts seemed unattainable. But the increase in the number of races, from around sixteen per season in the early 1990s to twenty-two today, has allowed eight other drivers to surpass his record, turning what was once a benchmark for endurance into a statistic that can be surpassed in a single career.

At the time of his retirement, Patrese's closest rival was four-time world champion Alain Prost, who was already three seasons behind in terms of starts, a gap that would be reduced to just two and a half seasons in the current calendar. The Frenchman had 57 fewer starts than Patrese and five more than Nelson Piquet, but even he would eventually be surpassed by drivers such as Fernando Alonso, who is expected to finish the weekend with 100 more starts than the Italian, and Sebastian Vettel, whose 299 starts will leave Prost more than 100 races behind. Despite Vettel's impressive number of starts, he will only rank seventh in the all-time standings. The climb began well before the current era. Andrea De Cesaris, with 192 starts, finally broke the 200-race mark in 1994 and retired after 208 starts. Gerhard Berger then surpassed him, finishing with two more starts, but both remained far behind Patrese's total, which reflected three additional seasons of racing. The pace of overtaking has accelerated considerably: the 1980s produced 156 Grand Prix races, while the 2010s have seen 198, giving today's newcomers faster access to the record books.

In 2008, Rubens Barrichello claimed to have broken Patrese's record at the Turkish Grand Prix, with a “257” badge on his car, which sparked controversy because two of his retirements (the warm-up laps in 2002 and the start at Spa in 1998) were not counted as official starts. Nevertheless, he retired with 323 starts, a figure that eclipses Patrese's. Young drivers are immediately feeling the impact. After four seasons, George Russell has already racked up 81 starts, the equivalent of five full seasons in the 1990s. The 2023 calendar, with 24 races, further reduces the time needed to reach milestones that once took a decade or more. Patrese's record stood for 15 years before finally being broken, and the next challenger appears to be Sergio Pérez, who now has 234 starts. Pérez has warned that an increasingly demanding schedule could push him toward retirement, as he wants to spend more time with his family. For now, Fernando Alonso stands alone at the top of the Grand Prix participation rankings, ahead of Kimi Raikkönen, proving that a longer schedule can turn what was once unattainable into a moving target.