Nino Farina

Giuseppe "Nino" Farina holds a place in history that can never be taken from him: he was the first Formula 1 World Champion. Born in Turin on 30 October 1906, the cultured, fiercely competitive Italian won the inaugural drivers' title in 1950 at the wheel of the Alfa Romeo 158, becoming the original name on the sport's roll of champions.

Farina took the 1950 crown ahead of his Alfa Romeo team-mates in a season decided at the final round, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Over a career that ran into the mid-1950s, much of it with Alfa Romeo and later Ferrari, he amassed 5 wins, 20 podiums, 6 pole positions and 127 championship points across 37 starts. He had been a leading grand prix driver before the war, already a champion of Italy, before the new World Championship gave his talent its greatest stage.

He retired from Formula 1 in the mid-1950s and was killed in a road accident in France in 1966 while travelling to the French Grand Prix. Whatever followed, his name will always stand at the very top of the championship's record books as its first holder.

Farina was famous for his distinctive straight-armed driving position, sitting back from the wheel, a relaxed-looking posture that many later drivers would adopt. Beneath the elegance lay a hard, uncompromising racer who gave nothing away. As the sport's inaugural champion, he set the template for the professional grand prix driver, and his name remains the first entry in Formula 1's history.