Jo Siffert

Jo Siffert, a Swiss driver born in 1936, competed in Formula 1 from 1962 to 1971, amassing ninety-seven World Championship starts, two victories, six podiums and two pole positions across ten consecutive seasons. He debuted at twenty-five in a Lotus-Climax and spent his early years in privately run machinery, scoring his first championship point in 1963.

The pattern of his career was one of steady, patient accumulation. Through the mid-1960s he gathered points regularly with Lotus-BRM and Brabham-BRM equipment, then with Cooper-Maserati, without ever having a car from the sport's front rank. His breakthrough victory came in 1968, a season in which he finished seventh in the championship with twelve points, comfortably his best result to that date.

After a solid 1969 with Lotus-Ford that brought fifteen points, a difficult 1970 with the new March team yielded nothing. He rebounded emphatically in 1971 with BRM, taking his second Grand Prix win and finishing fifth in the drivers' standings with nineteen points, the finest season of his career.

Across a decade Siffert drove for eight different teams and scored sixty-eight championship points, his record that of a driver who worked his way from the privateer ranks to become a genuine Grand Prix winner.