Raymond Sommer

Raymond Sommer, a French driver born in 1906, contested the inaugural World Championship season of 1950, making five starts. He was already in his mid-forties by then, one of the established pre-war generation of Grand Prix drivers who lined up when the new championship began.

Driving for Ferrari, with Talbot-Lago machinery also among his entries that year, Sommer scored three championship points, enough to be classified fifteenth in the first drivers' standings. Under the early scoring system, which rewarded only the top five finishers, any points at all marked a genuinely competitive outing.

That single 1950 campaign constituted the whole of his World Championship career, a brief record at the top level from a driver whose racing belonged mostly to the era before the championship existed.