1981

Pos	Driver	Nat	Car	Pts	Wins	Share of the leader
1	Nelson Piquet	Brazilian	Brabham	50	3
2	Carlos Reutemann	Argentine	Williams	49	2
3	AJAlan Jones	Australian	Williams	46	2
4	Jacques Laffite	French	Ligier	44	2
5	Alain Prost	French	Renault	43	3
6	John Watson	British	McLaren	27	1
7	GVGilles Villeneuve	Canadian	Ferrari	25	2
8	Elio de Angelis	Italian	Team Lotus	14	0
9	René Arnoux	French	Renault	11	0
10	HRHector Rebaque	Mexican	Brabham	11	0
11	Riccardo Patrese	Italian	Arrows	10	0
12	Eddie Cheever	American	Tyrrell	10	0
13	Didier Pironi	French	Ferrari	9	0
14	Nigel Mansell	British	Team Lotus	8	0
15	BGBruno Giacomelli	Italian	Alfa Romeo	7	0
16	Marc Surer	Swiss	Ensign / Theodore	4	0
17	Mario Andretti	American	Alfa Romeo	3	0
18	Andrea de Cesaris	Italian	McLaren	1	0
19	Patrick Tambay	French	Ligier / Theodore	1	0
20	Slim Borgudd	Swedish	ATS	1	0
21	Eliseo Salazar	Chilean	Ensign / March	1	0
—	Michele Alboreto	Italian	Tyrrell	0	0
—	Derek Daly	Irish	March	0	0
—	Beppe Gabbiani	Italian	Osella	0	0
—	PGPiercarlo Ghinzani	Italian	Osella	0	0
—	MGMiguel Ángel Guerra	Argentine	Osella	0	0
—	BHBrian Henton	British	Toleman	0	0
—	Jean-Pierre Jabouille	French	Ligier	0	0
—	Jean-Pierre Jarier	French	Ligier / Osella	0	0
—	Jan Lammers	Dutch	ATS	0	0
—	RLRicardo Londoño	Colombian	Ensign	0	0
—	Keke Rosberg	Finnish	Fittipaldi	0	0
—	Chico Serra	Brazilian	Fittipaldi	0	0
—	SSSiegfried Stohr	Italian	Arrows	0	0
—	Derek Warwick	British	Toleman	0	0
—	Ricardo Zunino	Argentine	Tyrrell	0	0

Read from the season’s final standings row, never summed from the race results. 15 of 36 entries in this table carry no championship position and are ruled below the placed field, ordered by points.

Read from the season’s final constructor standings row. A constructor scores through both of its cars, so these totals are not the sum of any one driver’s line above.

Both championship tables on this page are read from the season’s standings rows at round 15, the last round loaded, and neither is derived by adding up the race results. That distinction is the whole point: for most of the sport’s history only a driver’s best few results counted toward the title, a race stopped short paid half points, and a driver could be excluded from a championship he had scored in, so a table built by summing the results column would disagree with the championship as it was actually awarded. Positions are the source’s own; where it recorded none, the row prints a dash and sits below the placed field rather than being given a place it never held or dropped from the page. A points total is printed as it is stored, to two decimals where it needs them, because the sport has awarded half points and split shared drives since the 1950s and those fractions are real. The calendar is every round in the archive for 1981, in round order, with the winner taken from the classification code the source prints rather than from its sort key; three of the 1,161 races loaded were won by a shared car, and for those the calendar names one driver while the race classification credits both. The Cars column counts the rows in each race’s classification, which includes cars that retired, so it is entries with a recorded result rather than a count of cars that took the start. The drivers and constructors counted in the masthead are those that appear in a race result for 1981, not those that entered. The constructors’ championship has been awarded since 1958, so both tables exist for this season. 1981 is complete: all 15 rounds are loaded and both tables are final.