F1/Drivers/John Watson
John Watson, portrait

JOHN WATSON

British·Born May 4, 1946·1973-1985 · 12 seasons · 5 constructors
152
RACE STARTS
1973-1985 · 12 seasons
5
WINS
20 podiums · 2 poles
169
POINTS IN GRANDS PRIX
Race results only, not the championship total
0
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Completed seasons only, 1950 to 2025
1st
BEST FINISH
62
DID NOT FINISH
Retired, withdrew or disqualified
5
CONSTRUCTORS DRIVEN FOR
3.3%
STARTS WON
5 of 152

01/Season by season

14 lines over 12 seasons
One line per constructor
SeasonConstructorStartsBestWinPodPoleRace ptsChampChamp pts
1985McLaren17th00000
1983McLaren141st13022622
1982McLaren151st25039339
1981McLaren151st14027627
1980McLaren134th0006116
1979McLaren153rd01015915
1978Brabham162nd03125625
1977Brabham172nd0119139
1976Penske161st13020720
1975 · rounds 1-12Surtees118th00000
1975 · rounds 11-11Team Lotus10000
1975 · rounds 14-14Penske19th0000
1974Brabham154th0006156
1973Brabham200000
Career5 constructors1521st52021690 titles

One line per season AND per constructor, which is why Watson has 14 lines over 12 seasons: 1 season was split between constructors and the round range of each spell is printed beside the year. Across the archive that is 3,422 season-constructor lines against 3,129 driver-seasons, so folding on the season alone would silently merge 293 of them and credit a driver with a full year at a car driven for a fortnight. Champ and Champ pts belong to the SEASON, not to the spell, and are printed once on a season’s first line; a dash in those two columns on a continuation line means the figure is above it, not that it is missing. Race pts is the sum of Grand Prix points and does not have to equal Champ pts: 139 of 3,129 driver-seasons differ, 68 of them from 1950 to 1990, when only a driver’s best results counted toward the title, and 71 from 2021 on, when sprint points began landing in the standings while this archive holds the Grand Prix result alone. Best is the best CLASSIFIED finish, read from position_text.


02/Race log, 1973

2 races
2 not classified
RdDateGrand PrixConstructorGridPosLapsStatusPts
9JUL 14British Grand PrixBrabham23R36Fuel system0
15OCT 7United States Grand PrixBrabham24R7Engine0

The log is ordered by round, which is the calendar. Pos prints position_text, the source’s own classification, so R is retired, W is withdrew and D is disqualified rather than a finishing place: 2 of 2 rows in 1973 are one of those. Grid 0 means the car started from the pit lane or took no recorded grid slot and prints as PIT. No fastest-lap column is drawn: the source has no lap timing before 2004, so 1973 has none to show and an empty column would read as missing data. A Grand Prix name links to that race’s full classification. Sprints are not in this archive at all, so no sprint appears in the log and no sprint point is in Pts.

The portrait is the lead image of this driver’s Wikipedia article, shown only where that image was measured to hold a face at portrait scale: 374 of 881 drivers have one, 78 lead with a photograph of a car and 385 have no free image at all. Picture from Wikipedia by Chris Bloom from Durban, South Africa, CC BY-SA 2.0. File description