[DavidJH]

At Austin we’re losing a Brit and gaining a New Zealander. Will this GP have the most number of nationalities represented?

[Keith Collantine]

@DavidJH That’s a good question. I can’t answer it definitively at the moment, but a useful starting point might be to look at the biggest-ever entry which was when the field hit 39 cars during 1989. At the San Marino Grand Prix the following nationalities were represented:

Brazil
France
Britain
Italy
Belgium
USA
Japan
Spain
Austria
Switzerland
Germany
Sweden

Total: 12

This weekend we’ll have:

Belgium
Australia
Germany
Finland
France
Sweden
Mexico
Spain
Canada
Brazil
Denmark
Russia
Germany
France
Netherlands
New Zealand
Britain

Total: 17

So it looks like you’re probably right – even with a grid twice the size the number of nationalities represented was lower.

[hunocsi]

@keithcollantine You counted France and Germany twice, we’ll have 15 nationalities represented this weekend.
I don’t know if that’s a record or not, but I looked back to the 2000 season and if I didn’t miscount 15 is the highest in that period for this weekend’s along with:
– 2005 German-Chinese GPs (8 races, 20 cars, Doornbos driving under Monegasque colors)
– 2006 European-US GPs (6 races, 22 cars)
– 2011 German and Indian GPs (with 24 cars on the grid)
– Australian and Chinese GPs this year when Giovinazzi sat in for Wehrlein (20 cars)

I didn’t want to go back way before 2000 as that would mean counting race by race for most periods, but I guess this is pretty much as high as it gets. But if anyone has the time and algorithm or statistics to prove so, I’m interested to see the result.

[Keith Collantine]

@hunocsi Thanks for checking!

[ejay]

I might try and look at this properly if I get the time but the 1979 US grand prix stands out as it looks like it had 17 nationalities enter (not all of them qualified). Haven’t found anything better than that.

Of course it depends what your mean by ‘represented’. In the race or throughout the weekend? If you look back at this year’s malaysian grand prix there were 13 nationalities represented in the race but 3 further countries (russian, monaco, indonesia) were represented in FP1.

[hunocsi]

Nice find @ejay. Free practice drivers definitely shouldn’t count towards the number, as they aren’t driving with the intention to race. The highest number of entrants with different nationalities a) entered, b) qualified to race (or should DNSs not count?) could both make interesting statistics, but that needs proper a bit more research.

In the meantime I randomly stumbled upon the 1974 Swedish GP which had drivers from 16 different nationalities that actually started, which means @davidjh that this weekend’s race definitely isn’t the most.
Maybe I’ll look into it during the weekend…

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