F1 drivers height: How tall are Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and co?

Paul Macdonald
Thursday 26 January 2023 01:01 - Updated: 19:12

Thousands of people every month ask how tall F1 drivers are - who'd have thought - so we're here with all the answers to your height-related questions.

When drivers are careering round tracks at high-speed, we see just helmets poking out from their ultra-aerodynamic cars. Pretty tough to work out how tall they are from that.

But there might be a broader range of varying heights than you might think, so let’s take a look at the 2023 grid.

F1 drivers and their height in 2023

Of the 20 drivers set to compete in the 2023 world championship, there is roughly a foot or 0.30m difference between the tallest and smallest men on the grid.

Who are the tallest and shortest drivers on the grid?

Currently, the shortest driver is Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, who is just 5ft 3 in, or 1.59m, tall. At the opposite end of the scale the tallest driver is a dead heat between Williams’ Alex Albon and Esteban Ocon of Alpine, who both measure up at 1.86m. Both of those drivers are just ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell, who stands 1.85m tall.

Brit Justin Wilson, who raced for Minardi before moving to Jaguar in 2003, is considered the tallest driver of the modern era, at 1.94m.

What is the average height of an F1 driver?

The average height for a F1 driver in 2023 is a shade under 1.77m, or 5 feet and 9 and three-quarter inches. Lewis Hamilton is almost exactly on that average mark.

Do drivers need to be a certain height?

As you would expect, for weight and design purposes, extremely tall drivers would have it tough with the modern car and cockpit design.

Size and space are at more of a premium than ever before, and as such it seems as though the likes of Albon and Ocon are at the upper limit of what is feasible for the current F1 car set-up.