I did not go looking for this. I was building a list of every Formula 1 world champion for another piece entirely, birthdays included, when I noticed a gap I could not explain. May was empty. Empty.
So I went back and checked it properly, one champion at a time, from Giuseppe Farina in 1950 to Lando Norris in 2025. Thirty five different men have won the drivers' title in that time, from fifteen different countries. Every single month of the year has produced at least two of them. Except May, which has produced none.
How the F1 drivers' birthdays fall
January is a busy one with four champions, and not just any four. Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, the two most successful drivers in the history of the sport, were both born in January, four days apart on the calendar if not the year. Jenson Button and Jody Scheckter fill it out. February and April tie for the lead with five champions each. June has four, including Juan Manuel Fangio himself. Then you get to May and the well runs dry.
| Month | Champions born |
|---|---|
| January | 4 |
| February | 5 |
| March | 2 |
| April | 5 |
| May | 0 |
| June | 4 |
| July | 3 |
| August | 3 |
| September | 3 |
| October | 2 |
| November | 2 |
| December | 2 |
A seven week hole in the calendar
What makes it stranger is how wide the hole actually is. The champion born closest to May from the early side is Phil Hill, the American, on the twentieth of April. The next champion born after May is Jackie Stewart, on the eleventh of June. That is a run of roughly seven weeks.
Now, I am not going to pretend this means anything. Thirty five people is a small sample, and birthdays landing unevenly across twelve months is exactly the kind of thing you expect from chance rather than destiny. If you lined up any thirty five names from anywhere, you would probably find a quiet month somewhere. There is no astrology here, no hidden advantage to being born in one season over another, nothing you could ever put in a scouting report.
Be that as it may, the streak has survived seventy six seasons, and that is the part I keep coming back to. Formula 1 is full of quirks like this, from seasons where the champion won fewer races than the runner up to records that look untouchable, and this is another one to file alongside them. However you want to explain it, across the front engined cars of the fifties and the ground effect machines of today, not one champion arrived in the world in May.
The F1 driver who could break it
If the streak is ever going to break, there are candidates already on the grid. Three drivers racing today were born in May. Oliver Bearman, the young Briton, arrived on the eighth. Yuki Tsunoda came three days later on the eleventh. Franco Colapinto rounds them out on the twenty seventh. None of them is a world champion yet, and Bearman is the one most people would back to get there one day, so if you want a name to watch, watch him. The day one of those three lifts the title, a seventy six year quirk finally ends.
Until then, May keeps its strange little record. Every other month has a champion to its name. Despite everything the sport has thrown at the calendar, one month is still waiting for its first.
