With pre-season testing now well underway in Jerez, Formula One teams are gearing up their on-track preparations ahead of the 2014 World Championships.
This season, which kicks off with the Australian Grand Prix on 16 March will see a host of changes in comparison to the previous seasons in terms of rules, points and even car numbers.
While the majority of talk has been about the controversial double point allocation in the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, the other unforeseen rule of giving all the racers a chance to pick up their own driver numbers – and stick to them for the rest of their careers – was implemented as well.
As it is in most other sports, this change was brought about with the idea of giving each racer his own identity.
Under these rules, every driver was given the choice to pick a number ranging from 2 to 99, with number one being reserved for the reigning World Champion, that being the dominant Sebastian Vettel.
However, the Red Bull driver has chosen has booked the number five as a permanent driver number as he looks to clinch his fifth world championship.
Most drivers opted to choose numbers that were special to them. Whether linked to a fond memory of a special victory or with sentimental value attached to it.
However, in the unlikely event that more than one driver requested the same digit; the racer who finished higher in the 2013 World Championship standings would get priority.
Spaniard Fernando Alonso, the two-time World Champion opted for the number 14. The reason, on 14 July 1996, when he was 14-years-old, he won his first world championship racing in kart #14.
Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes driver who incurred a minor accident on the opening day of testing, chose #44 as he rose to fame in the Champions of the Future series during his junior career with a kart numbered 44. He’ll now be hoping the number was somewhat of a lucky charm as he looks to win his first world title since 2008.
Vettel’s Redbull teammate, and F1 debutant Daniel Ricciardo will be known by the number three as the Australian was allotted this number when he started his racing career, and wants to stick with the single digit.
Brazilian Fillepe Massa and Danish driver Kevin Magnuessen had similar reasons for picking their desired career number.
Massa fancied 19, as he won the Euro Formula 2001 series with that very number, while Magnuessen selected 20, his lucky number with which he won the Formula Renault 3.5 Series.
Speaking of lucky, Lotus team’s Pastor Maldonano was the sole person who opted for the number thirteen which is widely considered as an unlucky number. Only once in the history of Formula One has #13 been used by a driver, Moises Solana in 1963, after which the number has not been in the grid until now.
With 98 different numbers to choose from, #77 happened to be the one in the most demand, with Jules Bianchi and Valtteri Bottas both wanting to make it their identification. However, due to preference given to whoever stood higher in 2013 Championship standing, Bottas was permitted to keep the number.
Bottas was particularly pleased to be allotted number 77 as he had clearly been giving it some though and immediately started planning referring to himself as #BO77AS on social media since the numbers were announced.
Frenchman Bianchi was perhaps the unluckiest person on the grid after asking for 7, 27 and 77 he finally had to settle for number 17.
With all the good luck theories being the prime reason behind most of the selections, lucky number seven was picked up by Finnish driver Kimi Raikonnen. His laidback attitude about the purpose behind the choice was: “It is the number I already had last year and I saw no reason to change it. I like it which is good enough isn’t it?”
These numbers will be the new identifiers of the F1 racers for the rest of their careers.
A full list of the drivers and their numbers can be viewed below:
# Driver
1 Sebastian Vettel
3 Daniel Ricciardo
6 Nico Rosberg
7 Kimi Raikkonen
8 Romain Grosjean
11 Sergio Perez
13 Pastor Maldonado
14 Fernando Alonso
17 Jules Bianchi
19 Felipe Massa
20 Kevin Magnussen
21 Esteban Gutierrez
22 Jenson Button
25 Jean-Eric Vergne
26 Daniil Kvyat
27 Nico Hulkenberg
44 Lewis Hamilton
77 Valtteri Bottas
99 Adrian Sutil
