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As the title says, car #3 wasn't entered to at least one race for the whole season for the first time in F1 history. This marks the end of the #3 streak and also means that no car number was used at least once every season. As you know, numbering system is F1 is very FUN! So let me tell you about it through #3: Number 3 has been Ricciardo's number since the introduction of driver asssigned number in 2014, before that, since 1996 #3 assigned to the best placed team in the previous year WCC which hadn't won the WDC and before that, since 1974, it was assigned to Tyrell. But how it was BEFORE 1974? Well, numbers were assigned by each race organizers without a specific criteria, and how did #3 fared in that? Pretty good one would say, as it has been always assigned at least once throughout every season, not without close calls tho! In 1955 and 1952 the number was used exactly once, and both times it was used at the Indy500, in 1955 by Jack McGrath and in 1952 by Walt Faulkner (who actually DNQ, but I'm talking about entries here sooooooo it counts). And now to 2025 with Ricciardo being dropped in 2024 and the number being locked means that for the first time #3 wasn't entered to any race. Another couple of funny thing I discovered while searching for that are: – The 2nd longest streak was #11, which started in 1956 and finished in 2024 – For whatever reason, in 1955, excluding the Indy500, only even numbers were used throughout the championship – 1952 in the last season to have had a triple digit entry – The highest number ever used is #136 used by Rudolf Krause in the 1952 German GP submitted by /u/NoRefunds2021 |
