The FIA has changed its policy on car numbers for 2014 and allowed each driver to choose their own.

Here’s what each driver chose as their career number and how they picked them.

3. Daniel Ricciardo “It was the first ever number I raced with, it just got given to me when I was go-karting, and it stuck with me pretty much all throughout my karting career. Once I got the number three, I realised that a hero of mine, the late, great, Dale Earnhardt, was also number three in NASCAR.” 4. Max Chilton Like Bottas, Chilton chose a number he could incorporate within his name: ‘M4X’.

5. Sebastian Vettel “[The] first time I won the championship in Formula One I had number five on the car. Generally I think number five was very successful in Formula One: Nigel won the championship, Michael won the championship qith number five. And I have a very good memory to number five on my go-kart, I had a very good season back in 2001 with a lot of wins.” 6. Nico Rosberg “I chose number six as my race number because my dad wrote me an email saying ‘ah, that was a really lucky number for me, I was world champion with that number, you need to take that’. Then I spoke to my fiancee, she said ‘ah, six is my lucky number, take that”. I also won a championship in Formula BMW with number six, back in 2002.”

7. Kimi Raikkonen “There’s no particular story linked to it. It’s 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?” 8. Romain Grosjean “Simply I like this number, plus it has some significance to me. My wife was born the 8th of December, we started dating in 2008 and, to my eyes my son is the 8th wonder of the world. That’s why I picked up number 8.”

9. Marcus Ericsson “I just like that number” 10. Kamui Kobayashi Kobayashi put ’10’ as his first choice and his second choice, and didn’t list a third choice. He pointed out he used the number when he made his F1 debut with Toyota in 2009.

11. Sergio Perez “It’s the number I’ve been using all my career since karting. I’ve enjoyed having number 11, so I went for it, and luckily I ended up getting it as my first choice. I will be wearing it the rest of my career, except when I win the world championship, when I will be wearing number one!” 13. Pastor Maldonado “The reason I choose the number 13 is just because I like it. In Venezuela it is not an unlucky number and it actually has a long history in Venezuelan sport.”

14. Fernando Alonso “It has always brought me luck, dating back to 14th July 1996 when, at the age of 14, I won the world championship in a kart that had the number 14. Let’s see if it will still bring me luck.” 17. Jules Bianchi After failing to get any of his first three choices – 7, 27 and 77 were all taken by other drivers – Bianchi settled on 17.

19. Felipe Massa “It was my number when karting and my uncle also used 19 when he raced. Luckily it was one of our numbers this year anyway!” 20. Kevin Magnussen “I don’t really have any particular reason why I picked 20 as my number. It’s the number I had last year when I won the World Series [Formula Renault 3.5] championship. I also had it in karting when I won the things I won in karting. It’s just a number that’s followed me a little bit so I thought if we have to go for one number it should be that.”

21. Esteban Gutierrez “The number 21 has always been my favourite number. I always chose it as a lucky number. It’s also the number of my age when I started Formula One, so it’s quite a special number for me. It was my first priority.” 22. Jenson Button “22 is a good number for me, it was in 2009 anyway that’s when I won the world championship with it. It’s also the number that McLaren last won the [drivers’] world championship with, in 2008 with Lewis [Hamilton].”

25. Jean-Eric Vergne Vergne picked number 25 because his birthday is on April 25th. 26. Daniil Kvyat Kvyat also picked his number because of his birthday – one day (and a few years) later than Vergne’s. “I also competed in my first karting event in Russia with that number. But there’s not much history behind it and I’m looking forward to making something of that number as I start my F1 career.”

27. Nico Hulkenberg “One, it’s my birthday dates together: 19.8; and two, it’s simply a cool number.” 44. Lewis Hamilton “When we started racing go-karts it had 44 on the number plate. So that’s where you got 44 from. And it just became my number, and we won our first British championship with it, our first races we won with it. And so it’s been the ‘family number’ since then.”

77. Valtteri Bottas Bottas chose 77 so he could include it within his surname as ‘BO77AS’. 99. Adrian Sutil The drivers were given a choice between 2 and 99 and Sutil said he simply went for the highest number available.

Test drivers

Three test drivers have also run in their teams’ cars this year. Here’s which numbers they chose:

34. Daniel Juncadella

40. Felipe Nasr

46. Robin Frijns

2014 F1 season preview

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