5 Great Drivers Who Have Thrived Outside of F1

Last month, the belief that Formula One is the only form of motor racing worth bothering with was blown out of the water by one of its own competitors.

Nico Hulkenberg's decision to participate in endurance races with Porsche in 2015, in addition to his commitments with Force India, was hugely popular among the motor sport community and took us back to a time when F1 drivers were permitted to compete in alternative series.

F1 teams, in the modern era, had always been hesitant to grant their stars permission to risk their lives while representing other organisations in other formulae, with Robert Kubica's career-ending rally crash in early 2011 doing little to weaken the collective stance.

Hulkenberg's balancing act, however, should open the floodgates for drivers to broaden their horizons and follow in the footsteps of icons of yesteryear such as John Surtees and Graham Hill, who enjoyed success outside of F1.

Surtees and Hill are just two men who make up our list of five drivers whose careers went beyond the inner circle.

John Surtees

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Before he became a Formula One world champion, John Surtees was a hugely successful motorcycle racer, winning four 500cc titles in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960.

It was in 1960 that a 26-year-old Surtees opted to switch from bikes to cars on a full-time basis, making his grand prix debut for Lotus at Monaco.

In just his second world championship event, the multitalented Englishman claimed a second-place finish but had to wait until 1963 for his maiden win, which came in a Ferrari at the Nurburgring.

The following year, Surtees secured the title for the Prancing Horse, pipping BRM's Graham Hill by one point.

Although Hill scored more points than Surtees over the course of the year—41-40 in his favour—the fact that only a driver's best six results counted toward the championship allowed the latter, who made the podium in every race he finished, to take the crown.

Surtees remains, and probably will remain, the only man to win world championships on two and four wheels.

Graham Hill

Graham Hill was motor sport's ultimate utility man, the only driver to win the "triple crown" of the Formula One title, the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Indy 500.

Fourteen grand prix wins were good enough for two F1 championships, with Hill beating his fellow Britons, Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart, to the crown in 1962 and 1968 respectively.

The five-time Monaco GP winner was victorious in a Lola-Ford at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1966—an event which was also participated in by Clark and Stewart—and triumphed at Le Mans alongside Henri Pescarolo, with whom he shared a Matra, in 1972 when his F1 career was beginning to fade away.

Jacques Villeneuve

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IndyCar has in recent years become a fallback option for drivers who find their Formula One careers at a standstill. Jean-Eric Vergne, for instance, told IndyCar.com's Marshall Pruett of his interest in the series following his departure from Toro Rosso.

Rarely do drivers make the switch in the opposite direction, but Jacques Villeneuve used American open-wheel racing as a stepping stone to F1 in the mid-1990s.

After winning the CART championship, as well as the hallowed Indy 500 race, in 1995, the Canadian landed a seat with Williams for 1996.

Villeneuve excelled on his debut in Australia, taking pole position, and ended his maiden season with four wins. He added a further seven in '97 to claim the title, despite Michael Schumacher's dirty tactics at the season finale.

It all went downhill from there, however, with Villeneuve failing to win another grand prix before participating in several series—including NASCAR and endurance racing—with minimal success.

He returned to his old stomping ground for another shot at Indy in 2014, but finished 14th at the Brickyard.

Juan Pablo Montoya

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Another driver to move from American single-seaters to Formula One (before going back again) was Juan Pablo Montoya, who like Villeneuve, was handed his debut by the Williams team.

The Colombian was victorious in the Champ Car series, with seven wins for Ganassi in 1999, and made up for a limp title defence the following year by making a one-off appearance at the Indy 500, which he won with ease having led over three quarters of the event's 200 laps.

Montoya went on to win the Italian Grand Prix at the end of his rookie season in F1 in 2000, after which he emerged as a leading challenger to the dominant Ferrari of Michael Schumacher.

With seven grand prix wins to his name, Montoya quit F1 midway through the 2006 campaign after growing tired with the sport, fleeing to NASCAR, where he won only two races in seven full seasons.

Montoya, who also won the Daytona 24 Hours on three occasions between 2007 and 2013, made a successful return to IndyCar in 2014, finishing fourth in the standings and winning at Pocono.

Emerson Fittipaldi

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Emerson Fittipaldi is one of the most versatile drivers in motor sport history, with the Brazilian winning two Formula One titles, two Indy 500's and one CART championship.

After claiming his F1 crowns for Lotus and McLaren in 1972 and '74 respectively, Fittipaldi retired from the sport at the age of 33 in 1980, having gone without a grand prix win for five seasons.

He didn't return to the racing stage until '84. Fittipaldi won his first race two years later before claiming the overall crown—as well as his first Indianapolis victory—in 1989.

The Brazilian took his second Indy win in '93, but a crash at Michigan in 1996 brought his career to an end as he approached his 50th birthday.

Or so we thought.

In November 2014, Fittipaldi took to the wheel of a Ferrari and participated in the final round of the World Endurance Championship at his home track of Interlagos.

All statistics in this article, unless stated, have been taken from Wikipedia and the official Formula One website.