As Fernando Alonso never fails to remind us, winning the drivers’ championship is all about having the best car.
So as you’d expect, most F1 drivers who won the championship did so in a car which also won the constructors’ title in the same year.
But not always: Since the constructors’ trophy was first awarded in 1958, eight years after the championship began, 10 drivers have won the title on occasions where their team did not take the crown.
It’s set to happen again this year. With six rounds remaining, Max Verstappen is on course to win the drivers’ title, but his Red Bull team lost the constructors’ championship lead to McLaren two races ago and have already fallen 41 points behind them.
Is winning the championship in a car which failed to take the teams’ title the ultimate achievement for an F1 driver? Here’s which drivers pulled off the feat in the past, and what it tells us about their performances.
Mike Hawthorn
1958 drivers’ champion with Ferrari while Vanwall won constructors’ championship
F1’s first constructors’ title went to a team whose driver did not win the world championship. Indeed, no driver ever took the title at the wheel of a Vanwall, as Tony Vandervell wound down his team following the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans, who suffered terrible burns in a crash at the season finale.
The same race saw Ferrari’s Mike Hawthorn clinch the championship by finishing second, despite having only won one race all year, at Reims in France. Stirling Moss took his fourth victory of the season that day (the first of which he’d taken in a Cooper as Vanwall missed the season-opening Argentinian Grand Prix).
Famously, Moss might have been champion had he not sportingly intervened on Hawthorn’s behalf when he was initially disqualified from second place in the Portuguese Grand Prix, urging stewards to reinstate him. Hawthorn’s steady points accumulation eventually did for Moss, whose team mate Tony Brooks also won three times. The speed of the Vanwalls ensured they claimed the title in the days when only one of a team’s cars scored constructors’ points.
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Jackie Stewart
1973 drivers’ champion with Tyrrell while Lotus won constructors’ championship
While Jackie Stewart clinched his third and final title within five years, 1972 title winner Emerson Fittipaldi grew frustrated by the threat from team mate Ronnie Peterson. The Lotus drivers pinched enough points off each other over the season that Stewart clinched the title with two rounds to spare.
A tragic finale ended Tyrrell’s hopes of repeating its sole constructors’ championship win. Francois Cevert was killed in a crash during practice, and Stewart withdrew from what was going to be his final race. The team had arrived at the finale just one point behind Lotus, and Stewart’s decision not to race, with team boss Ken Tyrrell’s blessing, ensured the title went to their rivals.
James Hunt
1976 drivers’ champion with McLaren while Ferrari won constructors’ championship
James Hunt’s chances of winning the world championship appeared to be over when he was disqualified following his victory in the British Grand Prix. He had already been stripped of another win earlier in the year in Spain, though that was subsequently reinstated.
Niki Lauda was handed victory at Brands Hatch which meant he headed to the Nurburgring with twice as many points as his nearest rival, Jody Scheckter. But a terrible crash early in the race almost cost Lauda his life and forced him out of the cockpit.
While Lauda incredibly hurried back after missing just two further races, Hunt emerged as his closest rival, winning in Canada and the USA to set up a final-round decider in Japan. There, in dire conditions, Lauda opted to withdraw, while Hunt clinched the title by one point with third place. Ferrari had already taken the teams’ title.
Nelson Piquet
1981 drivers’ champion with Brabham while Williams won constructors’ championship
1983 drivers’ champion with Brabham while Ferrari won constructors’ championship
Nelson Piquet is the only driver to win the drivers’ title in years when his team did not win the constructors’ championship on more than one occasion.
His 1981 win was a classic example of a driver in a ‘one-car team’ beating two top-drawer rivals who took points off each other with an arguably superior car. While reigning champion Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann fell out spectacularly at Williams, Piquet scored 50 of Brabham’s 61 points using their effective BT49C. He ended the season as champion, both Williams drivers within four points of him.
Piquet’s team mate that year, Hector Rebaque, never placed higher than fourth and ended the season 10th in the championship. Riccardo Patrese replaced him the following year and was still there when Piquet took his second title in 1983, this time while Ferrari won the championship. Though he was a far more capable team mate, he suffered dire unreliability, only picking up a single win at the finale as Piquet clinched the title.
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Keke Rosberg
1982 drivers’ champion with Williams while Ferrari won constructors’ championship
Ferrari won the constructors’ championship in back-to-back seasons from 1982-83 while its drivers were unable to clinch the crown. Rene Arnoux and Patrick Tambay were unable to keep Piquet from the silverware in 1983, but the preceding season the team was blighted by tragedy.
First Gilles Villeneuve was killed in a crash during qualifying at Zolder. The late driver’s team mate Didier Pironi took the championship lead, but was seriously injured in another crash at Hockenheim.
That opened the door for Keke Rosberg. His first and only win of the year, at Dijon, propelled him into the championship lead, though when the season ended he was only five points ahead of the absent Pironi.
Alain Prost
1986 drivers’ champion with McLaren while Williams won constructors’ championship
Piquet moved to Williams in 1986 but despite winning on his debut was unimpressed by the team’s refusal to establish him as their clear ‘number one’. Team mate Nigel Mansell took the next four wins for the team and claimed the lead of the championship.
But the pair couldn’t shake Alain Prost in the McLaren, who by the latter stages of the season didn’t have to worry about his retiring team mate Rosberg. At the finale, Mansell suffered a tyre explosion, Piquet pitted as a precaution and Prost, who had been forced to make an extra pit stop earlier in the race, astonishingly bagged the title.
Michael Schumacher
1994 drivers’ champion with Benetton while Williams won constructors’ championship
The tragic 1994 season remains one of Formula 1’s great ‘what-ifs’: How would the title fight between Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna played out had the Brazilian star not died in a crash at the third round? Schumacher pipped Senna’s team mate Hill to the title by a single point following a series of controversies, disqualifications and a contentious final-round collision.
Despite being thrown into disarray by Senna’s death, and having to re-engineer an ill-handling car, Williams clinched the teams’ title thanks to points gathered by Hill, David Coulthard and the returning Mansell, who won the finale in Adelaide. Schumacher’s original choice of team mate, JJ Lehto, was injured in pre-season testing, and was replaced by Jos Verstappen and Johnny Herbert at different stages.
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Mika Hakkinen
1999 drivers’ champion with McLaren while Ferrari won constructors’ championship
Five years later, another ‘what-if’ scenario: Mika Hakkinen arrived at Silverstone eight points ahead of Schumacher, who then broke his right leg in a crash and missed much of the rest of the season.
Hakkinen then proceeded to make hard work of beating Schumacher’s team mate Eddie Irvine, who was gifted wins first by Mika Salo in Germany and then Schumacher when he returned in Malaysia. Finally, Hakkinen prevailed with victory in Japan.
McLaren lost the constructors’ title to Ferrari partly by squandering points and partly due to the FIA’s controversial decision to reinstate the disqualified F399s after Irvine and Schumacher’s one-two in the penultimate race at Sepang. The team initially accepted its bargeboards did not conform to the technical regulations, but many predicted the FIA would find a way to deem them legal and keep the championship fight alive. Sure enough, the Court of Appeal ruled the part had not been measured correctly, resulting in a 22-point swing which proved decisive. Ferrari won their first championship in 16 years by four points.
Lewis Hamilton
2008 drivers’ champion with McLaren while Ferrari won constructors’ championship
McLaren missed out on another championship in a year its driver was crowned nine years later, when Lewis Hamilton clinched his first title in dramatic style. The final score line reflected the situation neatly: Hamilton pipped Felipe Massa to the title by a single point, while the Ferrari driver’s team mate Kimi Raikkonen came third. Heikki Kovalainen, who joined McLaren that year, was only seventh.
However Kovalainen wasn’t solely to blame for McLaren’s points shortfall. Hamilton missed several scoring opportunities, notably in Canada where he crashed into Raikkonen in the pits, and with a scruffy performance in France.
Max Verstappen
2021 drivers’ champion with Red Bull while Mercedes won constructors’ championship
If Verstappen does become the second driver in F1 history to twice win the title in a year his team does not, the circumstances will hopefully be less controversial than the notorious conclusion to the 2021 championship.
An off-season tweak to F1’s floor regulations gave Mercedes more headaches than Red Bull and the two teams were closely matched on performance for much of the 2021 season. While Verstappen’s new team mate Sergio Perez helped him to the title, and produced arguably his best year-long performance for the team since joining them, it wasn’t enough to stop Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas securing Mercedes’ eighth championship in a row.
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The mark of a ‘true great’?
Several of these drivers can justifiably claim to have won their titles by wringing the best out of a car which was not clearly the best over a full season, and taking advantage of better-equipped rivals failing to do the same. Stewart in 1973 and Prost in 1986 stand out as particularly conspicuous examples of this. So too does Verstappen in 2021, the farcical end to the season notwithstanding – hence why we named him our driver of the year on that occasion.
But on other occasions it’s fair to argue the champion’s team was a one-driver operation. This was true of Piquet with Rebaque in 1981 and Schumacher, partly by dint of having so many team mates, in 1994. Then there are outlier cases strongly influenced by unusual circumstances, such as Hunt and Rosberg.
It’s too simplistic, therefore, to say every instance of a driver winning the world championship when their team failed to proves they were a ‘true great’. But it can indicate some of F1’s most impressive title-winning performances.
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