A Brief History of Ferrari Signing Former F1 World Champions (Like Lewis Hamilton)

The Prancing Horse's newest superstar is by far the most successful they will have brought in, but also the oldest.

Thursday’s news that seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton would be joining Ferrari in 2025 sent shock waves through the Formula 1 world. Hamilton is, by total numbers, the greatest driver in the history of the sport; he’ll be leaving Mercedes — the dominant team of the 2010s into the early 2020s — after 12 seasons to join the most successful constructor in F1 history, a longtime Mercedes rival which hasn’t won a team title since 2008.

In other words, all of the ingredients are there for incredible drama next season.

That’s regardless of whether Hamilton (who’ll be 40 next season) can still compete for the championship after a pair of 0-win campaigns in 2022 and 2023 — the only times he’s gone winless in his entire career. But the success component is still important in a historical sense, because it would allow Hamilton to potentially break a tie with Michael Schumacher (more on him later) for the most driver’s titles in F1 history.

So let’s take a look at what happened in other instances where Ferrari added a former champion (or in a few cases, a veteran with championship potential), and whether they lived up to the Prancing Horse’s lofty expectations.

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Michael Schumacher (1996)

Age in first Ferrari season: 27
Previous races: 69
Previous wins: 19 (27.5%)
Previous championships: 2

Coming over from a very successful run with Benetton, which saw him win back-to-back driver’s titles in 1994 and 1995, Schumacher was already a superstar in his prime when he joined the Scuderia in 1996. But despite winning 16 races, his first four seasons with Ferrari were shaping up to be a disappointment after winning zero titles, getting disqualified from the 1997 championship for intentionally crashing into Jacques Villeneuve and falling to 5th in the standings in 1999. What followed, though, was the most dominant five-year stretch in F1 history — even Max Verstappen still has to try and match it — as Schumi won 48 times in 85 races (56.5%) with five straight championships, ending Ferrari’s 21-year drought in that regard. This is the gold-standard run for any established, big-name driver who comes to Ferrari.

Races with Ferrari: 181
Wins with Ferrari: 72 (39.8%)
Championships with Ferrari: 5

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Sebastian Vettel (2015)

Age in first Ferrari season: 27
Previous races: 139
Previous wins: 39 (28.1%)
Previous championships: 4

It’s scary how similar Vettel’s pedigree was to Schumacher’s at the time each joined Ferrari: both German drivers were 27, having won 28% of previous races, with identical percentile ranks among the field in their average race. And by virtue of an earlier career start, Vettel could claim roughly double the wins and championships as Schumacher by the same age. But that’s where the similarities ended. Vettel was competitive through his time at Maranello, but he never won a title in six seasons (finishing outside the Top 3 in half of those years). He posted multiple winless years and, after outdriving teammate Kimi Raikkonen for a few seasons during Kimi’s own career downturn, Vettel was decisively surpassed by young teammate Charles Leclerc by the end of his Ferrari stint. While the Schumacher comparisons set the standards for Vettel impossibly high, he was also nowhere near as good with Ferrari as he had been with Red Bull earlier in his career.

Races with Ferrari: 119
Wins with Ferrari: 14 (11.8%)
Championships with Ferrari: 0

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Alain Prost (1990)

Age in first Ferrari season: 35
Previous races: 155
Previous wins: 39 (25.2%)
Previous championships: 3

Prost is an interesting comparison for Hamilton, as both were older (well past 30) when joining Ferrari, and came to the team with gargantuan reputations in the sport. In fact, Prost was the defending world champion from 1989, having outdueled teammate/bitter rival Ayrton Senna for the title. Prost’s first season in the Ferrari seat produced 5 wins and 9 podiums in 16 races, and he was within striking distance in the points going into the season finale at Suzuka, but he ended up in second after crashing out of the race with Senna in the first corner. Things didn’t go well at all in Year 2, as Prost went winless, dropped to 5th place and barely outdrove new teammate Jean Alesi. Prost was fired before the final race of the season and was paid not to drive for any other team in 1992, adding to the sense of failure surrounding his stint with the Prancing Horse.

Races with Ferrari: 31
Wins with Ferrari: 5 (16.1%)
Championships with Ferrari: 0

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Fernando Alonso (2010)

Age in first Ferrari season: 28
Previous races: 140
Previous wins: 21 (15.0%)
Previous championships: 2

Alonso may well be the best F1 driver ever if we analyze his head-to-head performances against teammates in the same equipment. And at Ferrari, that held true: he consistently outpaced Felipe Massa (and then Raikkonen) throughout his time there. But Alonso was never able to beat Vettel for the championship during his time at Maranello, finishing second to the younger Red Bull driver on three different occasions (2010, 2012 and 2013). Alonso drove extremely well, with an average finish of 5.4 during that span — second only to, you guessed it, Vettel — so it’s hard to consider his run with Ferrari a disappointment, but he also had multiple missed opportunities to win a championship and left the team on bad terms (which, to be fair, is sort of the Alonso way).

Races with Ferrari: 96
Wins with Ferrari: 11 (11.5%)
Championships with Ferrari: 0

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Jody Scheckter (1979)

Age in first Ferrari season: 29
Previous races: 84
Previous wins: 7 (8.3%)
Previous championships: 0

Maturing from a wrecking ball of a young driver early in his career into a more disciplined championship contender, Scheckter came to Ferrari in 1979 after five years as a regular with Tyrell and Walter Wolf Racing. During that span, he finished 3rd in the standings twice and 2nd (behind Ferrari’s own Niki Lauda) in 1977, but his first season with the Prancing Horse proved to be the best of his career. While Scheckter didn’t lead F1 in wins or podium finishes in 1979, his overall consistency (his average finish was a season-best 4.9) propelled him to the championship by four points over teammate Gilles Villeneuve. Scheckter’s title defense in 1980 was a struggle, with zero podiums and only a single Top 5 in 13 races, and he retired from the sport after the season. But for one year, he brought Ferrari the championship success it perennially craves.

Races with Ferrari: 28
Wins with Ferrari: 3 (10.7%)
Championships with Ferrari: 1

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Kimi Raikkonen (2007)

Age in first Ferrari season: 27
Previous races: 105
Previous wins: 9 (8.6%)
Previous championships: 0

Over the years, Kimi Raikkonen became an F1 folk hero for his funny interactions and odd mannerisms, but he was also lightning-quick on the track during his prime. Though he joined Ferrari (the first time) coming off of a winless, 5th-place season with McLaren in 2006, Raikkonen had finished 2nd in the standings in both 2003 and 2005. And he immediately put on a show with Ferrari, winning 6 times in 2007 with 12 podiums in 17 races. Kimi did also need good fortune, of course, winning the championship by a single point over Hamilton and Alonso after a well-timed pit stop at the finale in Brazil — giving Ferrari what is still its only post-Schumacher title. After that, Raikkonen had a strange career arc that included retiring from F1 after a disappointing 2009, returning with Lotus only to rejoin Ferrari in 2014, and playing out a serviceable but somewhat underwhelming second stint with the team before leaving for good in 2018. So it’s tough to say what his overall legacy with Ferrari was, although you can’t argue with that championship result from ‘07.

Races with Ferrari: 152
Wins with Ferrari: 10 (6.6%)
Championships with Ferrari: 1

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Nigel Mansell (1989)

Age in first Ferrari season: 35
Previous races: 120
Previous wins: 13 (10.8%)
Previous championships: 0

Mansell was a gifted driver who won open-wheel championships in both F1 and IndyCar. But despite his resume — and the fact that he was last driver personally selected to the team by its founder, Enzo Ferrari, before he died — Mansell’s stint with Ferrari was not one of the highlights of his career. In 1989, Mansell carried over his disaster-prone form from Williams the previous year (in which his car ran at the finish just 2 times in 14 races) and registered a DNF in 9 of 15 races. Though he did win half of the races he finished and drove circles around teammate Gerhard Berger, Mansell finished just fourth in the points. Things got even worse in 1990 with the addition of Prost as his Ferrari teammate; the two clashed over relative positioning within the team, and Mansell departed after a season where he felt like he was given underpowered equipment en route to 9 more DNFs in 16 races and a disappointing fifth-place finish in the standings.

Races with Ferrari: 31
Wins with Ferrari: 3 (9.7%)
Championships with Ferrari: 0

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What do these cases tell us about Hamilton’s future at Maranello? It’s tough to map any of them onto his case perfectly, but it’s worth noting that Schumacher is the only previous champion on the list who actually delivered a title to Ferrari (and he was much younger than Hamilton at the time). Even seemingly great fits like Vettel have found a way to fall short under the pressure of leading F1’s most decorated team. Still, both team and driver will be powered by something to prove — Hamilton to show he can still win, and do it away from Mercedes; Ferrari to show they can rise above the perpetual good-but-not-great territory they’ve occupied since the late 2000s. That could be a powerful combination, starting a season from now.

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Filed under: Formula 1