Which British drivers competed for Ferrari ahead of Lewis Hamilton?

Ferrari have announced the signing of Lewis Hamilton for the 2025 season, which will make the seven-time world champion the 12th British driver to compete for the famous Italian team. But who were the 11 predecessors of Hamilton, and how did they do? Find out here.

World Champions for Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton is looking to win his eighth title with Ferrari after a risky move. There were two other Britons who became world champions while racing for Ferrari.

The first one is Mike Hawthorn, who was crowned champion in 1958. He first debuted at the Italians when Alberto Ascari won his second title, in 1953. That year, he won his first F1 race at the French Grand Prix. In total, he won three races and had four pole positions, all of them with Ferrari, and in 1958, he managed to defeat Stirling Moss by a single point.

John Surtees is one of the greatest racers of all time, as he is the only person to ever win both a Formula One and a FIM Road Racing (now known as MotoGP) world title. He joined the team in 1963 and stayed there until the beginning of 1966, securing a world title in 1964. Along with his championship, he won four races and started four times from pole position.

The Years of Drought

From Jody Scheckter’s 1979 title until Michael Schumacher’s third in 2000, Ferrari failed to win a drivers’ world championship. In 1989, fan favourite and well-established driver Nigel Mansell was approached by the Italians, after the Briton left Williams missing out on a championship in 1987 and having 12 DNFs in 1988. In his two-year span in Maranello, Mansell won three races and had three pole positions to his name. However, just like Alain Prost, who joined him in his second season, he failed to bring home his car first place in the standings. Mansell won his title in 1992 with Williams.

The last driver to appear at Ferrari was Eddie Irvine, from 1996 until 1999. Irvine won all four races of his career in 1999 when he missed out on the title against Mika Häkkinen by just two points, and he failed to start from pole position throughout his whole career. A year later, Michael Schumacher ended the drought and won his first out of his five-in-a-row titles with the Italian team.

The Golden Age of Formula 1

From 1950 until 1968, seven other British drivers represented the famous Italians not including Hawthorn and Surtees.

The first Briton to run a race for Ferrari was Peter Whitehead. He competed in two Grands Prix for the works teams, but he failed to make the race in those in 1950. However, at the French GP that year, competing under his team but with a Ferrari car, he finished on the podium.

Peter Collins could have been a world champion, but he famously handed over his Ferrari to Juan Manuel Fangio in 1956, after the Argentine had to retire in the final race of the season. Collins won three races with Ferrari, competing with the team from 1956 until 1958 when he had a fatal crash at the Nürburgring.

Tony Brooks was also close to winning a title for Ferrari in 1959, when he was a driver for the team at every race but the one in Silverstone. He earned three wins and two pole positions that season, but lost the title to Jack Brabham.

Cliff Allison raced for Ferrari in 1959 and 1960 during six races, earning a single podium at the 1960 Argentine Grand Prix finishing second. In the same amount of races between 1966 and 1967, Mike Parkes managed to double Allison’s number of podiums, and finished second in the 1966 French and Italian Grands Prix.

In 1967, Jonathan Williams competed in his only race at the Mexican Grand Prix, failing to score a single point.

Well-known in the world of endurance racing, having won 24h of Le Mans and the Daytona 24 multiple times, Derek Bell was the final Briton to race for Ferrari ahead of Nigel Mansell’s signing in 1989. In 1968, he ran at the Italian and the American GPs, but did not finish either of them.