Pedro Rodríguez wins at Spa as Brabham leads the 1970 F1 title race

There are certain people in Formula 1 who arrive in the paddock through the front door, carrying with them polished CVs, silver-spoon assumptions, inherited contacts and accents that sound as though they were educated at Eton while simultaneously being dry-cleaned at Harrods. And then there is Otmar Szafnauer.

Otmar came from somewhere else entirely. Not merely geographically – although geographically too, emphatically so – but culturally, psychologically and existentially. F1 is and always has been a world built on improbable ambition, but even by its standards Szafnauer’s story feels almost fantastical: a little Romanian boy from a village without running water eventually becoming the leader of grand prix teams capable of giant-killing.

Nick Fry during his Honda Formula 1 team management days. — Otmar Szafnauer was hired by Honda in 2001, rising to vice-president of its Racing Development department –here at the 2002 Austrian GP

Sutton Images

“You’re absolutely right,” he says when I suggest that rural Romania is not the likeliest cradle for a future F1 team principal, “and, although I don’t know exactly how many team principals we’ve had in F1 history, I do know that there have been only two of us from Romania: me and Colin Kolles [who held that position for the Hispania F1 team in 2011 and 2012]. But hopefully that’s where the similarities between us end.”

The line lands exactly as intended: dry, sharp and mischievous. Those who know Szafnauer well understand that beneath the calm managerial exterior is a man with a highly developed sense of irony and a memory capable of storing every political slight, every organisational inefficiency, every engineering misstep and every dramatic absurdity that the sport has thrown at him.

But before all that there was Semlac (do not worry: I will explain). “I left Romania when I was eight,” he says, smiling expansively. “We lived in a house that didn’t have running water, but that didn’t really matter to me because I was just a kid. I didn’t have a television growing up either, but my cousin did, so, because Saturday morning was always cartoon time on TV in Romania – American cartoons – I’d go to my cousin’s house to watch them on Saturday mornings.”

“I went back to work for Ford on the Monday with two trophies”

Already, listening to him, one begins to understand something important about Szafnauer: his worldview was forged not in entitlement but in adaptation. He has spent his life solving problems because life itself initially presented one enormous logistical complication. “I was OK with what now seems like deprivation because it was all I knew. But for my parents life was hard, because there was oppression from the government, led by Nicolae Ceauşescu. You didn’t have normal freedoms or basic human rights, and you didn’t have the economic scope to prosper and make yourself and your family better off. But as an eight-year-old you don’t understand how difficult that kind of thing is, because you spend your days going to school then coming home and kicking a soccer ball around with your mates.”

There is no self-pity in any of this. Szafnauer narrates hardship the way an F1 engineer might discuss understeer: as a variable to be understood, managed and overcome. “We lived in a rural area, in a small village in the Semlac commune of western Romania. We grew our own vegetables and we kept our own chickens and pigs. People in our village didn’t need grocery stores, so as a kid I didn’t feel the economic plight that urban Romanians felt when the grocery stores in towns and cities had no food in them. Instead we went into our gardens and picked potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes that we’d grown ourselves. Every fourth or fifth household had a cow, and as a four-year-old I remember, every night, having to walk over with our little jug to get fresh cow’s milk from the neighbours who lived a few doors down. It would be really, really dark because there were no outdoor lights. My dad used to say to me, ‘Don’t worry about walking in the dark, because the moon will walk with you.’ And it always did.”

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That last sentence lingers. It is lyrical without trying to be. Little Otmar’s father could never have imagined that his son would one day spend his evenings negotiating multi-million-dollar contracts with megastar F1 drivers in suites in five-star Monte Carlo hotels, having spent the previous afternoons arguing about aerodynamic set-ups with expensively educated Englishmen who had studied for PhDs at Oxford and Cambridge. Yet it happened, for Szafnauer has uniquely traversed the unlikely journey between that moonlit Romanian alleyway and the Monaco paddock and pitwall.

The Ford Indigo V12 concept sports car in a studio setting. — Szafnauer’s Indycar for the road: the 1996 Ford Indigo concept car was powered by a 6-litre V12

Ford

How did it even begin? “I don’t know why – I’ll never know why – but a school in my village bought two go-karts, and they set up a little oval dirt track in the playground that the older kids would race around. I got to drive one of those go-karts when I was six years old, and that’s when it started. Also my dad, who worked for a railcar manufacturing company, was one of only two people in our village to have a car. Just Dad and the doctor had one – everyone else had a horse and cart. So, because we had a car and I was able to have a run in the school’s go-karts, I fell in love with all that.

“Then, when I was eight, we moved to Warren, Michigan, just outside Detroit. Now we had running water and a TV, and, when I was 10, my neighbour, also 10, told me that his dad [Jim Halloran] competed in Pro Stock NHRA drag races. My mate’s dad would bring his race car transporter home every once in a while – it would barely fit in their driveway – and that, too, was fascinating for me.”

Detroit in the early 1970s was effectively the Vatican of internal combustion and Szafnauer absorbed it all. “Every birthday I’d say to my parents, ‘I want a go-kart.’ But every birthday I got a soccer ball, a basketball, or a baseball glove instead. I never got a go-kart because they couldn’t afford one.” Again: no bitterness; merely fact.

“The most significant difference between Ford and Honda was that the Honda guys were racers”

A remarkable aspect of ambitious people is that delayed dreams tend to ferment rather than fade. Hard graft almost always plays its part, too, and Szafnauer eventually found his route into racing not through privilege but via financial discipline and determination. “I graduated from university with an engineering degree at the age of 21, and I started working for the Ford Motor Company when I was 22. I was still living at home. I was saving 95% of my net earnings and I duly saved enough to go to the Jim Russell Racing Drivers’ School at Laguna Seca in California. In 1989 I got my racing licence. I then did a couple of Formula Ford races, and a few Formula Mazda races as well, then I decided to buy a race car of my own so that I could race more consistently and more often.”

What followed were the classic requirements of grassroots motor sport: ingenuity, hustle and endless toil. “I was in luck because at that time there was a racing series in Canada for Formula Ford 2000 cars, which was called Esso Protec because it was sponsored by Esso Protec [engine oil], but it was disbanded. When it was disbanded all the guys who had been racing in it went to race somewhere else, so they all needed to sell their Esso Protec cars, and I bought a Reynard Esso Protec car from a guy in Montreal called Stéphane Proulx, a gay guy, very fast, who’d moved up to French Formula 3. Sadly he died of HIV/AIDS in 1993, aged just 27.”

Szafnauer pauses solemnly when mentioning Proulx. Motor sport careers are often littered with such ghosts. “Anyway,” he goes on finally, “I bought Stéphane’s Reynard, and my first two races in it were at a road course, Nelson Ledges, in Garrettsville, Ohio. It’s a great story actually.”

Honda RA106 Formula 1 car races during the 2006 season. — Future world champion Jenson Button earned his first F1 victory driving for Honda at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix

Grand Prix Photo

It really is. “I needed an SCCA [Sports Car Club of America] licence, for which you had to do two race weekends plus a lot of classroom work, so that they could teach you the rules, the flags, the racing etiquette, all that. After the first class I did at Nelson Ledges they had a 15-lap race, I won it, and I lapped the field. Afterwards the officials said, ‘You know what? We’re going to give you your SCCA licence after only one weekend, you don’t have to do the second weekend. There’s an SCCA regional race here tomorrow and you’re welcome to race in it.’ Well, I did, and I won that, too. So I went back to work for Ford on the Monday with two trophies in my bag, because I’d won two races.”

You can almost picture the young man’s grin – indeed, sitting in front of me, the middle-aged man is grinning now. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to be F1 world champion,’ but obviously that was naive. Anyway the next step was SCCA national races, and after that was USF2000. But the farther up I moved, the harder it became. First, the competition became much more intense. When I was racing USF2000, kids were coming over from the UK, boys who’d won in Formula Ford in the UK. I was in my mid or late-twenties, they were 17 or 18, and they’d been karting forever. So they were really good.

“And, second, there was a fresh car development in USF2000 every year. The Van Diemen was the dominant car, so, if you wanted to do well, you had to have a Van Diemen, and every year they developed and improved it. So my old Reynard got slower and slower relative to the Van Diemen every year. I was getting better, but my car was getting worse, and the result was that I was always in the midfield.”

What matters here – and it matters a lot – is not that Szafnauer did not become a racing star. What matters is what he learned by not becoming one. “That frustrating pattern continued to be the case every year until 1995, by which time I was in my early thirties, when I rented a Van Diemen for a race at Indianapolis Raceway Park the night before the Indy 500. I wanted to see how good I really was versus the handicap of my ageing equipment, so to speak. I qualified quite well, seventh out of 44, but in the race I crashed. I understeered into the wall. I didn’t hit it hard, but I hit it hard enough to the extent that I couldn’t afford the spares to fix it.” That, in a few unsentimental sentences, is privateer motor sport distilled to its purest essence.

Racing Point Formula 1 team prepares the car on the starting grid. — Szafnauer rates the management style of Force India chief Vijay Mallya, right, who would delegate, allowing the team to get on with racing

Grand Prix Photo

“I was annoyed with myself, so I drove home instead of staying to watch the Indy 500 the next day, which is what I’d been planning to do, and I missed seeing Jacques Villeneuve winning it in a Reynard. I’d like to have seen that actually.” Now comes a line that illustrates how he later became such an effective F1 operator: “That was it for me as far as racing cars was concerned. But, you know, I learned so much in those five years of owning, running and racing for my own little team, and the lessons I learned have been useful to me throughout my career ever since.”

Indeed they have – because F1, despite its opulence, is fundamentally a resource-allocation contest, and no one understands the allocation of resources quite like someone who once could not afford the spare parts to repair his own crashed race car.

Even so, Szafnauer’s route into F1 was delightfully improbable. “Here I was, racing in North America, in a Reynard, when Adrian Reynard decided to go IndyCar racing at the same time. So I called the Reynard offices in Indianapolis in an effort to buy spare parts for my Reynard race car, because I figured it would be cheaper than importing them from the UK, but they never answered my calls. I then ran into Adrian at an IndyCar race somewhere, and I said, ‘Adrian, I race a USF2000 Reynard. I want to buy spares from you, in North America, so that I don’t have to pay so much.’ And that’s really how our relationship started.

“But our relationship quickly developed further because I’d been tasked by Ford to come up with a few new concepts under the umbrella of sports and performance. My first concept was a hot version of the Ford Explorer, which Ford never pursued, but was ahead of its time, because almost every manufacturer sells sports and performance SUVs nowadays; and the second was an IndyCar for the road with an IndyCar-style carbon tub and IndyCar-style pushrod suspension.”

He is grinning again – and now, suddenly, I glimpse the engineer-dreamer within him. “We called it the Indigo, and it was fantastic. It had a stressed mid-mounted 6-litre V12 and a stressed sequential gearbox, and I’d lined up Reynard to build 150 of them per year. Ford never pursued that either though, sadly.”

Relationships matter in Formula 1 perhaps more than in any other sport – for although F1 is big, the paddock is small. Moreover, reputations travel at fibre-optic speed, and Szafnauer’s big break is an example of exactly that. “Not long afterwards, Adrian said to me, ‘Otmar, we’re starting an F1 team from scratch, called British American Racing [later truncated to BAR]. British American Tobacco are going to fund it, and we’re going to need to hire hundreds of people for it. Are you willing to leave Ford to come and work with us as our operations director?’ I said yes, and I quit Ford straight away.”

And just like that, the little boy from Semlac was in F1. “We did the deal in 1997, and I duly started in 1998 at British American Racing as operations director, based in Brackley, in the UK, readying the team for its debut in 1999.”

“We never had a lot of money at Force India. But we finished fourth in the constructors’ championship”

Those BAR years were risibly ambitious at first, then chaotic, then combustible and therefore quintessentially late-1990s F1 – yet, despite all that, Szafnauer successfully avoided most of the political crossfire. “I did that for a few years – difficult years because starting a new F1 team from scratch is always hard – but in 2000 we finished joint fourth in the F1 World Constructors’ Championship, tied on points with Benetton, which was encouraging. But, also in 2000, I was approached by Bobby Rahal, who was running the Jaguar F1 team, based in Milton Keynes, to be his number two, because he was trying to combine running the Jaguar F1 team with running his own IndyCar team and he was spending almost his whole life on long-haul flights, which was unsustainable. It seemed like a good move into a senior and stable position, so I said yes.”

But, F1 being F1, that apparently senior stability lasted approximately five minutes. “I handed in my notice at BAR in the usual way. Then, on the Friday before the Monday on which I was due to start at Jaguar, I got a phone call from a PA in Niki Lauda’s office saying, ‘Sorry, we’ve just fired Bobby so we don’t need you to work for us any more.’”

“So, although I’d signed a three-year contract with Jaguar, the only time I ever set foot in what was going to be my office was to negotiate my way out of that contract, with as much compensation as I could persuade them to give me. It worked out OK.” That little coda – “It worked out OK” – is probably vintage Szafnauer understatement.

“Then, immediately after that, I was approached by Honda, because they’d already decided to buy BAR and they wanted someone on their side who knew how big car companies worked and also knew how BAR worked. Well, having worked for Ford and BAR, I fitted that bill perfectly. So just a week after I’d agreed my goodbye deal with Jaguar, I started work for Honda, again based in the UK.

“The most significant difference between Ford and Honda, to my mind at least, was that the Honda guys were out-and-out racers. They’d do absolutely anything for performance, and I really liked that.” He is grinning again, and I sense genuine admiration. “But fast-forward to now and Honda can’t do that in F1 because of the cost cap. But if they could, they still would.

Racing Point crew celebrate as Sergio Pérez crosses the finish line. — Victory for Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez at the 2020 Sakhir GP – Szafnauer’s favourite F1 moment

Sutton

“Back then they did though – and when they bought BAR, and they renamed it Honda Racing F1 Team, which competed in F1 between 2006 and 2008, they always did. We won the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix, and by 2008 we had three wind tunnels running in tandem, two in the UK and one in Japan. Then the world was plunged into financial crisis at the end of 2008, Honda pulled out of F1, and the brilliant double-diffuser Honda car that we’d developed became the Brawn car that won the F1 World Championship with Jenson Button in 2009.”

Szafnauer did a good job at BAR and Honda, but if his reputation was forged anywhere, it was at Force India and later Racing Point. There, his skill set aligned perfectly with circumstance: limited resources, ambitious targets, endless political turbulence and a need for calm operational intelligence.

“Vijay Mallya, who owned Force India, had done a deal with [McLaren boss] Ron Dennis whereby Force India would pay McLaren for the use of McLaren technology – 32 days in the McLaren simulator, plus use of McLaren gearboxes, McLaren hydraulic systems, the McLaren rear impact substructure, two McLaren software packages [Morse and Marple], and McLaren’s manufacturing and assembly expert Simon Roberts on loan.

“But after a year Simon decided to go back to McLaren, so now Vijay was looking for a replacement. He asked Bernie [Ecclestone], whom I’d got to know really well after I left Honda. I founded Soft Pauer, and in 2009 we developed the F1 app for the iPhone. Bernie recommended me to Vijay, Vijay went ahead and hired me, and my first race with Force India was Brazil 2009.

“Do you remember that I told you I’d learned a hell of a lot when I was running and racing for my own team back in the States? Well, one of the things I’d learned was how to make every cent count. We never had a lot of money at Force India, not compared with the big teams which in that era [2008-2018] were McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes, just as they are now. But, even so, we finished fourth in the constructors’ championship in 2016 and 2017, and we’d have finished fourth again in 2018 had we not run out of money and entered administration [owing to large debts accumulated by the team’s owners].

Sergio Pérez celebrates victory on the Sakhir Grand Prix podium. — Sakhir in 2020 was Pérez’s first F1 win; more would follow after his move to Red Bull in ’21

Florent Gooden/Dppi Media

“It was a small team, but we were a great bunch with a fantastic esprit de corps. I look back on those 10 years at Force India and Racing Point [as the team was renamed in 2018] with a degree of pride – pride in the team. OK, we stumbled a bit when we went bankrupt in 2018, because Vijay got embroiled in legal and financial troubles in India, but until then we were probably the most efficiently successful F1 team on the grid, point for point, pound for pound.”

That phrase – “point for point, pound for pound” – captures the essence of the operation beautifully, and now Szafnauer leans back in his chair and says something genuinely insightful about leadership. “As an F1 team owner Vijay was hugely underrated. He loved racing, he went to most of the grands prix, but he hardly ever visited the factory. He knew how to delegate, which is the secret of good leadership and clever management, and he let us get on with the job. He was the absolute opposite of a micromanager. In that sense he was very like Dietrich Mateschitz, under whose ownership Red Bull was fantastically successful, but rather unlike Lawrence Stroll, under whose ownership Aston Martin has not yet proved to be quite so successful.” There speaks a man perfectly capable of delivering a velvet-gloved jab.

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But before the Aston Martin complications came the high point. “That race was and still is the highlight of my F1 career,” Szafnauer says of ‘Checo’ Pérez’s extraordinary victory in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. “If you remember, that was the race in which George Russell replaced Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes because Lewis had Covid. OK, without that late left-rear puncture, George might well have won it, because he did a great super-sub job, but we were bang on the pace and we beat Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and the rest on merit, even though we had only 400 employees whereas all the big teams had more than 1200 by then.

“It was brilliant, just the most fantastic feeling. And, don’t forget, Checo was dead-last at one point, but he never gave up, he pushed all the way, and he came through to win.” Even now, six years on, Szafnauer’s recollection still carries emotional voltage.

Then came Aston Martin. “Lawrence had bought the team at the end of 2018 – because Vijay could no longer fund it whereas Lawrence definitely could – but it wasn’t renamed Aston Martin until 2021. Lawrence’s vision was: ‘If I can give these guys a bit more budget, we can grow and improve the team, and together we can take it up the F1 drivers’ and constructors’ championships from fourth to first.’

“At first it was working well. We hired good people, we grew and improved the team, but in the end Lawrence began to get more involved in areas that I thought were my responsibility.” What follows is Szafnauer at his most revealing: measured, logical, analytical and forensic. “Matters came to a head when I found out from [Red Bull team principal] Christian Horner that Lawrence had begun trying to hire Red Bull’s HR director [Heath Cade]. I said to Lawrence, ‘We already have a great HR director [Sarah Watson] – we don’t need to replace her.’

Szafnauer Pit Wall — There was frustration at Aston Martin in 2021, where Szafnauer found himself outmanoeuvred by Lawrence Stroll; he left for Alpine in ’22

LAT Images

“Well, Lawrence didn’t argue with me, but he instructed one of my direct reports [Robert Yeowart, chief financial officer] to approach Heath without my knowledge, and in the end Lawrence insisted that we hire Heath. Now, to be clear, when I met Heath, I could see that he was a strong candidate, but Sarah was also excellent and she didn’t need to be replaced, and the way the whole thing had been handled, behind my back, even though I was team principal and chief executive officer, felt all wrong.”

Then comes perhaps the most illuminating line in our entire interview. “An old baseball player once told me, ‘Managers manage, coaches coach, and players play.’ That’s so true, and it’s absolutely how things should be run – in baseball and in all sports, including F1.” There, distilled into one sentence, lies the essence of Szafnauer’s philosophy of leadership. “Yet that was no longer how Lawrence was allowing us to operate.”

“The way the whole thing had been handled, even though I was principal and CEO, felt wrong”

The arrival of a recently-retired-then-suddenly-unretired McLaren bigwig accelerated matters. “The issue came to a head when Lawrence hired Martin Whitmarsh as group CEO. When Martin arrived, he wrote me a couple of nice emails, saying stuff like, ‘I want to come in, I want to learn all about the team, alongside you, and after that I want to work collaboratively with you, to take the team forward together’ – all that sort of thing.

“That sounded good – obviously – but it wasn’t what actually happened because within a month he’d taken over the vast majority of my duties and responsibilities as CEO. In fact he’d taken over almost all my duties and responsibilities within the factory, leaving me left with more or less only the trackside part.

“Renault had begun to look to recruit me to become team principal of Alpine, which appeared to be a role in which once again I’d be able to control the destiny of an F1 team, as its leader, not merely as a guy who was coming along for the ride. So I left Aston Martin in January 2022, which I could do without a notice period because I felt they’d altered the terms of my contract without my consent, and I started work for Alpine straight away.”

An Alpine Formula 1 car in BWT colours on track during testing. — Alpine’s Fernando Alonso testing at Barcelona, in 2022; Renault expected instant success

Grand Prix Photo

At Alpine he inherited challenges both technical and cultural, however. “Our Renault power unit was 15kW [20bhp] down on those of our rivals, which was a serious problem, but, working with the good people there, and there were plenty of them, we began to make improvements to systems, to operations, to processes, to production efficiencies, all that, and those improvements began to accelerate our performance gains.”

Again, one notices Szafnauer’s recurring managerial themes: systems, operations, processes, efficiencies and people. “By the end of the 2022 season our chassis had become pretty good, and we finished fourth in the 2022 constructors’ championship with a power unit that was the worst on the grid, which was an encouraging start for me. I was enjoying it.”

But F1 team owners are not famous for their patience. “The following winter we continued to make changes, we began to see progress, and we started the season pretty well, but the Renault high-ups said they wanted to win the F1 World Championship more or less straight away, whereas I’d set a 100-race time frame on it, which I think was realistic and doable, but they didn’t like that, so that was that.” He was fired at mid-season, and most F1 pundits and commentators thought the decision truly bizarre.

And now? Well, now Formula 1 finds itself in an intriguing position. It is awash with money, swollen with car manufacturers, and crowded with executives who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as the cliché goes. In such an environment, super-experienced F1 operators capable of building functioning racing organisations are surprisingly rare commodities – and Szafnauer knows it. “I’m 61,” he begins, frowning earnestly at first, then suddenly chuckling. “I’d like to work until I’m 65 or 66, so I’ve got about five more years. In those five-or-so more years, if I can help an F1 team make real progress, help it go from the back half of the grid to the front half, well, I’ve done it before and I could do it again.”

Frankly, looking around the current F1 grid, I reckon there are several team owners who should probably be listening carefully. But there is one final twist. “I’ve also done a lot of work preparing an entry route for a potential 12th F1 team. Any new F1 team would have to be backed by a big company and/or a car manufacturer, with deep pockets, just like the last new F1 team, Cadillac, was and is [backed by the leading sports investment vehicle TWG and the giant car company GM]. Whenever that big company and/or car manufacturer with deep pockets comes along, which it will, I’ll be in a great position to help them enter F1 because, as I say, I’ve done a lot of the preparatory work already.”

And that is the point. Otmar Szafnauer has spent a lifetime preparing. Preparing to leave Romania. Preparing to race. Preparing to build teams with too little money and too few people. Preparing to out-think richer opponents. Preparing for political turbulence. Preparing for the next opportunity. The moon, one suspects, is still walking with him.

Otmar Szafnauer walks through the Formula 1 paddock. — Formula 1 via Getty Images

CV

BORN: 13/08/1964, SEMLAC, ROMANIA

● 1972 Family moves to Warren, Michigan.

● 1986 Graduates with an engineering degree; to Ford as programmes manager.

● 1991 Attends Jim Russell Racing Driver School; starts racing in Formula Ford.

● 1993 Manager of Ford Racing in the US, overseeing lower-level categories.

● 1998 Becomes operations director at new F1 team British American Racing; fourth in 2000 constructors’ standings.

● 2001 Recruited by Honda Racing Developments; rises to vice-president.

● 2008 Founder of Soft Pauer

● 2009 To Force India as COO; 4th in F1 constructors’ championship in 2016 and ’17.

● 2018 Team principal at Racing Point; victory for Sergio Pérez at 2020 Sakhir GP.

● 2021 Retains role at Aston Martin.

● 2022-23 Team principal at Alpine; 4th in F1 constructors’ championship in ’22.

Pedro Rodríguez wins at Spa as Brabham leads the 1970 F1 title race

Mario Andretti leads Ronnie Peterson during Lotus's dominant 1978 season — Mario Andretti leads Ronnie Peterson in the 1978 Dutch GP

Grand Prix Photo

10. Mario Andretti + Ronnie Peterson 1978

Win rate: 57%
Win count: 6 + 2 out of 14 GPs
One drivers’ title
One constructors’ title

In the mid-70s, Mario Andretti had finally committed to what he’d started on his sensational pole-winning Formula 1 debut at Watkins Glen in 1968 by joining forces with Colin Chapman to properly crack Formula 1. He was a key component in the development of the ‘wing car’ Type 78 – and he wasn’t about to be derailed in his mission to become champion by a gifted and fast incoming team-mate. No matter how great he was as a bloke.

Ronnie Peterson and Mario Andretti during Lotus's 1978 title-winning season — Zandvoort was the final 1-2 for original Lotus

Sutton Images

Chapman had previous when it came to mismanaging quick team-mates. By coincidence, Ronnie Peterson had also been the unwitting ‘problem’ when he and Emerson Fittipaldi took points off each other and opened the door for Jackie Stewart’s third world crown in 1973. This time, history wouldn’t repeat. “I’d made my position clear to Colin,” said Andretti. “The agreement was if both cars were running at the front with no problem, then I was to win. Ronnie accepted that when he signed his contract.”

The season of the black and gold ‘train’ is recalled as one of domination, although it was nothing compared to much later one-sided Mercedes and Red Bull years. Between them, Andretti and Peterson claimed over half the races they competed in as team-mates, before Ronnie’s death in the wake of his Monza crash. It was there that Mario achieved his goal, with two races to spare.

Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard launch McLaren's 1999 Formula 1 campaign — The second of Mika Häkkinen’s F1 titles came in 1999 – a golden era for McLaren, with David Coulthard a podium regular

Dppi

9. Mika Häkkinen + David Coulthard 1996-01

Win rate: 31%
Win count: 20 + 10 out of 98 GPs
Two drivers’ titles
One constructors’ title

Their win rate across six seasons was comparatively low. Keep in mind that in their first year paired together the still-fresh McLaren-Mercedes alliance wasn’t yet firing on all cylinders. But this double act makes our top 10 due to a few crucial points.

First, they were the spearhead of a new, German-powered age of Adrian Newey-shaped glory that pulled McLaren from its 1990s slump; second, Mika Häkkinen single-handedly provided blessed resistance to the incoming tide of Schumacher/Ferrari domination, claiming hard-fought back-to-back titles in 1998 and ’99; and third, their partnership was conducted harmoniously (at least in public) and at a high level of performance over a long period. This was a good, and at times great, era for McLaren.

Yes, Coulthard remains forever humble over his abilities and accepts his place in Häkkinen’s shadow. But he had his moments – one of his finest wins was Magny-Cours in 2000 – and beyond Häkkinen’s retirement in ’01 he continued to serve McLaren valiantly for three more seasons. As for Häkkinen, he was and remains one of F1’s most explosive talents, as the only driver Schumacher considered an equal.

Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello celebrate Ferrari's dominant partnership — Rubens Barrichello was the Scuderia number two to Michael Schumacher

Clive Rose/Getty Images

8. Michael Schumacher + Rubens Barrichello 2000-05

Win rate: 56%
Win count: 49 + 9 out of 104 GPs
Five drivers’ titles
Five constructors’ titles

Clearly, there was a senior partner when it came to Ferrari’s greatest run of Formula 1 success. Michael Schumacher infamously held the upper hand over Rubens Barrichello in every regard during their six seasons together, including contractually – although the Brazilian emerged with his dignity intact and with a shelf full of trophies that included a few cups for victories he claimed on full merit.

As his interview with Motor Sport [Matt Bishop Meets, November 2025] emphasised once more, Barrichello accepted his position with good grace (if also through gritted teeth). Austria 2002 and Jean Todt’s scandalous order for him to hand victory to Schumacher at just the sixth of 17 races rammed home the full consequence of what Barrichello had agreed to when he sold his soul at the Maranello crossroads. It remains high among the most depressing days for long-time F1 watchers.

The win rate would have been higher – at 67% – had Barrichello split at the end of 2004. Instead, his final season in red, 2005, was ruined by Bridgestone’s miscalculation on what turned out to be a one-season-only ban on mid-race tactical tyre changes. The ignominy of Schumacher’s lone victory at Indianapolis was the only ‘highlight’ that year. It was an unequal partnership that had paid Ferrari its greatest dividends.

Damon Hill leads Jacques Villeneuve in the dominant Williams FW18 — Damon Hill leads Jacques Villeneuve, Estoril, 1996

DPPI

7. Damon Hill + Jacques Villeneuve 1996

Win rate: 75%
Win count: 8 + 4 out of 16 GPs
One drivers’ title
One constructors’ title

A short and sweet partnership between a duo who shared a high level of mutual respect. In Adrian Newey and Patrick Head’s near-perfect Williams FW18, against opposition weakened by Michael Schumacher’s defection from Benetton to Ferrari, just look at those numbers. Only Schumacher’s genius and a freak Monaco GP that fell to Ligier and Olivier Panis thwarted a Rothmans white-and-blue wash.

Villeneuve was lucky, of course, to land from IndyCar into the best car on the grid, but he made the most of his golden chance.

Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve celebrate Williams' successful 1996 partnership — The pair ended ’96 first and second

Dppi

Meanwhile, Hill was introspectively focused on a potentially open goal. “I’d been soundly trounced by Michael the previous season and by the end it was pretty torrid,” he told Motor Sport. “So I re-set myself, dumped 1995 in the bin and went into ’96 with a completely fresh mind. I knew I had this one last big opportunity, nothing else worried me, and I really liked Jacques in many ways. He was a fresh face in the sport. He wasn’t tainted by F1.”

How Villeneuve almost embarrassed Hill first time out in Melbourne, then took Damon all the way to the final round, makes this one of the great rookie seasons. A shame then, that Williams made a wrong call, by sacking Hill for ’97 in favour of Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Villeneuve vs Schumacher was spicy as it was. Imagine the tingle had Hill remained in the mix to defend his title.

Jack Brabham leads Denny Hulme during the 1966 Dutch Grand Prix — Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme lead from the front in the 1966 Dutch GP

Grand Prix Photo

6. Jack Brabham + Denny Hulme 1966-67

Win rate: 40%
Win count: 6 + 2 out of 20 GPs
Two drivers’ titles
Two constructors’ titles

A chance encounter for Jack Brabham with an Oldsmobile engine block in Los Angeles triggered a mid-60s burst of glory for this undemonstrative, doughty pair. Fettled by Repco into a compact and frugal V8, then fitted to Ron Tauranac’s safe-as-houses spaceframe BT19, Brabham undercut Lotus, Ferrari and Cooper in Formula 1’s ‘Return to Power’ first 3-litre season – and turned back the clock.

Four in a row across the summer of 1966 – the French, British, Dutch and German Grands Prix – revived memories of Jack’s glorious 1960 season. Now the Old Man – all of 40 – became the first to win in a car bearing his own name, and then a three-time world champion. What a turn-up. He hadn’t won a single points-paying GP through the five years of 1.5-litre F1.

Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme discuss strategy before a Formula 1 race — Team talk, Nürburgring, ’66

GettyImages

His friend and Kiwi team-mate Denny Hulme ably stepped up when Dan Gurney left at just the wrong time to create his lovely Eagles. Then a year later, Denny surprised the boss by outscoring him. His first F1 win, in Monaco, was overshadowed by the horror of Lorenzo Bandini’s death. But Hulme won again later that summer at the Nürburgring, then shadowed Brabham in the Mexican finale to claim an unflustered crown.

The partnership was broken without rancour for ’68 when Hulme transferred to his mate and countryman Bruce McLaren’s team. Brabham’s green-and-gold mid-decade purple patch quickly faded. But talk about taking your chances when they crop up.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg begin their Mercedes team-mate partnership — New team-mates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton before the 2013 Aussie GP

LAT/Sutton Images

5. Lewis Hamilton + Nico Rosberg 2013-16

Win rate: 69%
Win count: 32 + 22 out of 78 GPs
Three drivers’ titles
Three constructors’ titles

Check out those numbers… Nico Rosberg is another who too often is underrated. Fresh from seeing off a returning (and not quite as sharp) Michael Schumacher over three seasons, Keke’s lad welcomed his old karting buddy into the Mercedes fold for 2013. But this was only going to fall one way, surely.

Yes… but Rosberg proved more of a thorn to Lewis Hamilton than most would have predicted. And without him, Hamilton would already have been a record eight-time world champion by the time Michael Masi’s fast and loose reading of the FIA rule book diddled him out of the infamous 2021 crown.

Russell vs Antonelli resembles one of F1’s most toxic team-mate battles

The emerging Antonelli vs Russell F1 title duel brings to mind 2016 and the Hamilton-Rosberg years. But there’s an older, destructive example that’s a closer match for Mercedes’ current situation

27th May 2026

By Pablo Elizalde

Paired for F1’s final season with V8 power, both were in the pound seats when Mercedes changed the game as the V6 turbo hybrid era dawned in 2014. The old friendship soon became strained as the stakes rose, Rosberg resorting to gamesmanship at Monaco and overt aggression at Spa to combat the irrepressible force of an all-time great.

He had no answer in 2015 as Hamilton’s career numbers continued to expand – which makes his 2016 achievement all the more impressive. Lewis won 10 races to Nico’s nine, but through guile, genuine speed and some bad luck for the three-time title winner, Rosberg held his nerve to join his old man as a world champion.

His decision to then immediately retire cured a worsening headache for team chief Toto Wolff, given the tattered state of the relationship between his two champions. Another example of bitter irony behind the soubriquet of ‘team-mate’.

Alain Prost and Niki Lauda during McLaren's successful partnership — Alain Prost and champion Niki Lauda in Rio for Round 1 of ’85

LAT Images

4. Niki Lauda + Alain Prost 1984-85

Win rate: 56%
Win count: 6 + 12 out of 32 GPs
Two drivers’ titles
Two constructors’ titles

We’ve previously voted these two as the ‘greatest’ team-mate rivals [The enemy within, January 2024) – another contentious term – and they score highly here too as the best of team-mates. That they famously got on so well again makes them a breath of fresh air, for a far more harmonious run of success compared to other examples on this list. Well, at least between the drivers, we mean. Ron Dennis’s declining relationships with both Niki Lauda and designer John Barnard eroded and shortened the lifespan of this iteration of the ultimate 1980s superteam.

Alain Prost leads Ayrton Senna during McLaren's dominant partnership — Austria, later in ’85 – and Prost is now McLaren’s leading driver

DPPI

This was a different Lauda to the peak version who led Ferrari through its mid-70s pomp. Ruffled at first by Prost’s arrival from Renault – John Watson, while quick, was so much easier to live with – Lauda’s famous pragmatism became his greatest strength. He quickly accepted that going toe-to-toe on pure speed was a waste of time, so focused on maximising his scoring potential. Rather than grind his teeth at the half-point defeat in 1984, magnanimous Prost proved forever grateful at the lessons he learned. They’d come in handy for another ‘big beast’ team-mate later in the decade.

In their second season together, there was no contest, although Lauda at least took a 25th and final GP win at Zandvoort. This time he walked away (as a driver) for good as Prost ripped the monkey from his back to become the champion he always was.

Juan Manuel Fangio leads Giuseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo one-two — Juan Manuel Fangio followed by Alfa team-mate ‘Nino’ Farina, Silverstone, 1951

Getty Images

3. Juan Manuel Fangio + Giuseppe Farina 1950-51

Win rate: 77%
Win count: 6 + 4 out of 13 GPs
Two drivers’ world titles

In his book Fangio by Fangio, The Maestro admitted he was left “bitter” by the mechanical problems that allowed ‘Nino’ Farina – a man he referred to as his friend – to beat him to the inaugural world championship in 1950. “Some observers, in whispers, called attention to those repeated, too regular breakdowns, saying they happened too often to be mere chance,” he wrote. “I refused to listen to such guesswork.” Didn’t stop him pointing it out!

The pair were joined by pre-war grand prix ace Luigi Fagioli to form Alfa Romeo’s ‘three Fs’, and Fangio described the news of a world championship coming into being as “electrifying”. Then he “nearly had a stroke” when he opened a telegram from the great marque inviting him to join its team.

Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss with the Mercedes Formula 1 team — 1950 BRDC International Trophy

Getty Images

Farina carried a reputation into battles. Fangio described him as “loco” in an interview with Nigel Roebuck. “I hated to drive with him in traffic on the way to a race… ay, ay, ay. Of course, he killed himself in a road accident.”

In Alfa’s second and final year with the glorious 158/159, Fangio had the rising force of Ferrari and Alberto Ascari to worry about more than Farina, but had enough to achieve the first of his eventual five titles. As he told Roebuck, “In sentimental terms the Alfetta was my favourite car, because it gave me the chance to be champion for the first time.”

Juan Manuel Fangio leads Stirling Moss in Mercedes Formula 1 cars — Fangio (No8) and Stirling Moss (No10) on their way to a 1-2 in the 1955 Dutch GP

Gilles Levent/DPPI

2. Juan Manuel Fangio + Stirling Moss 1955

Win rate: 83%
Win count: 4 + 1 out of 6 GPs
One drivers’ world title

Here’s a line-up that was a true partnership. But had it lasted beyond one season, had Mercedes-Benz raced into 1956 and beyond, how long would Stirling Moss have maintained his unquestioning deference to the driver he respected beyond all others?

The master-and-apprentice narrative was neatly framed within one near-perfect Formula 1 season. Only the Monaco Grand Prix escaped the silver train, when both Fangio and Moss dropped out to the benefit of Maurice Trintignant.

Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss celebrate a Mercedes one-two finish — 1-2 was reversed at Aintree a month later

Gilles Levent/DPPI

Fangio recalled first meeting and being impressed by Moss at the Bari GP in 1951 (despite lapping his HWM twice). Five years later, Moss was “that tenacious British rival, one of the best I ever drove against”.

In a sports car, Moss already had Fangio’s measure. In F1… well, there was so little between them. Moss appeared content to follow in the Maestro’s wheel tracks that summer. “Fangio was my strongest reason for going to Mercedes,” Stirling would tell our own Rob Widdows in 2007. “I would have done anything for him, I had that much respect for the man. For me, it was the same sort of respect I had for my father, actually. I loved the man, in a different way from my father. But yes, I loved the man.”

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost celebrate together after a McLaren one-two — Our top team-mates at the close of the 1988 season – a win Down Under for Prost, but the title was Ayrton Senna’s

Fairfax Media via Getty Images

1. Ayrton Senna + Alain Prost 1988-89

Win rate: 78%
Win count: 14 + 11 out of 32 GPs
Two drivers’ world titles
Two constructors’ world titles

All eyes were on Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost during their incendiary two years together at McLaren, and their own were focused solely on each other too.

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost collide at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix — Prost out in Japan 1989; Senna DSQ

LAT

In terms of titles it ended as a draw, before Prost felt compelled to leave for Ferrari. But there’s no doubting who had the upper hand in terms of race wins and, more emphatically, poles (13-2 in Senna’s favour, both seasons). Prost focused on finding speed when it counted most. “When he [Senna] impressed me was in qualifying sometimes,” Prost told Motor Sport in 2024 – before adding with iron defiance: “Never in race conditions – never. In race conditions, in the warm-up, most of the time I was quicker than him.”

Today, young Kimi Antonelli and George Russell have become the latest team-mates to be pitched into a battle for the world title. Already, there are signs of tension (see their edgy battle in Canada) and Toto Wolff might well be getting Hamilton/Rosberg flashbacks. As we’ve seen, it is possible for team-mates to be friends as well as rivals. But not often, and usually not for long.

2002 Nissan Skyline Gt-r Crs by Nismo

Sold by Broad Arrow, £403,700

1960 Mini Cooper S ‘evocation’

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1970 Mercedes-benz 600 Pullman

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1993 Lotus Carlton

Sold by Iconic auctioneers, £109,125

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Moet & Chandon Champagne Bottle

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1970 Lotus Elan Series 4 Se Coupé

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1935 Riley Imp

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10. Mario Andretti + Ronnie Peterson 1978

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8. Michael Schumacher + Rubens Barrichello 2000-05

7. Damon Hill + Jacques Villeneuve 1996

6. Jack Brabham + Denny Hulme 1966-67

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