► Hamilton’s move to Ferrari analysed
► How did the other champions and Brits fair?
► How he’s making history again
This season Lewis Hamilton has become the 13th Brit to race for Ferrari in F1. He’ll hope to emulate Mike Hawthorn (1958) and John Surtees (1964) by winning the world title in red at some point. He was unable to match Nigel Mansell’s feat (1989 Brazilian GP) of winning his first race for the Scuderia, but he did with the Sprint Race in China.
All were hired by Enzo Ferrari (Mansell was the last driver the Old Man personally selected). Of course much has changed since Enzo died in August 1988. He was notoriously stingy with driver salaries, whereas today Lewis is rumoured to be earning even more from Ferrari than his multi-million deal netted him at Mercedes.
In Enzo’s day, if they didn’t like the money, plenty of other drivers wanted their place. John Surtees, for example, wanted to buy a Ferrari (a 330 GT) when he joined the Scuderia in 1963. Enzo offered him a 15 per cent discount and then deducted that from his salary. Kiwi Chris Amon, Ferrari’s best driver in the late ’60s, received no salary at all, just a cut of the prize money. When Phil Hill became America’s first world champion (in 1961) the Old Man tried to cut his salary.
Enzo must have mellowed by the time Mansell joined. He gave him an F40.
Some Brits prospered at Ferrari, some did not. Peter Collins, who won three GPs for Maranello (1956-58), was a favourite of the Old Man, partly because he spoke good Italian and embraced the Italian lifestyle. Lewis lives nearby in Monaco – Gilles Villeneuve could famously drive the 350 miles from Monte Carlo to Maranello in two-and-a-half hours – but his new team-mate, Charles Leclerc, is already well established at Ferrari.
Collins fell out with Ferrari towards the end. So did Surtees and the under-rated Brit Tony Brooks, a two-times GP winner for Ferrari in 1959. He had a chance of winning the world title at the season-ending US GP but pitted to get possible damage investigated. (The ’50s was a notoriously dangerous decade in F1, and Brooks didn’t want unnecessarily to risk joining the roll call of fallen heroes – which included poor Collins, killed at the Nürbürgring in 1958.) Enzo later dismissed Brooks as ‘too cautious’.
Niki Lauda also fell out with Ferrari, quitting straight after wrapping up his 1977 world title. He walked out with two races of the season remaining and bid the red team good riddance.
The calculating Lauda never connected with the tifosi, unlike ‘Il Leone’ Nigel Mansell. His exuberance won over fans, and he won three races for Ferrari, but wouldn’t become world champion until rejoining Williams.
Lewis is the sixth former world champion to join the Scuderia – after Juan Manuel Fangio (1956), Alain Prost (1990), Michael Schumacher (1996), Fernando Alonso (2010) and Sebastian Vettel (2015). Only Schumacher and Fangio would win the title for Ferrari.
There are some striking parallels between Lewis and Fangio. Like Lewis, the Argentinian joined from Mercedes and, as with Lewis, was a former champ starting his Maranello career after his 40th birthday. He also won the title (in 1956) in his debut season for Ferrari, a feat Lewis will hope to emulate. (Fangio then left the following year.)
Two other all-time-great Brits very nearly drove a Prancing Horse car in F1. Enzo Ferrari wooed Jackie Stewart but was put off by the canny Scot’s focus on business and the talk of legal contracts. (Phil Hill always said the Old Man preferred gung-ho drivers.)
Enzo also had huge regard for Stirling Moss and tried to hire him as a youngster, before the Englishman’s brilliance had blossomed. He tried again, this time successfully, 10 years later. Moss agreed to drive a Ferrari for the 1962 F1 season, factory supported but entered by his favoured team manager, Rob Walker.
A month before his first F1 race in a Ferrari, Moss crashed at Goodwood on Easter Monday and would never compete in top-level motorsport again. He later said his greatest regret was never racing for Ferrari in F1. As Lewis now proves, the allure of racing in red remains as rich as ever.