Five F1 legends who turned their first win into their first championship

Back in 1982, his demonstrative compatriot Keke Rosberg was also surprisingly promoted to a top team, and thence to its number one seat by the sudden retirement of Carlos Reutemann – don’t expect Lewis to do the same, Valtteri – and became world champion at the first opportunity. Rosberg did not score his first GP win, however, until round 14 of 16 that year. Outgunned by turbocharged rivals, his campaign was necessarily stealthy, whereas Bottas’s cover has been blown – albeit in a nice way – with 16 rounds still to go.

But beware, Valtteri, Keke’s is the most recent occurrence of a driver achieving a maiden GP victory and being crowned champion in the same season. Indeed only five men have managed this feat since the world championship’s 1950 inception, the other four being: Giuseppe Farina (1950), Jack Brabham (1959), Graham Hill (1962) and Denny Hulme (1967).

Farina was already 43 when he won the season-opening GP d’Europe at Silverstone in May 1950, having been a protégé of Tazio Nuvolari’s during the second half of the 1930s. His battle with Alfa Romeo team-mate Juan Fangio went down to the Italian GP finale at Monza in September, the latter having two cars break underneath him while Farina took the crucial victory.

At the opposite end of the 1950s, 33-year-old Jack Brabham’s long road from Australia and groundbreaking career path with Cooper’s rear-engine cars finally paid dividends when Stirling Moss’s sister car broke its transmission while leading with fewer than 20 laps to go in Monaco, opening round of the 1959 season. This pair was still in the title hunt – as was Ferrari’s Tony Brooks – in the December finale at Sebring, Florida, when Moss’s transmission again failed, and Brabham pushed his out-of-fuel car across the finishing line; Brooks finished third.

Hulme was a protégé of Brabham’s at Brabham when he too, opened his win account at Monaco; the 30-year-old New Zealander would have done so at the preceding South African GP – five months earlier yet still in 1967! – had his brakes not failed. A second victory, at the Nürburgring, plus excellent consistency – in contrast to the faster Lotus-Cosworths of Jim Clark and Graham Hill – saw Hulme beat his boss to the title after they had finished third and second respectively at the final round in Mexico City.

Hill and Clark were rivals at BRM and Lotus when they scored their first GP victories within a month of one other in 1962. In the South African finale at East London – on December 29^th – Clark’s hopes went up in oil smoke and Hill, 33, took the win and the crown. 

Clark and Fangio are far from alone: Alberto Ascari (1951), Jody Scheckter (1974), Jacques Villeneuve (1996), Kimi Räikkönen (2003) and Hamilton (2007) came within an ace and a race of the championship in the immediate aftermath of having broken their GP win duck; Niki Lauda (1974) and Nelson Piquet (1980) went very close, too. There’s an eventual 21 world titles among that impressive lot. That’s how difficult the task facing Bottas is, no matter how ‘relatively’ easy he made it look in Russia.

Year | Champion | 1st win          

1950   Farina             1950   1951   Fangio             1950

1952   Ascari             1951   1953   Ascari              1951

1954   Fangio            1950   1955   Fangio             1950

1956   Fangio            1950   1957   Fangio             1950

1958   Hawthorn       1953   1959   Brabham        1959

1960   Brabham        1959   1961   P Hill               1960

1962   G Hill             1962   1963   Clark               1962

1964   Surtees           1963   1965   Clark               1962

1966   Brabham        1959   1967   Hulme             1967

1968   G Hill             1962   1969   Stewart           1965

1970   Rindt               1969   1971   Stewart           1965

1972   Fittipaldi         1970   1973   Stewart           1965

1974   Fittipaldi         1970   1975   Lauda             1974

1976   Hunt               1975   1977   Lauda             1974

1978   Andretti          1971   1979   Scheckter       1974

1980   Jones               1977   1981   Piquet             1980

1982   K Rosberg      1982   1983   Piquet             1980

1984   Lauda             1974   1985   Prost               1981

1986   Prost               1981   1987   Piquet             1980

1988   Senna             1985   1989   Prost               1981

1990   Senna             1985   1991   Senna             1985

1992   Mansell           1985   1993   Prost               1981

1994   Schumacher    1992   1995   Schumacher   1992

1996   D Hill              1993   1997   Villeneuve      1996

1998   Häkkinen        1997   1999   Häkkinen        1997

2000   Schumacher   1992   2001   Schumacher   1992

2002   Schumacher   1992   2003   Schumacher   1992

2004   Schumacher   1992   2005   Alonso             2003

2006   Alonso            2003   2007   Räikkönen      2003

2008   Hamilton        2007   2009   Button             2006

2010   Vettel              2008   2011   Vettel              2008

2012   Vettel              2008   2013   Vettel              2008

2014   Hamilton        2007   2015   Hamilton        2007

2016   N Rosberg      2012

Photographs courtesy of LAT Images