13 British F1 drivers who raced for Ferrari

Hamilton’s arrival at Fiorano for his first test in a Ferrari F1 car was a significant moment, a driver transfer on a scale we haven’t seen for a very long time. It’s comparable to Alain Prost’s move to Ferrari from McLaren, or Senna’s switch to Williams. The sport’s greatest ever driver has left the team that brought him so much success to begin a new chapter at the sport’s greatest ever team. It’s a truly momentous occasion ahead of what promises to be a captivating F1 season.

It’s significant also, because Hamilton will become the 13^th British driver to race for Ferrari when the lights go out for the Australian Grand Prix in March. He joins a list that has so far yielded two World Championships and several Grand Prix victories, but Hamilton will no doubt be hoping to add to both of those columns over the course of his Ferrari career. Here are the 13 British drivers who have raced for Ferrari in F1.

Lewis Hamilton

You get the feeling that Lewis Hamilton needed this to revitalise his F1 career. In the three seasons since that day in Abu Dhabi, the seven-time World Champion has rarely looked the same driver he was when he was charging through the field at the 2021 Brazilian Grand Prix. Hamstrung by a troublesome Mercedes car, he has struggled to recapture the form that saw him dominate the sport for the best part of a decade, but heading out the pits at the wheel of a scarlet Ferrari is bound to give Hamilton a new lease of life.

We can’t wait to see how he takes to life in Maranello, it’s no secret that he always dreamed of one day driving for Ferrari, and the fact he’ll be teaming up with the lightning quick Charles Leclerc only serves to heighten the anticipation. Whatever happens, Hamilton at Ferrari is going to be box office, and we can’t remember being this excited for an F1 season in a very long time. We hope he keeps the yellow helmet, too, because it’s perfection.

Oliver Bearman

There we were thinking that Hamilton was going to be the first British driver to race for Ferrari since Eddie Irvine in 1999, but it turned out we’d all jumped the gun, because when Carlos Sainz Jr. was forced out of Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with appendicitis, it was 18-year-old Oliver Bearman who was called up to fill his seat. And what a brilliant job he did.

As a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy since 2022, there was always a decent chance that Bearman would one day end up somewhere in the Scuderia fold, but even he would be lying if he said he expected to be racing in red quite so early on in his career. The fact he was effectively pulled from the cockpit of his Prema F2 machine and crowbarred into an unfamiliar Ferrari cockpit ahead of the third practice session must have come as quite the shock, but you wouldn’t have known it from his composed performance.

Having been unlucky to qualify only 11^th, Bearman fought to seventh by the chequered flag, holding off the challenge of Hamilton and Lando Norris to become the youngest driver to score points on their F1 debut. His exploits were swiftly rewarded with a drive at Haas in 2025, where his performance will be watched closely by Ferrari bosses.

Peter Whitehead

The amateur pre-war racer and RAF pilot is best known in F1 terms as a respected privateer who became the first man to convince Enzo Ferrari to sell him a Grand Prix car. Upon taking delivery of his shiny new Ferraris, he was also bold enough to run them in British Racing Green, which he planned to do for the first time at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1950, though he never made it to the start.

He did also enter the subsequent Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten as a driver for the Scuderia itself, although Whitehead’s place on this list is admittedly precarious, because he once again failed to qualify.

His inclusion on the entry list however, where he sits alongside Alberto Ascari, Raymod Sommer and Luigi Villoresi, is enough to ensure he makes it on to this list. Anyone who had the chance to drive a Ferrari 125 on the same circuit as the likes of Fagiolo, Fangio and Ascari is worthy of note in our book.

Mike Hawthorn

It would be a couple of years before Enzo Ferrari found a British driver he respected enough to trust with a drive in one of his cars. When Mike Hawthorn arrived in F1 in 1952, he immediately caught the attention of Ferrari, and joined the Scuderia for the ‘53 season. His team-mate Ascari dominated the season on his way to his second World Title, but Hawthorn did also make an impression with a stunning victory at that year’s French Grand Prix, when he came home the victor of a relentless 60-lap duel with Fangio at Reims. Despite that performance, Hawthorn’s initial Ferrari career lasted only two seasons, although he did end on a high with victory at the 1954 Spanish Grand Prix.

Three more appearances in red in 1955 yielded no success, but after a couple of years in the wilderness, he couldn’t have timed his return to Ferrari any better as it coincided with the arrival of the new 246 F1 car. He rejoined the team in 1957, and took a couple of podium finishes in the D50-derived 801, but his opportunity to fight at the very front finally arrived when the 246 broke cover for the 1958 season.

He became embroiled in a season-long battle for the Championship with compatriot Stirling Moss, whose Vanwall VW5 was generally considered to be the class of the field. But Hawthorn’s ruthless speed and consistency saw him take seven podium finishes including a Grand Prix victory at Reims, to claim the title by a single point and become Ferrari’s first British World Champion.

Peter Collins

Hawthorn was Ferrari’s first British Champion, but Peter Collins had every chance of becoming the second. Collins first arrived at the team in 1956, and showed decent speed that put him in contention for the Championship. But it was his humility that earned him Enzo Ferrari’s respect, after he gave up his own World Championship ambitions and handed his car over to Fangio at Monza to secure the great Argentine’s fourth title.

He was joined by Hawthorn in 1957, and the pair quickly became close friends. It was said that they would share prize money whenever they won races, and the pair built up a fierce rivalry with their Italian team-mate Luigi Musso which served to push all three drivers to new limits.

That added motivation would eventually prove to be Collins’ undoing however, as he died following an accident at the Nürburgring in 1958. In all he scored three victories for Ferrari, including an emotional final win at Silverstone, where he led home Hawthorn in front of an adoring crowd just three weeks before his death.

Tony Brooks

Teamed with Moss at Vanwall in 1958, the pair generally had the better of fellow Brits Hawthorn and Collins at Ferrari – even if Hawthorn would end up champion. But when the British team withdrew following the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans, and with both Hawthorn and Collins having also been lost (this was the reality of a cruel and deadly era), Brooks found himself in a red car for 1959.

Victories at Reims and the Nürburgring put him in title contention, but this brilliant, intelligent man chose to pit at the Sebring season finale after being hit by team-mate Wolfgang von Trips. The stop turned out to be needless, but Brooks hadn’t known that. His life was worth more than a World Championship, he’d reasoned – and he stands by that decision to this day.

Cliff Allison

Like Brooks, Allison was part of a stable of new-generation stars hired in 1959 – but after just six races his career at the Scuderia was cut short.

Following a second place in Argentina, Allison was hurled from his cockpit at Monaco and woke up in hospital speaking French, despite never having learned the language…

Sidelined for a year, he finally returned to F1 in a privateer Lotus in 1961, only to break both legs in an accident that ended a once-promising career for good.

John Surtees

John Surtees had a short but hugely successful tenure at Ferrari. Having only driven British cars during his early years in F1, he made the move to Maranello to reunite himself with Italian machinery with which he had been so successful during his two-wheel career.

Like his British predecessor, Surtees made an immediate impact at Ferrari as he won the 1963 German Grand Prix in his first season. He went one better in '64 with two wins and a World Championship triumph.

Things eventually turned sour between driver and team, however. Maranello’s Machiavellian politics and his own quick temper put paid to any further successes, and he left Ferrari in a rage at the end of the 1966 season.

Mike Parkes

A brilliant engineer and accomplished sportscar racer, Parkes emerged from Surtees’ F1 shadow after John’s sudden departure.

Non-championship victories at the Silverstone International Trophy and at Syracuse in ’67 gave sign of his capabilities – only for a leg-breaking crash at Spa to end his F1 career prematurely.

Jonathan Williams

Only one F1 World Championship start to his name – and he made it for Ferrari.

Motor racing was just a small part of Williams’ full, adventurous life. Signed during 1967, he mostly raced sportscars, but stepped up to the F1 team for the Mexican Grand Prix and finished eighth – only to be dropped the following season.

Derek Bell

The future sportscar legend enjoyed a rich and varied career, but remains proud of his two F1 World Championship starts for the Scuderia. Signed for Formula 2 in 1968, Bell was called up for the non-Championship Oulton Park Gold Cup and then made his World Championship debut for the team at, of all places, Monza.

A lack of opportunities forced him to move on in 1969, but he’d race for Ferrari again in sportscars.

Nigel Mansell

Frustrated by Williams’ lack of a turbo engine, Mansell became the first Brit to race a Ferrari in F1 for more than 20 years in 1989. An unexpected fairy-tale victory first time out in John Barnard’s semi-automatic 640 proved a false dawn, but ‘Il Leone’ became a cult hero for the Tifosi during two action-packed seasons.

He never quite connected with the Ferrari car, which proved to be horribly unreliable, although he finished on the podium on 11 occasions over two seasons, winning three times in all, though Mansell was ultimately outperformed by team-mate Alain Prost in 1990.

He returned to Williams for ’91 and achieved long-awaited World Championship glory a year later.

Eddie Irvine

It’s difficult to sum up Eddie Irvine’s F1 career. Not just anyone gets chosen to represent Ferrari in F1, but the Northern Irishman’s time with the Scuderia was so often overshadowed by the exploits of his illustrious team-mate that it’s impossible to judge how good he could have been in different circumstances.

After beginning his career with Jordan, and claiming his maiden podium at the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix, Irvine accepted a contract with Ferrari at a time when Jean Todt was instigating a fundamental rebuild of the ailing Italian outfit. His arrival coincided with that of reigning two-time World Champion Michael Schumacher, so the writing was already on Irvine’s wall, in bold italics, underlined. A podium at his first attempt in red was as good as it got in that first season, as a horrible run of eight retirements saw him languish down in tenth in the ‘96 Drivers’ Championship. Schumacher meanwhile finished third with three Grand Prix wins. 

Things improved slightly through 1997 and ‘98, but the top step of the podium eluded him until he finally took the chequered flag at the opening race of 1999 in Melbourne. Then, when Schumacher suffered a broken leg at Silverstone, Irvine’s opportunity finally arrived. He was thrust into a Championship battle with McLaren’s Mika Häkkinen, and while he did manage to pick up three more victories that season, it wasn’t enough to claim the title. It was a huge disappointment for Irvine, who left Ferrari for Jaguar in 2000.

Hamilton images courtesy of Getty Images. 

All other images courtesy of Motorsport Images.