Six driver pairings we cannot believe were actually F1 team-mates

Some F1 team-mate rivalries live long in the memory for how fierce they became, but others were notable for when hugely successful drivers shared a garage for either a brief period of time, or that they simply got along while doing so.

While some pairings stood the test of time, we have dug through the history books to relive some duos that make us realise that sometimes, F1 greats can coexist in the same team.

Six F1 team-mate pairings we cannot believe actually happened

Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen (McLaren)

It was a partnership that lasted only three races, but once McLaren driver (and current prospective Formula 1 team owner, if his plans prevail) Michael Andretti departed the sport in late 1993, former Lotus driver Mika Hakkinen, then McLaren’s test driver, stepped in for the final rounds of the season to partner the great Ayrton Senna.

The ‘Flying Finn’ had initially been slated to be a race driver for McLaren that season, but with Senna reportedly non-committal over staying with the team until late on and Andretti already signed, they eventually had three drivers for two seats. Hakkinen was the one to make way, biding his time as test driver and waiting for his chance – which eventually came after the Italian Grand Prix, stepping up in place of Andretti, who had just finished on the podium at Monza.

The young driver would make his mark instantly, out-qualifying Senna in their first race together at Estoril, but a mid-race crash prevented him from converting that into points.

At the very next race, Hakkinen would take his first Formula 1 podium at Suzuka, with Senna winning the race – and the Brazilian followed that up with victory in Australia to sign off his McLaren career in style before heading to Williams for 1994, taking the place of the retiring Alain Prost.

Hakkinen, meanwhile, was handed a multi-year contract with McLaren and would become a double World Champion with the team in 1998 and 1999.

Michael Schumacher and Nelson Piquet (Benetton)

In a tale of two careers dovetailing, a young German driver called Michael Schumacher had made a significant impression on his Grand Prix debut with Jordan at Spa, to an extent that Benetton signed him up for the remainder of the 1991 season at the following race in Italy – with Roberto Moreno heading to Jordan in his place.

In the other cockpit for what would turn out to be his final Formula 1 season was the three-time World Champion, Nelson Piquet.

With 23 Grand Prix victories under his belt and a hugely successful career, the rookie Schumacher had a huge test in front of him, even though the Brazilian was heading towards the end of his time in the sport.

In five races together, Schumacher out-qualified Piquet four times – starting and finishing ahead of him in their first Grand Prix alongside each other at Monza, only Schumacher’s second in the sport.

Piquet led the race head-to-head 3-2, though Schumacher’s retirements in the last two races of the season helped that statistic. The former Williams and Lotus driver would retire at the end of 1991, while Schumacher would eventually go on to set a new bar in the record books, which has only been matched or beaten by Lewis Hamilton in most cases.

Read more about F1 history from PlanetF1.com

👉 Juan Manuel Fangio’s ‘drive of his life’ at the 1957 German Grand Prix

👉 Lotus 78: The revolutionary car that changed Formula 1 forever

Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss (Mercedes)

Mentioned in every conversation regarding Formula 1’s greatest ever driver, Juan Manuel Fangio had more than 30 team-mates in his career for at least one race – not least Nino Farina, the sport’s first World Champion, with the pair having raced together for Alfa Romeo in Farina’s title-winning 1950 season, with Fangio taking the title himself the following year.

Also mentioned in every conversation regarding the best driver not to win the World Championship, with 16 career victories to his name, is Stirling Moss, who was one of Fangio’s team-mates for Mercedes during his 1955 title-winning campaign.

Famously relentless in his pursuit of the best car on the grid, Fangio was not afraid to switch teams in order to get the best machinery – which is perhaps why his five World Championships came for four different constructors, which is still a record to this day in terms of titles won for different teams.

In any case, it was Fangio and Moss who finished P1 and P2 in the World Championship in the 1955 season, Fangio winning four of the seven championship rounds that year (including the Indianapolis 500, when it was part of the Formula 1 calendar).

Moss made it a 1-2 at Spa and Zandvoort behind Fangio, alongside taking his maiden Grand Prix victory, at his home race, no less, taking the chequered flag at Aintree as Fangio followed two tenths behind to secure his latest Drivers’ crown.

They would also start the first race of the 1957 season together for Maserati, before Moss moved to Vanwall for the remainder of the year as he again finished as runner-up to the Argentine great.

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (McLaren)

Now, this one does not seem as surprising, given we’re well aware Hamilton and Button were together for three whole seasons at McLaren and were largely harmonious throughout that time, but it is easier to forget the context through which they were brought together.

Hamilton, McLaren’s junior driver who had effectively grown up with the team since his teenage years, became World Champion for the first time in 2008, while Button joined the team fresh from his title success with Brawn in 2009.

So, for the start of 2010, you had the two most recent Formula 1 World Champions, both British, going head-to-head for the same British constructor.

For fans watching on, it was the perfect storyline to follow throughout what became a classic season in recent memory, with Hamilton one of four drivers capable of winning the title at the final round before Sebastian Vettel took the glory.

The two Brits had their flashpoints on track, including a thrilling hard-but-fair battle for the lead in Istanbul that season, and they came to blows in the wet during Button’s famous comeback victory in Canada in 2011, but they remained largely evenly-matched throughout – even finding time away from the track (contractually, most likely) to star alongside each other in the popular animated series Tooned , released by McLaren at the time.

Hamilton outscored Button by 26 points in 2010, then Button had the upper hand by 43 in 2011, and Hamilton just about edged it in 2012 before his career-changing move to Mercedes, beating his team-mate by two points come season’s end.

So while the now-seven-time World Champion won the in-team battle 2-1 in terms of the Drivers’ Championship, the stat that has popped up from time to time since is that Button actually scored 15 more points in their time together. Whichever way you want to cut it, we all got to witness a fascinating head-to-head between two World Champions for three years.

Jim Clark and Graham Hill (Team Lotus)

Speaking of British super-teams, for that distinction you don’t need to look much further than having both Graham Hill and Jim Clark on the same line-up for Team Lotus in 1967, while both were World Champions themselves.

Hill had already won his first title in 1962, while Clark had taken top honours in 1963 and ’65 respectively, and both are rightly regarded among the pantheon of all-time greats in Formula 1 – Hill, of course, holding the distinction of being the only driver to win all three Triple Crown events of the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours.

1967 was not a vintage year by Colin Chapman’s team’s high standards, despite Clark and Hill taking nine poles out of 11 races between them – with 13 combined retirements putting paid to any hopes of mounting a serious challenge for either title, eight of which befalling Hill.

This partnership would end in tragedy, however. The pair contested the season-opening South African Grand Prix as planned in 1968, which Clark won, but Clark’s subsequent death following a crash in a non-championship Formula Two race at Hockenheim in April of that year saw him pass away aged just 32.

The team would race on through their mourning, and Hill would go on to win his second title come the end of 1968.

Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)

Our other more modern entry onto this list, this could so easily have been Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, but given the Iceman was returning to Ferrari to form an all-World Champion partnership in 2014 – against the man he had fought so much of his career to date – this had to take it.

In truth, however, it proved to be a one-sided affair in a Ferrari that did not match up to expectations after the switch to turbo hybrid power, with Raikkonen in particular struggling to get to grips with the brand-new cars in the first half of the season, taking until the 12th round of the year to finish ahead of Alonso – at the Belgian Grand Prix.

It would also be 12th place where Raikkonen would finish in the Drivers’ Championship that season, with Alonso up in sixth and four points shy of treble the Finn’s points tally.

It’s a battle we wish would have been closer as Alonso departed for what proved to be an ill-fated return to a McLaren housing a “GP2 engine” for 2015, but even still, seeing two of the sport’s great modern talents in the same car cannot be disappointing.

Honourable mention: Alain Prost and… most of his team-mates

For all his success in Formula 1, Alain Prost certainly pitted himself against some other big names in his time.

While Senna would be the obvious name to pick out here, that would be doing a disservice to the fact that ‘Le Professeur’ in fact had five team-mates during his career that either already were, or would eventually become, World Champions.

Even within this, we need to give honourable mentions within this honourable mention to his non-champion team-mates, which include John Watson and René Arnoux, with 12 Grand Prix victories between them, as well as nine-time podium finisher Eddie Cheever, Grand Prix winner Jean Alesi and 12-time podium finisher Stefan Johansson, with Prost almost exclusively having team-mates to have had notable achievements within Formula 1.

For the champions, let’s start with Niki Lauda, whose status was already cemented as a legend of the sport as a multiple World Champion when he partnered with Prost, and only half a point separated them in the 1984 season as the Austrian won his third and final title by a whisker.

Prost would ascend to his first Drivers’ title a year later as Lauda was plagued by unreliability – retiring from 11 of the 14 races he started in what would be his final Formula 1 campaign.

In his place would step 1982 World Champion Keke Rosberg, with Prost again taking the World Championship in dramatic fashion as Nigel Mansell suffered a dramatic tyre blowout at the final race of the season, with the Frenchman going on to win the race to secure another title.

Following his year with Johansson, Senna would follow at McLaren in 1988 and one of the most dramatic and intense team-mate rivalries in the history of Formula 1 would follow. Prost would describe Senna as “impossible to work with” as he departed for Ferrari two years later, each driver sharing a title apiece as their increasingly fraught on-track battles then turned into respect between the great duo.

Latterly, Prost would partner Mansell at Ferrari, the Briton labelled ‘Il Leone’ or ‘The Lion’ by the tifosi as his popularity at Maranello grew, before driving alongside another British driver in his final season in the sport with Williams, with Damon Hill on the other side of the garage in 1993, who would later become the World Champion himself in 1996.

Read next: Ranked: The 10 worst drivers to race in F1 this century