Ferrari’s 7 greatest moments in Formula 1

Back on form

At the turn of the millennium, F1 racing was a battle between the dominant forces of Ferrari and McLaren and the 2000 season conformed to that playbook. Michael Schumacher took victories in the first three races, but then suffered three consecutive retirements. That allowed McLaren drivers Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard to share the victories between them.

The Championship fight was eventually settled at the Japanese Grand Prix. Schumacher took the lead during a Häkkinen pitstop and never relinquished, taking both the race win and the season Title. He went on to win the Championship one fixture later with 108 points to the Finn’s 89 points. Schumacher had won nine of the 17 races with his team-mate Rubens Barrichello securing one win for the Italian team.

Of course, the 2000 Championship was far from Schumacher’s only title victory aboard a red F1 car, but we’ll come back to that later.

An emotional 1-2 finish

McLaren dominated the 1988 F1 season. Between them, team-mates Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost won all but one round, but things didn’t go the Woking team’s way at the Italian Grand Prix, where Ferrari scored a particularly poignant win; the Monza round took place just 28 days after Enzo Ferrari’s death.

Prost took the initial lead before chasing Senna hard despite a misfire that ultimately caused his retirement. Ferrari drivers Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto then started applying pressure to the remaining McLaren driver. Senna maintained his lead until a tangle with a back-marker saw him spin and become beached with just two laps to go.

The result? A win that sent the home crowd wild. Little did they know, as they invaded the track, that Berger’s car only passed post-race scrutineering by the tightest margin. But that mattered not. Ferrari had scored an unlikely 1-2 victory under the most remarkable circumstances. 

Schumacher’s record-breaking run

Michael Schumacher’s Championship win for Ferrari in 2000 set the tone for a full half decade. He went on to win the Title another four consecutive times, setting a five-in-a-row record that has yet to be equalled. Such consistent success was a vindication of the reigning two-time World Champion’s decision to move to the Maranello team in 1996, at which time it hadn’t won a Title for 13 years.

Schumacher was instrumental in building Ferrari back up to its winning ways, together with designer Rory Byrne and technical director Ross Brawn, who like Schumacher had come from Benetton. Led by team boss Jean Todt, Ferrari was the dominant force in F1 for the first part of the 21^st century.

Ascari’s dominant 1952 Championship

In 1952, the F1 World Championship wasn’t as long as it is today, and with just seven fixtures in the calendar Milanese Ferrari driver Alberto Ascari completely ran away with the season. Ascari scored five out of seven pole positions and six out of seven wins – how about that for a set of statistics? The one race he didn’t win, the Swiss Grand Prix, clashed with the Indianapolis 500 which he chose to compete at instead.

Only the best four results counted towards those early Championships, so even sitting out of one round, Ascari scored the maximum possible number of points. Numbers only tell part of the story, of course. In 1952, the World Championship moved to 2.0-litre Formula 2 regulations which suited the Ferrari 500 perfectly. At 34 years old, Ascari became F1’s youngest World Champion. How times (and driver’s ages) have changed. The next youngest winner was 29-year-old Mike Hawthorn, who won the title in 1958. 

A first F1 win in Britain

A season and a bit into the history of the F1 World Championship, Ferrari scored its maiden Championship victory on British soil at the 1951 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Argentinian José Frolián González qualified a second faster than Alfa Romeo driver Juan Manuel Fangio to take the very first non-Alfa Romeo pole position in the F1 World Championship.

The race win was by no means a foregone conclusion, though. Fangio kept González honest as they left the front row of the grid together, and poor fuel consumption from the Alfa Romeo contributed to Fangio’s woes, helping González build up a 51second lead by the time the chequered flag fell. His team-mate Luigi Villoresi claimed another podium position, finishing two laps behind in third place. Ferrari had arrived.

The first Constructors’ Championship triumph

It would take a full decade from Ferrari’s debut race win to for a first Constructors’ Championship to arrive, and it did so beautifully with the Ferrari 156 ‘Sharknose’. 1961 marked only the fourth Constructors’ Championship (or ‘International Cup for Manufacturers’ as it was called); prior to that, F1 titles could only be won by drivers. Regulation changes for the ‘61 season saw the permitted displacement reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 litres, similar to the previous F2 regulations for which Ferrari had already developed a mid-engined car. 

Ferrari fielded six drivers for the eight-round season, between them claiming five outright victories to secure a first Championship for Maranello. But the season was not without tragedy – the American Ferrari driver Phil Hill won the Drivers’ Title after his team-mate Wolfgang von Trips was killed in the penultimate round in Italy.

Mansell’s debut victory

We may know him as ‘Our Nige’, but in Italy he is Il Leone – The Lion. Nigel Mansell cemented the affection he receives from the Tifosi by taking a victory on his very first outing with Scuderia Ferrari at the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Ferrari 640 designer John Barnard had joined Ferrari from McLaren in 1986 and joined a highly politicised environment in the aftermath of Enzo’s death. He fought to introduce paddleshift despite in-house resistance, until Mansell insisted that he wanted it.

It could have cost that first victory. Mid-way through the race, Mansell’s steering started coming adrift. Two of the three bolts that held it in place had loosened, and as well as the obvious steering deficiency all the gearbox electronics passed through the wheel. An untested steering wheel was fitted with little hope it would last the race. But it did, and Mansell too the chequered flag at the first time of asking in red.

Plagued with reliability issues, Mansell only claimed one more win that year. But every time his finished, he was on the podium. No wonder he’s just as popular in Italy as he is here.

The 2025 Festival of Speed takes place on 10^th-13^th July. Friday and Saturday tickets are now sold out, but Thursday and limited Sunday tickets are still available.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.