Formula One’s exclusive club of four-title winners

If Red Bull’s Max Verstappen sees off Lando Norris to seal the Formula One world championship in Las Vegas on Saturday, he will become just the sixth driver to win four titles.

AFP looks at the other five who achieved that feat:  

Juan Manuel Fangio

Titles won: 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957

Cars: Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, Ferrari

Born in 1911, Fangio was a successful driver at home in Argentina, notably winning the gruelling 10,000 kilometre (6,250 miles) Gran Premio del Norte in 1940, before becoming the first superstar of Formula One.

He won the 1951 title with Alfa Romeo and went on to triumph with Maserati, Mercedes and Ferrari to become the first man to win five titles, a record that stood for 46 years. He died aged 84 in 1995.

In his own words:

“I learned to approach racing like a game of billiards. If you bash the ball too hard, you get nowhere. As you handle the cue properly, you drive with more finesse.”

Alain Prost

Titles won: 1985, 1986, 1989, 1993

Cars: McLaren, Williams

The Frenchman, who was known as ‘The Professor’ for his analytical approach to the sport, is remembered by many as the dull counterpoint to the crowd-pleasing Ayrton Senna (three titles) in a rivalry that gripped F1 in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

But he was a gifted, methodical driver who won his first three titles with McLaren and a fourth with Williams. He might have had five had he not been pipped by half a point by Niki Lauda in 1984.

In his own words: 

“My ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.”

Michael Schumacher 

Titles won: 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Cars: Benetton, Ferrari

The year after Prost’s final championship, up stepped the heir apparent in Michael Schumacher. The German, with his undoubted verve and pace mingled with an aggression that occasionally bordered on the dangerous, won twice with Benetton in the 1990s before switching to Ferrari. 

From 2000 he dominated the track, winning five titles on the trot, eclipsing Fangio’s record on the way. His 91 race wins was a new record until Lewis Hamilton passed him.

Schumacher suffered a serious brain injury in a 2013 skiing accident and has been in care at the family home in Switzerland since. 

In his own words:  

“Just being a mediocre driver has never been my ambition. That’s not my style.”

Sebastian Vettel

Titles won: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Car: Red Bull

Six years after Schumacher’s last title, along came another German to take a firm grip of the sport. Vettel made his F1 debut in Indianapolis shortly before his 20th birthday in 2007 with Red Bull which had taken over and rebranded the Jaguar team four years earlier. 

Three years later he became the youngest-ever champion, going on to win four in a row and frustrating the great Spaniard Fernando Alonso who was runner-up three times to Vettel. His 2013 title was the last won by Red Bull until Verstappen’s first in 2021.

In his own words:

“It’s correct that I’m a bad loser. Why should I lie? If I was good at losing I wouldn’t be in Formula 1.”

Lewis Hamilton

Titles won: 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

Cars: McLaren, Mercedes

In a sport that had been exclusively white, Lewis Hamilton broke new ground for being the first Black driver and the first Black champion. He used his position to speak out on many social issues but kept his most telling actions to the track where he and his Mercedes team were in a class of their own. 

After winning his first title with McLaren in 2008, he switched to Mercedes winning six further titles over a seven-year period. Arguably he should have made it eight when a controversial decision by the race director in Abu Dhabi ushered Verstappen through for the win instead — and the title.

In his own words:  

“If you don’t have the balls to brake late, that’s your problem.”