Before Hamilton: Every British Ferrari F1 driver

The gentleman farmer paid Enzo Ferrari handsomely for the use of a turbocharged 125 single-seater, and won on the incredibly dangerous, 11-mile Moravia circuit.

A number of drivers and spectators died during the weekend, clouding what was a career highlight for Whitehead.

He would become better-known for his sports car exploits, winning Le Mans with Peter Walker in 1951 in what was Jaguar’s first La Sarthe victory.

The Yorkshireman holds a unique place in Scuderia history too though: its first British grand prix winner.

Reg Parnell – 1951

Before Stirling Moss, Reg Parnell was the undisputed ‘King of Goodwood’, winning 15 races there, including its first F1 meeting.

Though not actually a works Maranello driver, Parnell also took Tony Vandervell’s modified Ferrari 375 ‘Thinwall’ to a fourth-place finish at the attritional 1951 French GP, as well as wins at Goodwood and the Silverstone International Trophy.

The Reims result brought the first championship points scored by a Brit for Ferrari.

Parnell would enter one more world championship race, the 1954 British GP for privateer Scuderia Ambrosiana in a Ferrari 500/625, failing to finish.

However, in his own 500 that year – again under the Ambrosiana banner – he won more races at Goodwood and Crystal Palace.

Roy Salvadori – 1952

In a 1950s ‘golden age’ when professional motor sport really got going, Roy Salvadori was one of racing’s busiest drivers.

The Essex lad born to Italian parents became the archetypal jobbing racing driver, often competing multiple times in one day.

At a June 1954 Snetterton meeting he competed in six races and took four wins, a second and a third.

Save for finishing fourth in the 1958 world championship for Cooper, Salvadori was only an occasional grand prix driver. F1 offered more glory but less money than other races.

His first world championship start came in a Ferrari, driving a privateer machine to eighth at the 1952 British GP.

Finishing three laps down, Salvadori would make F1 cameos for another ten years, but never again in a Ferrari.

Mike Hawthorn – 1953-’54, 1957-’58

Mike Hawthorn stands tall in racing history as the first British F1 world champion. He did so in a Ferrari.

Hawthorn made his Scuderia works debut in a full 1953 campaign, taking his first win at Reims in what was dubbed the ‘Race of the Century’ as he prevailed against Juan Manuel Fangio in a slipstreaming classic.

The 1954 season brought a second win at Pedralbes in Spain. Hawthorn then bounced between Vanwall, BRM and Ferrari before a full time Scuderia return in 1957.

The following year would be Hawthorn’s crowning glory. Going up against Stirling Moss for the title, Hawthorn clinched the championship due to the sportsmanship of his rival.

Hawthorn had been disqualified for bump-starting his car after an off at the Portuguese GP, but Moss intervened and vouched for the former. Hawthorn’s second place was reinstated, and the points scored were enough for the championship.

Having made it to the top, he promptly retired. Still basking in the glory of being the first British champion, Hawthorn was tragically killed when his Jaguar road car collided with a lorry early the next year.

Peter Collins – 1956-’58

Best friends with Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins was Ferrari’s other debonair Brit racing in the mid-1950s.

Collins was hired by Ferrari in 1956 on the recommendation of his mate.

Previously racing for HWM, Vanwall, BRM and Maserati, Collins hadn’t even scored a championship point before he finished runner-up in his second F1 race for Ferrari at Monaco.

He then won in Spa and Reims, and was in contention for the title that year at the season finale in Monza before handing his car over to team leader Fangio, who had already retired from the race.

Collins reasoned he would have time to win the title himself – sadly this was not the case. He was killed two years later at the German GP, still driving for Ferrari.

Tony Brooks – 1959

Dubbed the ‘World’s Fastest Dentist’ due to his pre-racing profession, Tony Brooks is a candidate for the most unlikely Ferrari star ever seen.

Brooks joined Ferrari in 1959, following the deaths of Collins and Hawthorn, and immediately challenged for the title.

His hopes were extinguished at the season-ending US GP in Sebring when he was rear-ended by team-mate Wolfgang von Trips.

Brooks would leave the team after that season, and retire two years later.

“Ferrari was always a happy team, and the mechanics were all such fun,” said Brooks.

“If you won a race you’d think from their reaction you’d won the championship. And the drivers, Phil Hill, Dan, Cliff Allison, we were all competitive with each other but somehow easy-going as well.”

Cliff Allison – 1959-’60

If Tony Brooks was Ferrari’s most unlikely star, Cliff Allison runs him a close second.

Cumbrian car dealer Allison came into F1 under the wing of Lotus boss Colin Chapman.

The pair shared a Lotus Eleven to finish sixth at the 1958 Sebring 12 Hours, before Allison made his grand prix debut with the team at Monaco that year, finishing sixth.

The Brit moved to Ferrari the next year, and challenged for the win at the season finale – again at Sebring.

“I was lying third behind the Coopers of Brabham and McLaren, and I really think I could have got on terms with them in the closing stages. Then the clutch flew apart . . . God, I was sick!” he told Motor Sport.

Running his family’s car dealership all the while, Allison had to undergo a commute which made the Dakar Rally look like small fry.

“I’d drive to Darlington, park the car at the station, get the train to Kings Cross, a taxi to the bus station where I’d get the bus to Heathrow, fly to Milan, taxi to the train station there, train to Modena, then another taxi. I once did this for a test that they wanted to do and when I got there I found they’d cancelled the test! So I set off back home again!” he recalled.

Unfortunately the injuries sustained from a huge crash while practising at Monaco in 1960, and then another on his comeback for Lotus at Spa in ’61, put paid to a promising career.

Still, Allison enjoyed his brief tenure at Ferrari and time with Enzo Ferrari: “Oh, he was grand! Never a cross word. He even used to take me round with him in his own car and we’d go for great long three-hour meals.”

John Surtees – 1963-’66

For many years John Surtees was the ultimate British Ferrari F1 driver. He rode a wave of momentum to be hired by Enzo after getting a podium in his debut season with Lotus and then spearheading the Lola F1 car development.

His Scuderia first campaign in 1963 brought a debut race win at the Nürburgring, and in 1964 it got even better.

Going into the final race of the season at Mexico, Surtees was challenging Graham Hill and Jim Clark for the title – but an inadvertent bit of teamwork helped Surtees to victory in the battle of the Brits.

Mike Parkes – 1966-’67

If John Surtees was the ultimate engineer-race driver, then perhaps Mike Parkes was the true race driver-engineer.

Starting out working in the Rootes car factory, Parkes was integral in the design of the Hillman Imp.

The Surrey native went to Le Mans in 1961 to oversee the Sunbeam Alpine team, but was invited to try out a Ferrari 250 in practice, having been successful in the car on the British national circuit.

Parkes went faster than any of the works drivers, and was promptly hired by Ferrari to compete in the blue riband race, finishing second with Willy Mairesse.

This started a long association with the Scuderia. He would win the 1964 Sebring 12 Hours with Umberto Maglioli, but the Brit longed for an F1 drive.

He got his wish at Reims in 1966, finishing second on his debut. He would get three more races that season, coming home runner-up again at Monza after taking pole.

Though 35 by the time of his next appearances in 1967, Parkes was adamant he could make it as an F1 driver. However that all ended when horrific leg-breaking crash at Spa brought his GP career to an end.

Jonathan Williams – 1967

Jonathan Williams had a short but eventful Ferrari career consisting of one F1 appearance.

Born in Cairo, the Brit always preferred sunnier climes when he  began dominating the Italian F3 championship in 1966.

This put him on Ferrari’s radar, and he was signed up for F2, sports cars and an outside chance of F1.

After impressing in the other categories, Williams got the call to the top team for the 1967 Mexican GP.

The Scuderia had lost a lot of drivers in 1967. Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scarfiotti had been killed, while Mike Parkes had broken his legs.

As a result, Williams was put into the other car in Mexico, and put in a solid drive to eighth. Unfortunately a testing crash at Modena ended his hopes of taking his Ferrari career further.

“I was very fast until I lost it and knocked three wheels off,” he remembered. “I booted it coming out of the chicane and went into the hedge. That’s when the phone stopped ringing. When the mechanics came to drag it to the pits, none of them looked me in the eye. They knew I was doomed…”

Derek Bell – 1968

Like Parkes and Williams before him, Derek Bell was only granted frustratingly sporadic Ferrari F1 cameos, but starring for the Scuderia at Le Mans gave the latter an incredibly successful sports car career.

Winning eight races in his first F3 season in 1967, before immediately scoring F2 podiums in the early stages of the following year.

This caught the Enzo Ferrari, who gave Bell his debut at the 1968 Monza F2 race. Not that everyone was happy.

“People kept telling me that Ferrari killed its drivers,” he remembered. “My wife was ill in hospital and my mother told me that if I signed for Ferrari then I’d never set foot in her house again. ‘Over my dead body will you race for them,’ she said. It was a stressful time.”

Bell delighted Enzo by taking pole on his F2 debut, despite crashing out of the race.

Two F1 subsequent races though, at Monza and Watkins Glen, brought little joy.

“I qualified near the back and was beginning to feel hacked off with Ferrari, becoming aware that I was being used; a pawn in the politics,” he said.

“They never let me practice properly, always two laps out, then back in for some fiddling thing. Forghieri told me that I was to play it safe, get round and finish. He said he wanted to tell Enzo Ferrari that I had a good race, whatever that meant. Anyway, I got up to sixth before the engine blew up. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be an F1 star by this point. So many were dying, and Ferrari was going nowhere. The cars were outdated and there was so much politics.”

However, Bell was next put into the 512 sports car at Le Mans 1970, which kickstarted a famous endurance career – so it wasn’t all bad.

Nigel Mansell – 1989-’90

The last driver signed by Enzo Ferrari before his death, Nigel Mansell had already made his name as a swashbuckling grand prix hero when he joined the Scuderia in 1989.

‘Il Leone‘ instantly endeared himself to the tifosi by winning at his first race in Brazil, using the nimble 640 and its innovative paddle shift gear system – not that the victory came easy after taking an early lead.

“Having been ‘Happy Nigel’ up to that point, he suddenly came on the radio in hysterics, saying the steering wheel was falling off!” remembered the car designer John Barnard. “I said, ‘Christ Nigel, come in!’ It turned out two of its three bolts had come out. This was pretty crucial. All the electronics for the gearbox went through the steering wheel.

“There was a tiny little multi-pin plug in the centre of the steering column which communicated the signals from the paddle shifts. Nigel came in, we got the spare which we hadn’t even tested, just jammed it on and he drove off! Myself and my chief mechanic looked at each other: ‘There’s just no way that’s going to work straight off the bat, without being tested!’ But it did, and we won!”

They honeymoon didn’t last though. Reliability was poor, and Mansell would win just twice more for the Scuderia before leaving at the end of 1990.

Eddie Irvine – 1996-’99

Canny Ulsterman Eddie Irvine was making a living racing in Japan before he was brought into the Jordan F1 team, whose boss Eddie Jordan sold him on to Ferrari to be Michael Schumacher’s faithful No2.

Irvine made solid unspectacular start to life at Maranello, but podiums in 1998 suggested more was on the horizon.

That duly was the case after Schumacher broke his leg at the 1999 British GP. With Mika Häkkinen and McLaren fumbling their title challenge, an early race win in Australia put Irvine in contention.

Help first from super sub Mika Salo and then the returning Schumacher aided Irvine to three more wins, but the Northern Irishman just lost out to Häkkinen in the Suzuka title showdown.

It earned Irvine a lucrative move to the new Jaguar team though, so he probably wasn’t complaining.

Oliver Bearman

When appendicitis struck at the eleventh hour for Carlos Sainz at the 2024 Saudi Arabian GP, 18-year-old reserve driver Oliver Bearman was drafted in to replace him.

Forgoing his F2 duties that weekend, Bearman was given just one practice session to acclimatise himself.

The Essex native qualified a highly impressive eleventh, before holding off Lewis Hamilton to finish seventh in the race.

“Destroyed. Physically it was a really difficult race!” Bearman said afterwards. “Especially in the end, when I had the two guys on softs behind me, I had to basically push flat out and it was a mentally difficult race as expected, and physically I was struggling too, but great fun out there.

“I think I put in a good showing for myself, which is the main thing right?. It’s difficult circumstances, not a lot of laps on track, but I think I maximised everything today. I felt like I was a bit quicker than [Fernando] Alonso and [George] Russell in front, but not enough to catch, the gap was pretty big.”

Bearman certainly appears to have marked himself out as a British Scuderia star of the future.