F1 champions by year: every world champion since 1950

Every world champion by year

Below is every world champion since the first season in 1950: the year, the driver and their team. The table is built from our results database and is updated after every season. The champion is the driver with the most points in the Drivers’ Championship at the end of the year; how points are awarded today is explained in the chapter “Points and the championship”.

A title isn’t always settled at the last race: it is decided as soon as the rivals can no longer catch the leader on points. Each year is covered in detail on its season page in the History section, starting with the first championship in 1950.

Who has the most titles

As of the end of 2025, the record of seven titles is shared by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton. Juan Manuel Fangio has five, and Alain Prost, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen have four each.

Schumacher won two titles with Benetton, in 1994 and 1995, and five in a row with Ferrari, from 2000 to 2004. Hamilton became champion with McLaren in 2008 and six times with Mercedes: in 2014, 2015 and 2017–2020. Fangio won his five titles in 1951 and 1954–1957.

Five drivers have been champion three times: Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna. Six have two titles and eighteen have one. Records for wins, poles and starts are on the Records page.

Eras: who won, and with which team

Titles often come in runs: a successful car stays at the front for several years, and its driver wins season after season. The longest run of consecutive titles belongs to Schumacher — five years.

The eras in brief:

• 1950–1958: titles for drivers of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes and Maserati. Fangio is the only champion to have won titles with four different teams.
• 1959–1968: the era of the British teams, whose drivers — at Cooper, BRM, Lotus and Brabham — won eight titles out of ten. In 1966 Jack Brabham became champion in a car bearing his own name, something no one else has done.
• 1970s: Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren and Ferrari; Jackie Stewart won three titles in five seasons, from 1969 to 1973.
• 1985–1993: Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, who won seven titles between them in nine seasons.
• 1992–1997: Williams — four titles in six years for Nigel Mansell, Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.
• 2000s: Schumacher’s five titles with Ferrari, then Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, Hamilton, and Jenson Button with Brawn, who raced in the championship for just one season.
• 2010–2020: Vettel and Red Bull, then Mercedes, whose drivers won seven titles in a row from 2014 to 2020.
• 2021–2025: four titles for Verstappen with Red Bull, then Lando Norris’s first title with McLaren in 2025.

The closest title fights

The smallest winning margin is half a point: in 1984 Niki Lauda beat his McLaren team-mate Alain Prost 72 to 71.5. The half point came from that year’s Monaco Grand Prix: the race was stopped early, and half points were awarded for it. On eight more occasions the champion won by exactly one point.

From 1950 to 2025 the title was decided at the last race of the season 31 times. In 2007 Räikkönen beat two drivers at once by a single point — Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. Three recent finales:

• In 2010 Sebastian Vettel arrived at the final round third in the standings — 231 points to Alonso’s 246 and Mark Webber’s 238 — then won the race in Abu Dhabi and became champion.
• In 2021 Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton went into the last race level on 369.5 points; Verstappen won it and took his first title.
• In 2025 three drivers were still in the title fight before the Abu Dhabi finale, and third place was enough for Lando Norris: he beat Verstappen by two points, 423 to 421.

The Constructors’ Championship

The Constructors’ Championship is the team title: under the 2026 regulations a team scores the points of both its drivers. It has been contested since 1958, and its first winners were the British team Vanwall. How the two championships work is explained in the chapter “Points and the championship” and in the glossary.

The table is as of the end of 2025. Mercedes won the Constructors’ Championship eight years in a row, from 2014 to 2021 — the longest run. The champion’s team doesn’t always win the Constructors’ title too: from 1958 to 2025 the two titles went to different teams 12 times. The most recent case was 2024, when Verstappen became champion with Red Bull but McLaren won the Constructors’ Championship.

Which countries the champions come from

Great Britain has produced the most champions: 11 drivers and 21 titles as of the end of 2025. Germany is second by titles: by the end of 2025 its three champions had won 12, seven of them Schumacher’s.

In all, the world champions from 1950 to 2025 represented 15 countries. None of them came from Russia: Russian drivers and their best results are covered in the article “Russian F1 drivers”.