Max Verstappen joined an elite club of triple world champions with his latest triumph over the Qatar Grand Prix weekend. With the dust settling on the achievement, we take a trip through the archive to shine a light on F1’s other three-time title winners, along with the legendary names the Dutchman has now cleared in the all-time list.
Three-time F1 world champions
Jack Brabham.
The next F1 driver to win three championships was Jack Brabham, who followed Juan Manuel Fangio, who accomplished the feat of winning five world championships in the 1950s.
Cooper helped Brabham complete his first brace by utilizing the British team’s innovative switch to rear-engined machinery. He was the first Australian to win an F1 race, then the drivers’ championship, in a thrilling finish at Sebring in 1959. The following year, he repeated the feat with a run of five straight victories in the middle of the season.
As the 1960s progressed, Brabham formed an eponymous team and eventually won his third and final championship in 1966 (and came dangerously close to winning it again in 1967).
Jackie Stewart
Jackie Stewart had enjoyed some early success with BRM in the mid-1960s, but his career stepped up a gear when he moved to Tyrrell’s Matra International team.
Stewart’s breakthrough season came in 1969 with a dominant performance that included six wins from 11 races and contributed to a then-whelming title-winning advantage of 26 points over Brabham’s Jacky Ickx. Stewart had narrowly defeated Lotus rival Graham Hill for the championship in 1968.
Following a 1970 season that saw many retirements, Stewart and Tyrrell found their form again, and over the course of the following three seasons, the “Flying Scot” added the 1971 and 1973 championship trophies to his cabinet. He later tried his hand at broadcasting and ran his own Formula One team, and until Lewis Hamilton, who currently holds seven titles, did so in 2015, he was the only British driver to have won three championships.
Niki Lauda
Niki Lauda made his F1 debut in the early 1970s, and after impressing Ferrari executives with a few tenacious backmarker displays, he began the first chapter of his career there.
Lauda had just won the championship in 1975 and was attempting to make it two in a row when he was involved in a fiery accident at the Nurburgring, causing a priest to perform the last rites for him in the hospital. After heroically withdrawing from the championship race in Fuji due to torrential rain, James Hunt of McLaren won the 1976 championship by a razor-thin margin.
In 1977, Lauda came back to win a second championship, but strained relations at Ferrari caused him to leave for Brabham.
Nelson Piquet.
As it turned out, Lauda left Brabham just as Bernie Ecclestone’s team started winning championships again, with Nelson Piquet going on to benefit.
Following his second-place finish in 1980, Piquet won the drivers’ championship for the first time at the conclusion of the 1981 campaign after passing Williams rival Carlos Reutemann by one point with a fifth-place finish in the Las Vegas competition. He succeeded it in 1983, defeating Prost, a Renault racer at the time, by a narrow margin.
Piquet made the move to Williams, where he and teammate Nigel Mansell would develop a fierce rivalry, with just three more victories expected over the course of the following two seasons and the prospect of another title challenge.
In the 1986
Ayrton Senna.
While excelling with Lotus, Ayrton Senna was a contender for the 1986 and 1987 championships. However, his move to McLaren with Prost gave him his first real chance at winning the championship.
Senna, Prost, and the McLaren MP4/4 were unmatched in 1988, winning all but one of the 16 races that were held. With eight victories to Prost’s seven, the young Brazilian athlete emerged victorious and finished the season three points ahead.
However, there were issues between the McLaren drivers, and a number of flashpoints would come to define their time together, with the Suzuka collision in 1989 garnering the most attention. Prost was immediately eliminated from the penultimate round, but Senna resumed racing.
Two-time F1 world champions
Alberto Ascari
After Giuseppe “Nino” Farina won the first F1 championship in 1950 and Juan Manuel Fangio won the first of his five titles in 1951, Alberto Ascari earned the distinction of becoming the sport’s first double champion. He is also still the last Italian to win the drivers’ championship.
as a Ferrari racer, Ascari easily romped to the 1952 championship by winning six of the seven championship races he competed in. The following season, he added five more victories to make it two from two. But his chances of adding to that total of F1 championships and enjoying comparable success in sports cars would soon be cruelly dashed.
Ascari received special permission to compete in the 1000 Kilometres of Monza in a Ferrari after switching to Lancia.
Jim Clark.
As per Ascari and many other drivers racing from bygone eras, Jim Clark combined several motorsport categories with F1, where he and Lotus formed a potent combination across the 1960s.
There is a case for arguing that Clark should have won five titles between 1962 and 1967, were it not for a host of reliability problems. Nonetheless, the Scot got two on the board in 1963 and 1965 respectively, winning 13 of the 19 races he took part in across those two seasons – skipping Monaco during the latter year to take on and win the prestigious Indianapolis 500.
Clark’s journey was another that met a tragic end, the superstar talent losing his life aged just 32 in a Formula 2 accident at Hockenheim after winning the first round of the 1968 F1 season.
Graham Hill
Hill had to wait five years after making his F1 debut before claiming his first championship, but once it did, he cemented his position as a front-runner for the majority of a decade.
In fact, the then-BRM racer finished first in the championship in 1962 thanks to four victories throughout the season. He then finished second in 1963, 1964 (missing out by just one point), and 1965. After his teammate’s passing, Hill joined Clark at Lotus and won his third and final championship in 1968.
Hill tragically passed away while still competing, but unlike other competitors, he died in a plane crash along with other members of the team he had founded.
Hakkinen was firmly in the hunt to make it three on the bounce in 2000, only for Schumacher to edge the battle during a stunning late-season run, with the Finn then calling time on his career at the end of the 2001 campaign. He flirted with the idea of a comeback in later years, but ultimately remained on the sidelines and settled for his two championship crowns.
Fernando Alonso
The last driver on our list of two-time champions is Fernando Alonso, who has written his name in F1 history with Renault and is still competing in the sport today.
After winning his first pole position and race in 2003 and adding a few more medals to his collection the following year, Alonso enjoyed a prolonged period of success and eventually won two world championships in the middle of the 2000s.
Alonso and Renault defeated Kimi Raikkonen and McLaren to win their first championship in 2005, and the Spaniard then defeated the resurgent Schumacher/Ferrari team in a thrilling 2006 campaign after having ended their long winning streak.
Multiple team changes and opportunities lost