F1’s greatest team-mate rivalries

Senna vs. Prost

Has there been a more momentous sporting rivalry in history? When Ayrton Senna arrived at McLaren in 1988, Alain Prost’s face said it all, the young prodigy from Brazil had come to spoil his fun.

Prost had established himself as the man at McLaren, widely recognised as the best driver in F1, a two-time world champion in line to become the greatest of all time. With the run of form McLaren was about to embark on, he probably would have achieved that goal, but the arrival of Senna threw a major spanner in the works.

Suddenly, two hugely talented and incredibly ambitious drivers were sharing the same machinery capable of carrying them to world championships, but with only one winner at the end of it all it’s needless to say things quickly got out of hand.

At the start it was amicable enough as the pair traded victories at the start of 1988. But Senna’s obsession with beating Prost was already becoming a problem, so much so that he pushed unnecessarily to embarrass his French team-mate in Monaco, only to end up in the wall despite having a massive lead. The championship fight itself was fought fairly on the track between the pair, with Senna coming out on top with eight wins to Prosts’ seven, but the gloves came off for good in 1989.

Stories of a rift between the drivers and their engineers began to surface as they withheld information on car setup and threatened to split the McLaren team in two. Prost waged war on Senna, and Senna reciprocated in kind. It became a global phenomenon, and the pair’s championship-deciding collision at Suzuka was etched into legend as Prost demanded his team refer Senna to the stewards for outside assistance.

It didn’t end there. Senna swore revenge, and got it a year later when he swiped Prost out of the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix at the first corner to seal his own second championship. He wasn’t proud of it, but he felt it a necessary evil to right what he believed was wrong about the previous season.

That moment proved to be the final act in this legendary saga. Prost left McLaren at the end of 1990.

Hamilton vs. Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg grew up together in motorsport as childhood friends, and when they were reunited as team-mates at Mercedes it was a hugely heart-warming moment. Unfortunately, their friendship was never likely to last.

Rosberg had been with the revived Mercedes team since its first season in 2010, establishing himself alongside Michael Schumacher and winning his first grand prix in 2013. But the arrival of Hamilton for the new hybrid era in 2014 came as something of a shock to the system for Rosberg.

The German did take the first win between the pair at the Australian Grand Prix, but it took just three races for the first signs of what was to come. The ‘Duel in the Desert’ at the Bahrain Grand Prix was an epic battle on track between two drivers who would clearly be fighting for the championship in vastly superior machinery. Hamilton took the win, and the pair looked to be in good spirits after the race, but it later transpired that Rosberg had made use of engine modes banned by Mercedes to try and overthrow his team-mate. The battle lines were already being drawn, and the following weekend in Spain, Hamilton deployed the same banned engine mode to defend the lead.

Later, in Monaco, Hamilton questioned Rosberg’s tactics after he caused a yellow flag in qualifying to deny Hamilton the chance of taking pole position. It was after this race that Hamilton declared his friendship with Rosberg was over.

The pair continued to clash throughout 2014, notably Hungary, when Hamilton defied a team order to keep Rosberg behind him, and in Spa, when Rosberg clattered into Hamilton causing damage to both cars. Hamilton ultimately took the title, but Rosberg was gracious in defeat, and vowed to come back stronger in 2015.

It was Hamilton that struck form, though, and dominated the season with ten wins to claim the title. The aggression between the team-mates had gradually escalated however, and peaked at the title-deciding US Grand Prix when Hamilton pushed Rosberg wide at Turn One to take the lead, a move Rosberg declared “one step too far.” His infamous ‘cap-throw’ at the end of the race underlined his feelings.

Rosberg put everything into his 2016 campaign, focusing his entire life on beating Hamilton to the title. His run of four race wins at the start of the season was ended with a chaotic collision at the start of the Spanish Grand Prix that threatened to tear the Mercedes team apart. Tempers flared further when the pair almost crashed out of the Austrian Grand Prix, and Toto Wolff was moved for the first time to threaten team orders if things didn’t improve.

The final act between the pair came at that year’s title-decider in Abu Dhabi. Rosberg had the points advantage, and Hamilton needed to affect the result if he wanted to claim another championship. In the closing laps, he slowed dramatically in an attempt to hold up Rosberg and get him overtaken by Vettel and Verstappen behind. His efforts failed however and Rosberg finally became champion.

He retired five days later, and so ended this remarkable chapter of F1 history.

Villeneuve vs. Pironi

This was not a protracted rivalry, but one that ended in tragedy. Gilles Villeneuve was Enzo Ferrari’s golden boy. Singled out by Ferrari himself to race in his team at the end of the 1977 season, he garnered a reputation as a fiercely competitive and entertaining racing driver capable of beating anybody on his day.

He’d scored an emotional home win at the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix and completed a brilliant championship one-two with Jody Scheckter in ’79 before being joined by Frenchman Didier Pironi in 1981. Despite being named as the team-leader at Ferrari, Villeneuve was said to have welcomed his new team-mate as an equal.

With two promising drivers, Ferrari just needed a car that could compete at the front consistently, but Villeneuve could manage only two victories for the team at Monaco and Jarama. He scored a further podium at the Canadian Grand Prix, and outscored Pironi, who struggled to get to grips with the sluggish Ferrari, by 25 points to nine in their first season together. By all accounts, the pair had worked incredibly well together and developed a strong feeling of trust, even friendship.

After a disastrous start to the ’82 season, the Ferrari pair were gifted an open goal to stroll to victory at the fourth round at Imola. The field was decimated by an ongoing row between FISA and FOCA, and only 14 cars took to the grid on race day. The Renaults of Alain Prost and René Arnoux both retired with engine troubles, leaving the Ferraris to cruise a minute clear at the front of the field.

Villeneuve was leading, and Ferrari bosses gave the order for the pair to slow down to bring both cars home trouble free. The Canadian read this signal to mean the cars would also hold position, so he slowed expecting Pironi to sit behind until the chequered flag.

Pironi, however, had other ideas. He took the lead, a move that surprised Villeneuve, who believed it was simply a false move to inject some interest into the race. The pair swapped places again a couple of laps later, and Villeneuve again slowed to save his car. Then, with a lap to go, Pironi overtook again and this time went on to take the victory. Villeneuve was incandescent, he felt betrayed by his team-mate, his friend, and vowed to never speak to him again.

It's said he had declared war, and the first battleground would be Zolder, for the Belgian Grand Prix two weeks later. Pironi was sitting on provisional pole, and Villeneuve refused to let that stand. Having completed his two qualifying runs on new tyres, he had strapped on the best four tyres he had left and gone out for one final, ill-fated run.

Pironi suffered in the weeks after Villeneuve’s death, he took blame for the Imola incident and ultimately the accident in Zolder, but he didn’t let it affect his performance on the track. He would almost certainly have become world champion that year if it weren’t for his own career-ending crash in qualifying for the German Grand Prix.

Vettel vs. Webber

There is a very simple equation for explosive team-mate rivalries in F1, the best car on the grid offers two drivers an opportunity to win the world championship, but only one can take the crown. It often brings out the meanest competitive streak in a driver, and inevitably leads to the fraying of tempers. That was certainly the case when Red Bull became the dominant force in F1 during the early 2010s.

Sebastian Vettel was already a star when he arrived at the team in 2009 after his memorable victory for Toro Rosso at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix. Mark Webber on the other hand had played the long game in his career, being forever stuck in the midfield until his fortunes changed along with those of his Red Bull team.

Almost from day one as team-mates, the race was on to see who out of Vettel and Webber would be able to get the upper hand in the intra-team battle. It was Vettel who took the team’s first win at the Chinese Grand Prix and a second at the British Grand Prix, before Webber fought back with one of his own in Germany. By the end of the season Vettel had taken four wins to Webber’s two, positioning himself as the de facto leader within the team.

Red Bull would be embroiled in another title fight in 2010, and both drivers performed well to keep themselves in title contention, but not without the first of several incidents between the pair. It was at the Turkish Grand Prix where Webber was leading from Vettel that the two cars collided at high speed. The incident put Vettel out of the race, while Webber was able to salvage a third-place finish, but the damage to the team was extensive. Christian Horner was visibly enraged by the incident, and the rift between the two drivers was formed.

Webber was already beginning to feel as though his team-mate was being favoured by management, and his comment after his victory at the British Grand Prix: “not bad for a number two driver” clearly laid out his point of view.

Vettel swept in to claim the title from the under the noses of Webber and Fernando Alonso, a pivotal moment that piled on further confirmation that the German was the number one at Red Bull. He followed that up with a dominant season in 2011 that blew everybody else away, including Webber, and made it three in a row in 2012.

By 2013, Webber’s patience with Vettel was beginning to wear thin, and things came to a head at the Malaysian Grand Prix, when the German ignored a direct team order to hold position behind his team-mate. The ‘Multi-21’ saga was the final straw for Webber, who was enraged as Vettel proceeded to attack and pass him to take the win. He claimed Vettel would receive protection from Red Bull’s management despite ignoring team orders, while Vettel stated he was simply getting revenge for two previous occasions where Webber had himself ignored team-orders.

It was a poisonous spat that even caused Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz to get involved due to the damage it caused to the brand. Webber would retire from F1 at the end of the season after Vettel strolled to a fourth championship.

Mansell vs. Piquet

The Mansell-Piquet partnership at Williams should have been world beating. Two of the best drivers in the sport driving one of, if not the best car in 1986. That dynamic of course led to one of the most toxic team-mate rivalries in F1 history.

When Piquet arrived it was under the pretence that he would be the number one driver in the team. A two-time world champion with a reputation substantially more substantial than Nigel Mansell’s, it did seem as though Frank Williams had signed the Brazilian with that in mind.

Words had been spoken before the season had even got underway, which made for a frosty atmosphere within the team. Honda was reportedly paying a large proportion of Piquet’s salary, and was disappointed that Mansell was being allowed to win races ahead of the Brazilian.

Mansell came within a whisker of the title in 1986, his infamous tyre failure ensured the title went to Alain Prost, but the relationship between him and Piquet went from bad to worse in ’87. The drivers did not get on, and the team was split solidly down the middle. “We have no relationship whatsoever, not even a professional one” Mansell once said of his team-mate.

Piquet completed a remarkable season, scoring 11 podiums including three wins, while Mansell won six races to keep himself in contention. This was a personal feud, one that often overflowed beyond the circuit, but the two were often involved in aggressive battles on the track, too. Not least at the 1987 British Grand Prix, when Mansell had fought to close a 29-second gap after a tyre change, breaking the lap record on eight occasions, before pulling off an audacious overtake with three laps to go to take a remarkable home win.

That move has since been linked with Honda’s decision to switch its engine supply to McLaren, while Piquet also decided he would make the move to the Honda-powered Lotus team to become the undisputed number one.

Alonso vs. Hamilton

Talk about a baptism of fire. Lewis Hamilton made his F1 debut in 2007 for the sport’s second most successful team alongside the reigning two-time world champion Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard was immediately put on notice by Hamilton after the rookie swept around the outside of his illustrious team-mate at turn one of round one in Melbourne, a move that set the tone for the rest of the season. Alonso may have expected to have a comfortable season alongside a fresh new upstart, but that was not to be the case.

Hamilton was the chosen one at McLaren, and his arrival at the team had been written in the stars for several years. Alonso knew this, and his defence mechanisms immediately kicked into action to try and manoeuvre himself into a more dominant position within the team. In the early races the atmosphere within the team was calm, the car was fast, and both drivers were behaving well on track at least.

The first signs of trouble appeared in Monaco, when Hamilton felt aggrieved that his strategy was manipulated to give Alonso the advantage in the race. He went against team orders to continue pushing hard when his team-mate had turned his engine down, but ultimately had to settle for second. From this point, the gloves were off.

Hamilton did score his maiden F1 win a race later in Canada, when in the aftermath Alonso accused McLaren of favouring its British driver. He had similar complaints when Hamilton won again in Indianapolis, insisting he was quicker and should have been handed the victory.

Things came to an ugly head in Hungary when Hamilton went back on a pre-agreement to allow his team-mate through during qualifying. Alonso retaliated later by blocking Hamilton in the pitlane, a tactic that caused the Brit to miss out on a final timed lap and infuriated Ron Dennis on the pit wall. He and Alonso had several arguments behind the scenes in the aftermath, and the Spaniard made a threat to Dennis that he would divulge emails pertinent to the ongoing ‘Spygate’ scandal that engulfed the McLaren team that year unless the team disadvantaged Hamilton in the race.

It was the ultimate escalation that threatened the entire team’s future, and all because the competition on the track between two team-mates had got too hot to handle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Alonso left McLaren after just a single season.

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