LANDO NORRIS is looking to join the elite club of British speedsters who have won the Formula One Drivers’ World Championship this weekend.
The 26-year-old leads a three-way battle going into Sunday’s race in Abu Dhabi, with Max Verstappen trailing him by 12 points and McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri by 16 points.
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F1 has seen 10 British drivers crowned world champion of the world’s most glamorous motorsport, with Norris looking to become the 11th in the sport’s 75th year.
Like many of his predecessors, he has enjoyed his share of the glam side of the sport by dating stunning Wags and attending massive parties – though he revealed he has cut out the alcohol to help him achieve his F1 title dream.
If he is successful he will join a club first opened back in 1958 which contains notorious bad boys, a former farmer and the only driver to win motorsport’s Triple Crown.
But who are the other winners to hail from the UK? SunSport takes a look through the history books.
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Jenson Button – 2009
Jenson Button was most recent new Brit to win the F1 title, doing so with Brawn – who would later become Mercedes – in 2009.
An electrifying start to the season saw him win six of the first seven grand prix and then not win another after that.
Button completely retired from motorsports earlier this year, but recalled 2009 being one of the toughest years of his life due to the pressure he was under to deliver the title.
He also raced for the likes of Williams, Benetton, Renault and McLaren across a 17-year career between 2000 and 2017, competing in 309 races.
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Lewis Hamilton – 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
One of the undisputed greatest of all time in F1, Lewis Hamilton was setting records even in his rookie season back in 2007.
The 40-year-old boasts a record-equalling seven titles – tied with Michael Schumacher – but is outright clear for the most races won and poles earned throughout his career.
Hamilton, who has raced for McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari, is a trailblazer in F1 on and off the track, and was the first, and to date only, black driver in the sport’s history.
That’s not to say he didn’t also enjoy the more glamorous side of the sport either, often seen in the news for his high-profile off-track relationships with the likes of Nicole Scherzinger and now worth £385million according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2025.
Damon Hill – 1996
When Damon Hill won the F1 title with Williams in 1996 he became the first son of a previous world champion, Graham Hill, to be champion.
An impressive season saw him never qualifying off the front row in what was by far the quickest car on the grid – with those 16 races matching the records held by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
In 1994 Hill was famously turned into by Schumacher and sent both of them crashing out to hand the German his first F1 title.
Hill married his wife Susan in 1998 and they have four children together, while he has become a particularly outspoken pundit since hanging up his racing gloves – with Sky Sports even axing him in 2025.
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Nigel Mansell – 1992
Mansellmania swept across the nation when Nigel Mansell became F1’s first British champion for 16 years.
At the age of 39, Mansell – dubbed the “people’s champion” and “Red 5” – clinched the title at the 11th of 16 races in the season, at the time a record for quickest champion.
It was a huge relief after a series of near misses for Mansell, having finished second in the championship 1986, 1987 and 1991.
Mansell met his wife Roseanne in college and they married in 1975, living together on the Isle of Man before moving to Jersey.
James Hunt – 1976
James Hunt’s title-winning battle against Niki Lauda in 1976 has become the stuff of legend in F1 – not least for the critically acclaimed movie, Rush, which immortalised it.
Hunt was active in F1 for six years but made quite the impression with his off-track antics making him as much a celebrity as his on-track prowess.
The party animal became a major sex symbol in the 1970s and is said to have bedded as many as 5,000 women, while it’s also been claimed he took cocaine in the build-up to his F1 title win
Having been married twice and having two children, Hunt became an outspoken pundit after his racing career before he tragically died at the age of 45 in 1993.
Jackie Stewart – 1969, 1971, 1973
In stark contrast to Hunt, Jackie Stewart was seen as something of a killjoy by some due to his incessant demands for improved safety standards in F1.
Doubtless those efforts, which included calling for boycotts at Spa and the Nurburgring, have helped to save many lives in one of the world’s most dangerous sports. And Stewart was never one to shy away from a challenge on track.
The Flying Scot won three F1 titles over the course of eight years in the sport and held the record for most race wins by a driver for 14 years with 27 grand prix victories before he was dethroned by Prost.
Stewart was diagnosed with dyslexia in 1980 and married his childhood sweetheart, Helen in 1962. In 2018 he set up the charity Race Against Dementia after his wife was diagnosed with dementia.
John Surtees – 1964
The last Brit to win the F1 title at Ferrari, John Surtees was proficient in both F1 and motorcycle racing and is famed as the only racer to be a world champion on four and two wheels.
He was active for 12 years in F1, winning six races including two in 1964 on route to the championship. Things eventually turned sour between driver and team however, leaving Ferrari in a rage in 1966.
Surtees was married three times and had three children with his last wife, Jane. But his son, Henry, tragically died during an F2 race at Brands Hatch in 2009.
He died in Tooting, south London, of respiratory failure in 2017 at the age of 83 and was buried next to Henry in St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Lingfield, Surrey.
Jim Clark – 1963, 1965
Scotsman Jim Clark won two F1 titles with Lotus. Born into a farming family alongside four sisters, motorsport was a hobby in his early years, so becoming the best in the world came as quite the surprise.
His motorsport championships also included British Saloon Cars, Tasman Series three times and winning the Indy-500 in 1965.
Clark, who never married but did have a long-term girlfriend, died in 1968 while racing at the Hockenheimring in Germany, where a memorial in tribute to him remains to this day.
He was an inaugural inductee into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and in 2024 was ranked as the greatest racing driver of all time.
Graham Hill – 1962, 1968
The father of Damon, Graham Hill is the only racing driver to have won the famous Triple Crown of motorsport; Indy 500, Monaco Grand Prix and 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Nicknamed “Mr Monaco”, Hill was one of the media stars of F1 and held the record for most podiums in the series at the time of his retirement in 1975.
Hill married wife Bette in 1955, which she paid for due to Hill putting all his money into his racing career, and had two daughters and the aforementioned Damon. He tragically died in an aircraft crash in 1975 at the age of 46 and has a road named after him in Silverstone village.
He is the only British F1 world champion to have never won the British Grand Prix, and was actively involved in rowing while serving with the Royal Navy
Mike Hawthorn – 1958
The first British F1 champion and at the time only the fourth-ever driver to win F1, Mike Hawthorn was the son of a racing enthusiast and decided at the age of nine he wanted to be a racer.
Hawthorn won several endurance races including 24 Hours of Le Mans and Spa. He was famous for wearing a bow tie when racing.
The tall blonde never married, but fathered a son, Arnaud Michael Delaunay born 1954 and was engaged to model Jean Howarth at the time of his death.
In January 1959 he was killed in a car accident on the A3 just three months after his retirement from F1 immediately after winning the world championship.