Gerhard Berger

Gerhard Berger won ten Grands Prix across fourteen seasons and finished third in the championship in 1988 and 1994, but his place in history is marked by something harder to measure: he was Ayrton Senna's team-mate at McLaren for three years and came out of it with the relationship intact. That is no small thing. Nobody else managed it.

He joined McLaren in 1990 knowing what was coming and accepting the role. Senna won, he scored, and in between they built a friendship made of elaborate practical jokes still retold in the paddock: the briefcase thrown from a helicopter, the doctored passport. When Senna died at Imola, Berger was the one who accompanied him back to Brazil.

His relationship with Ferrari was longer and more complicated. He was there in two spells and both times arrived at the wrong moment, just before or just after the good years. He won his last race at Hockenheim in 1997, weeks after his father's death and having missed three Grands Prix with sinusitis, in one of the most complete farewells any driver has had.