Niki Lauda

Niki Lauda won three world championships nine years apart, with two teams and a retirement in between. An Austrian born in 1949, he made his debut in 1971 and joined Ferrari in 1974, where he won his first two races that same year from pole position. In 1975 he became champion with five wins, four of them from pole, and gave Ferrari a drivers' title it had not won since 1964.

The 1976 season is the best known of his career. Lauda had five wins from the first nine races when he suffered a fiery crash at the Nürburgring. He missed the next two races and came back six weeks later at Monza, where he finished fourth. At the final round, in Japan and in the rain, he withdrew of his own accord, and James Hunt took the title from him by a single point: 69 to 68. The following year he won it back, his second championship, with three victories.

He moved to Brabham, won two races and in 1979 left Formula 1. He returned in 1982 with McLaren, won in his third race back and in 1984 was champion for the last time, by half a point from his team-mate Alain Prost, the smallest margin in history. His final win, at Zandvoort in 1985, came from tenth on the grid. He died in 2019.