F1's 70 greatest influencers: 2010s

When the energy-drink billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz arrived in Formula 1, he brought a fellow Styrian with him. Helmut Marko was from Graz, only 40 miles from Murztal, Mateschitz's birthplace. What the two men had in common was ambition, and what Marko brought to the operation was a sharp and ruthless eye for what makes a racing driver. If anyone questioned his judgment, he could point to his own record behind the wheel.

Marko raced in only a handful of grands prix. In the ninth and last of them, at Clermont-Ferrand in 1972, a stone smashed into his helmet and cost the 29-year-old law graduate the use of his left eye. But one achievement had already defined Marko's career as a driver: six weeks before the accident he had finished a close second in the Targa Florio in Sicily, setting a lap record for the 45-mile mountain circuit that would stand in perpetuity.

He went on to manage Gerhard Berger and Karl Wendlinger and to run his own racing team, as well as other businesses. In 1999 he set up Red Bull's extensive junior driver operation for Mateschitz, and when the F1 team was launched in 2005 Marko became its consultant.

Typically, he recalled the first exchanges in Milton Keynes after taking over the former Jaguar operation: "They thought we were talking to them, but we were telling them." Within days a new management team was in place.

PLUS: Race of my life - Helmut Marko

Sebastian Vettel was the junior programme's first world champion, graduating from Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) into the senior team, having shown the qualities needed to survive an extremely demanding environment in which the possibility of promotion and relegation between the two Mateschitz-owned F1 teams provided a constant reminder to a driver that he was only as good as his last performance. Enzo Ferrari, who described himself as "an agitator of men", would surely have approved.

Vettel began karting soon after he could walk and was affiliated to Red Bull by the age of 11. Having made his F1 debut for BMW Sauber in 2007 deputising for Robert Kubica at the US GP, where his eighth-placed finish made him F1's youngest points scorer, Vettel switched to Toro Rosso later that season. At a wet Monza in 2008 he became the youngest driver to win a world championship grand prix, aged 21 years and 73 days.

Promotion to the senior team for 2009 coincided with the unveiling of Adrian Newey's Renault-engined RB5, a winner of six grands prix that season - four to Vettel and two to Mark Webber, ostensibly the team's senior driver.

In 2010 Vettel's five wins to Webber's four in the RB6 meant Vettel was crowned the youngest ever world champion. There would be three more titles in a row before his ability to translate Newey's aerodynamic genius into performance on the track could no longer compensate for Renault's lack of power.

Out of the cockpit, Vettel's charm and wit endeared him to many who also admired his quiet insistence on maintaining the privacy of his family life. But his competitive nature occasionally led to sulks and his sense of humour was tested by six trying seasons with Ferrari. Beaten in a straight fight for a fifth title by Lewis Hamilton, Vettel and the Italian team slowly grew apart and he has yet to prove himself capable of winning a championship in a non-Newey car.

PLUS: How Vettel's Ferrari dream died

It was after Toto Wolff had taken over the running of the Mercedes team that Red Bull's run of success was broken. Building on the foundations laid by Ross Brawn between 2010 and 2013, Wolff and his fellow Austrian Niki Lauda, the team's chairman, were soon recreating the kind of dominance the Silver Arrows had enjoyed in the 1930s and 1950s.

Cosmopolitan and charismatic, fluent in several languages, Wolff became a key figure in modern F1, a team principal whose thoughtful opinions were always worth hearing at a time when F1 was trying to redefine its place in a changing world

Born in Vienna in 1972, Wolff drove Formula Ford, GT and rally cars while pursuing a career as an investor in technology companies, some of them involved in motorsport. In 2009 he became a shareholder and director of the Williams F1 team; two years later he married Scottish racing driver Susie Stoddart, who joined Williams the following year in a testing capacity. In 2013 he left to become executive director of the Mercedes team, also succeeding Norbert Haug as co-ordinator of all the company's motorsports activities.

Cosmopolitan and charismatic, fluent in several languages, Wolff became a key figure in modern F1, a team principal whose thoughtful opinions were always worth hearing at a time when F1 was trying to redefine its place in a changing world, exemplified by his unhesitating support for Lewis Hamilton's efforts to promote the Black Lives Matter movement.

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The technical side of Wolff's all-conquering Mercedes team was heavily influenced by Aldo Costa, an engineer brought to England by Ross Brawn in 2011. Born in Parma in 1961, Costa studied at Bologna University before a career that took him from Abarth to Minardi and thence, in 1995, to Ferrari. At the Scuderia he worked under Brawn as Rory Byrne's assistant before taking over as chief designer and, from 2007-11, becoming technical director. In Brackley, Costa held the title of engineering director and supervised the design of the cars that won six consecutive constructors' titles between 2014 and 2019.

That success was only possible once a way had been found to integrate the work of engineers in factories on two sites 30 miles apart, mating power units designed under the aegis of Andy Cowell in Brixworth with chassis created at the Brackley plant, once the headquarters of the BAR, Honda and Brawn teams. The cars have won every championship for drivers and constructors since the replacement of the old naturally aspirated 2.4-litre V8 engines with a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 featuring sophisticated energy recovery systems.

Rejecting the widely copied high-rake configuration which distinguished Newey's successful Red Bulls, Costa and James Allison, the technical director since 2017, pursued a different approach to aerodynamics which, as refined over the seasons, eventually made the new Silver Arrows virtually unbeatable.

It was with Mercedes that the career of Lewis Hamilton reached fulfillment. The mixed-raced boy from Stevenage whose father worked three jobs to pay for his karting had been a protege of Ron Dennis, the McLaren boss, who signed the 13-year-old Hamilton to the team's driver development programme and guided him through his apprentice years. After winning the European F3 and GP2 titles, Hamilton was given a seat in McLaren's F1 team for 2007, alongside another new arrival, the double world champion Fernando Alonso.

Tensions between the two surfaced early in the season and came fully to the surface when the Spaniard delayed his departure from the pits during qualifying in Budapest, preventing his younger team-mate from setting a quicker time. Each won four races during the year: Hamilton's first had come in Canada, in only his sixth grand prix, and he narrowly failed to win the title in his debut season, at the end of which Alonso's contract was terminated by mutual consent. A year later Hamilton was celebrating his first championship after a dramatic climax to the season at Interlagos.

Four more years with McLaren failed to provide further titles, and a low point came in 2011 when distractions in Hamilton's personal life affected his performances. But he returned to form and, at the end of the following year, he announced his decision to move to Mercedes at the invitation of Brawn and Lauda.

With his diamond ear-studs, braided hair and fondness for hip-hop, Hamilton introduced a different culture to what had hitherto been a virtually all-white sport

A settling-in season prefaced six years in which Hamilton established himself as one of the greatest drivers in Formula 1's history, his run of five championships with the team interrupted only by the success of his team-mate, Nico Rosberg, in 2016 - while in the current decade he has matched Michael Schumacher's all-time F1 world titles record with his seventh crown in 2020, having also surpassed the German for most grand prix wins at the Portuguese GP.

PLUS: The hidden side of Hamilton's record-breaking quest

With his diamond ear-studs, braided hair and fondness for hip-hop, Hamilton introduced a different culture to what had hitherto been a virtually all-white sport. But the core of his appeal is a thrilling virtuosity that justifies comparisons with the greatest champions of the past combined with a dedication to winning which, although he can fight with the gloves off, is notably unsullied by underhand tactics.

Hamilton's first season in F1 coincided with the last championship to date for a Ferrari driver. In 2014, seven barren years after Kimi Raikkonen's success, Sergio Marchionne arrived at the Scuderia on a rescue mission. Born in Italy in 1952 but brought up in Canada, a man who wore chain-store jumpers to business meetings seemed an unlikely replacement for the flamboyant Luca di Montezemolo, who had twice rescued Ferrari in the 1970s and 1990s.

Marchionne had already achieved the feat of turning round the fortunes of Fiat through the formation of an alliance with Chrysler. While retaining his chairmanship of the parent company, he restructured the historic Scuderia with some success: after Vettel's arrival in 2015 the cars began winning races again, although the appointment as team principal of the abrasive Maurizio Arrivabene, a former Philip Morris marketing man, was not a success and championships continued to prove elusive.

Although he had come from outside the world of motorsport, Marchionne grasped its essentials and became a highly effective member of F1's inner councils, campaigning in particular - alongside Wolff - for the retention of grand prix racing's role as a showcase for the most advanced technologies and opposing the most radical cost-capping proposals. The consequences of his sudden death in July 2018, after what had seemed to be routine shoulder surgery, are still being felt in Maranello.

PLUS: What Marchionne tragedy means for Ferrari and F1

While Vettel and Hamilton, who had started off in F1 as young prodigies, were making the transition to the status of senior figures in the paddock, the arrival of 17-year-old Max Verstappen in 2015 announced the presence of a new generation. The son of Jos Verstappen, who had driven for six teams in an eight-year F1 career, the Dutchman became the youngest driver in grand prix history by a margin of almost two years.

Not yet old enough to hold a driving licence at home, Verstappen made it clear that he was ready to win races straight away - although it took a promotion from Toro Rosso to Red Bull part way through his second season before he scored his first victory, holding off Raikkonen's Ferrari in Spain.

A confidence easily mistaken for arrogance was evident in Verstappen's driving, both in the use of questionable tactics - his habit of blocking rivals forced the FIA to outlaw moving under braking - and in his superlative car-control, most vividly seen in a drive from 16th place to third in heavy rain at Interlagos at the end of 2016, where he was finding adhesion by using parts of the track others were avoiding.

Those characteristics made Verstappen seem like Marko's ideal driver, even when he and his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo were eliminating each other in a collision at the climax of a long battle for fourth place at Baku in 2018, although the growing catalogue of indiscretions eventually forced Verstappen's mentor to describe him as "too impatient".

Even when Red Bull's switch to Honda power in 2019 improved the team's competitiveness, Verstappen was required to find extra reserves of patience while establishing himself as consistently the best of the rest behind the Mercedes duo of Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

PLUS: The headache Verstappen is giving Red Bull

Verstappen was soon to be joined on the grid by other next-generation drivers, including Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Alex Albon and Lance Stroll, who made his debut for Williams in 2017 at the age of 18. Like many drivers before him, Stroll's path to F1 had been eased by family wealth.

But Lawrence Stroll was not any old rich dad. As soon became apparent, the Canadian with a fortune from distributing the fashions of Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and others had serious ambitions within F1.

Lawrence Stroll led a consortium to buy a large stake in the ailing Aston Martin company, and from 2021 the Racing Point team would adopt the identity of the marque. The Strolls were in F1 to stay

Stroll's links with Ferrari gave his son a place in the young drivers' programme at Maranello, and his investment in the Williams team secured the teenager an F1 seat. In 2018 Lawrence and a group of investors bought Force India and renamed it Racing Point the following year, when Lance became one of its drivers.

After a difficult start, and in the face of much scepticism, the teenager showed that he had what it takes, racing on equal terms with his team-mate, Sergio Perez, as they rose through the fierce battle in midfield.

In the early weeks of the new decade it was announced that Lawrence Stroll had led a consortium to buy a large stake in the ailing Aston Martin company, and that from 2021 the Racing Point team would adopt the identity of the marque whose sportscars won at Le Mans in 1959. The Strolls were in F1 to stay.

PLUS: Will signing Vettel save Aston Martin?

No presence in the F1 paddock had seemed more permanent than that of Charlie Whiting, F1's race director: the man who pressed the button to activate the starting procedure, acted as referee in technical disputes and played a primary role in improving safety.

Coming a couple of days before the first race of the decade's final season, the news of his sudden death from a heart attack, aged 66, shocked those who valued the shrewdness, imperturbability and humour he brought to bear on a demanding brief.

PLUS: Whiting's F1 career in his own words

Whiting had seen his first grand prix at the age of 12, climbing a fence to glimpse the cars at Brands Hatch, his local track. After studying mechanical engineering, Whiting found his way into motorsport and spent a year with the Hesketh F1 team before joining Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham outfit in 1979, serving as Nelson Piquet's chief mechanic in the title-winning seasons of 1981 and 1983.

Whiting's enduring relationship with Ecclestone gave him an unmatched inside view of Formula 1 and led to his appointment as F1's technical delegate to the FIA in 1988. As race director, he earned universal respect. "You'd better ask Charlie" and "Charlie says..." were the standard responses whenever a loophole in the regulations needed to be identified or closed.

If Whiting was a discreet figure in the paddock, Chase Carey instantly became one of its most distinctive in 2017, thanks not least to his luxuriant white moustache. Hitherto unknown in F1, the Irish-American executive had worked as president and chief operating officer of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation before Liberty Media's acquisition of the Formula One Group, to which he was appointed as chief executive and executive chairman.

Having made it clear that Ecclestone would play no further part, Carey effectively held F1's future in his hands. And they would certainly be full with the renegotiation of the Concorde Agreement, talks about budget caps, new technical regulations, and the pressing need to promote Formula 1 to a generation of potential fans hooked on social media.

Carey's biggest test, however, was around the corner of a new decade: a global pandemic that would test F1's ability to act collectively in order to give itself a chance of surviving into a new and uncertain era.