The worst title defences in F1 history

Defending a Formula 1 world title is always tough, but sometimes factors combine to stop a driver getting anywhere near repeating the feat.

For this list, we’ve looked at the performance of the reigning champion, their results and the circumstances surrounding their fall. While the drivers’ level is a key factor, some seasons have been so tough – even if largely outside their control – to warrant high spots in our ranking.

We’ve excluded campaigns in which the reigning champion was unable or unwilling to contest the season, such as Juan Manuel Fangio through injury in 1952.

10. Sebastian Vettel, 2014

Vettel was hamstrung by a poor engine but he was also well beaten by an inexperienced team-mate

Photo by: Rainer Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

Wins: 0
Position: 5th

Jacques Villeneuve finished fifth in his title defence in 1998 as a rule change (and the loss of Renault and Adrian Newey) pushed Williams down the pecking order. But Villeneuve did still beat team-mate Heinz Harald-Frenzten.

Vettel, on the other hand, went from winning four consecutive titles and a record-equalling nine races on the trot to being comprehensively beaten by a team-mate who came into the season having not yet won a grand prix…

Red Bull and engine supplier Renault struggled to adapt to the turbo-hybrid regulations in 2014 and were a long way off pacesetting Mercedes. Nevertheless, the RB10 still battled the Mercedes-powered Williams FW36 to be best of the rest and Daniel Ricciardo managed three wins when the Mercedes drivers hit trouble (or each other).

Vettel didn’t like the new cars and was often a step behind his team-mate. He scored four podiums on his way to fifth in the standings, two spots behind Ricciardo, and only beat Fernando Alonso – saddled with the woeful Ferrari F14 T – by six points.

Vettel headed to Ferrari at season’s end having failed to add to the 38 wins he’d scored with Red Bull in the previous ruleset.

9. Niki Lauda, 1985

Unreliability and bad luck followed Lauda around, but a Dutch GP victory provided a small window of light on a gloomy season

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 1
Position: 10th

Lauda’s performances in his final F1 season were not as bad as the stats suggest, though it's hard to argue he was a match for McLaren team-mate Alain Prost, who he'd beaten to the 1984 crown by half a point.

A hard-pressed Lauda had needed all his guile as well as some good fortune to beat Prost, but the bad luck seemed to transfer to his side of the garage in 1985. The MP4/2B was also a trickier and less-dominant beast than its predecessor, partly due to rule tweaks that led to the loss of some downforce.

A fuel system issue hit Lauda when he was following eventual victor Prost through the field at the Rio opener. Engine problems put him out of the wet Portuguese GP and that set the tone for the season, with Lauda only finishing two of the first 10 races.

Aside from an off at Monaco, the problems weren’t Lauda’s fault. After 11 seasons in F1, three titles and such a poor start, it perhaps wasn’t a surprise that Lauda wasn’t always at his best and Prost was undoubtedly quicker, but generally his performances deserved much more.

And there was also one more great day, at Zandvoort. After moving through the field from 10th and not being given the tyres he wanted at his pitstop, Lauda held off a determined Prost to take his 25th world championship GP victory by 0.2 seconds.

That contributed nine of his 1985 points tally of 14, only enough for 10th. Prost, with five wins, took the title with 73 (after dropped scores), the combination being just enough for McLaren to beat Ferrari in the constructors’ table.

8. Graham Hill, 1969

Nobody could stop Stewart in 1969, but Hill was outrun by Lotus team-mate Rindt

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Wins: 1
Position: 7th

If we excluded the first three races of 1969, Hill’s second title defence would be higher up this list. He only scored four points over the remaining eight rounds and was outpaced by Lotus team-mate Jochen Rindt. But his second place in South Africa and his fifth Monaco GP win save him.

Hill had picked up Team Lotus brilliantly after the death of Jim Clark, taking three victories and beating Jackie Stewart to the title. There was no stopping Stewart and the MS80 in 1969, but Rindt showed that the Lotus 49B still had pace by taking five poles.

It was the Austrian who increasingly led the team’s charge, and he would recover from poor luck early in the season to take fourth in the championship. Hill, who had been second in the table after Monaco, finished seventh on 19 points.

He also ended the season in hospital following a terrible crash in the United States GP that forced him to miss the Mexico finale. Hill would never win another GP, though he did taste success in the non-championship 1971 BRDC International Trophy and the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1972.

7. Alberto Ascari, 1954

Lancia D50's might have given Ascari a car capable of fighting for the title - if it had been ready in time

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 0
Position: 25th

Statistically, this should be higher on our list, but there are several key aspects that work in Ascari’s favour. Firstly, he didn’t contest the full season while he waited for Lancia to get its D50 ready. And secondly, he was still able to show his class.

Ascari had dominated the F2 era of the world championship with Ferrari’s 500, winning 11 of the 15 GPs. But when he and Ferrari couldn’t agree on his salary for 1954, Ascari switched to Lancia.

Vittorio Jano’s D50 was a gem, but there was a problem. It wasn’t ready. Ascari missed the Argentinian and Belgian GPs before being allowed to race for Maserati, but finished neither the French nor British GPs.

Ferrari’s season wasn’t going much better as it struggled to match the Maserati 250F, never mind Fangio’s Mercedes W196. Ascari made his one Ferrari start of the year at Monza and it nearly delivered a dream result.

Ascari qualified just 0.2s behind poleman Fangio and led for much of the way, despite challenges from the Mercedes and Stirling Moss’s 250F. A brilliant victory looked possible until the Ferrari’s engine cried enough after 48 of the 80 laps.

Ascari finally got his hands on the D50 at the Spanish GP, the final round of 1954. He took pole by a second and pulled clear in the early laps before the Lancia’s clutch gave up.

That meant Ascari recorded no finishes and his only points – 1.14 of them – were from two fastest laps, one in Spain and a shared one at the British GP. But his status as one of the best remained.

6. Phil Hill, 1962

Ferrari internal strife and stronger competition left Hill powerless to defend his crown

Photo by: David Phipps

Wins: 0
Position: 6th

With the dominant Ferrari 156 ‘Sharknose’ at his disposal at the start of the 1500cc era, Hill battled team-mate Wolfgang von Trips for the 1961 crown. When von Trips was killed in a horrific crash during the penultimate round at Monza, Hill won the race and became the first American to be F1 world champion.

Hill started the following season with three podiums, but the 156 V6 had been overtaken by BRM’s P57 and the Lotus 25, both with V8 power. The championship battle boiled down to a fight between Graham Hill and Clark.

Ferrari skipped the French GP round altogether (Italian strikes were cited) and Hill failed to score in the next three races.

Ferrari was in internal strife, so it’s hard to argue Hill drove any worse in 1962 – no one else achieved anything better for the team that year – but things went downhill fast. Hill also missed the final two GPs and ended up being part of the breakaway group that formed the ill-fated ATS operation.

That meant Hill only scored the 14 points he’d gathered in the opening three races of 1962. He would never score another F1 podium.

5. Nelson Piquet, 1988

Piquet failed to spark a revival at Lotus in 1988

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 0
Position: 6th

A quick look at the championship tables might lead some to suggest that Piquet’s 1982 season should be here. After winning three races and scoring 50 points on his way to the 1981 crown, Piquet fell to 11th with just 20 points the following year. But the Brazilian was working hard on the engine programme with BMW, which would pay dividends the following year, and he scored a victory in Canada, just a week after failing to qualify in Detroit.

His move to Lotus came after a fortuitous title with Williams in 1987, when he’d been outpaced by team-mate Nigel Mansell. It meant he got to keep the benchmark engine supplier, Honda, which had switched from Williams to McLaren as Ayrton Senna moved from Lotus to Ron Dennis’s squad.

Given that his team-mate was the inexperienced Satoru Nakajima, it’s hard to gauge Piquet’s level in 1988, but he certainly failed to achieve the heights Senna had managed at the team previously. There were three podiums – two in the opening brace of races and another at the Adelaide finale – but the Lotus 100T was no match for the McLaren MP4/4s of Senna and Prost.

Piquet failed to lead a lap for the first time since 1979 and ended up sixth in the table with just 22 points, behind Ferrari drivers Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto, plus Benetton’s Thierry Boutsen, as well as the McLaren duo.

In its assessment of that year’s F1 drivers, Autocourse did not put Piquet in its top 10 and said: “He could not motivate the Lotus personnel in the way Senna had done before him and the intensity of his commitment was swept away by an uncompetitive car.”

4. Jack Brabham, 1961

Even with the T58, Brabham was denied by unreliability throughout the season

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 0
Position: 11th

After finishing 1-2 in the drivers’ standings in 1960, Cooper was left behind. The switch from 2.5-litre engines to 1500cc left the four-cylinder Climax-engined T55 outgunned by Ferrari’s V6, while Lotus and BRM were growing forces.

Brabham wasn’t able to perform the miracles of Moss in the similarly powered Lotus 18 and his focus was starting to move to setting up his own team, but the reigning double champion didn’t do a lot wrong in 1961.

Brabham maintained an edge over team-mate Bruce McLaren, though was sometimes troubled by John Surtees in a privateer T53. And when the Climax V8 arrived, Brabham qualified the new T58 second at the Nurburgring and on pole for the season finale at Watkins Glen, in the absence of Ferrari.

But reliability was hard to come by. Whereas he’d only failed to finish in two of his eight championship starts in 1960, Brabham saw the chequered flag just twice in 1961. A sticking throttle caused him to crash in Germany, ignition and engine trouble hurt him early in the season and the new V8 suffered overheating late in the campaign.

The result was just four points, thanks to sixth at Zandvoort and fourth at Aintree, leaving Brabham 11th in his final season at Cooper.

3. Damon Hill, 1997

Hill went from title triumph with Williams to midfield battle with Arrows

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 0
Position: 12th

Another that’s hard to place. On the one hand, Hill scored just seven points and was outqualified by team-mate Pedro Diniz at Magny-Cours, Spa and Suzuka. On the other, there was his near-win in Hungary and there can be little doubt he helped the minnow team move forward: 5.4s off the pace at the first round in Melbourne, where the car failed before the start, to 0.058s from pole at the Jerez finale.

After being dumped by Williams, Hill joined Arrows, which had scored just one point in 1996. He therefore went from taking eight wins and nine poles on his way to 97 points and the crown, to battling in the midfield.

There were times when Hill’s frustration showed – he clashed with Shinji Nakano’s Prost at Imola and picked up a suspended ban – but the bigger failings were on the car side. When he finished, Hill was often in the top 10, though only the top six scored points at the time.

Hill’s Hungarian GP performance stops his season climbing any higher on this list. On a weekend his Bridgestone tyres gave him an edge over the Goodyear hordes, Hill qualified third, jumped to second at the start and then overtook Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari to lead.

The Arrows-Yamaha pulled away and was more than half a minute ahead with three laps to go when the A18 suffered a hydraulics problem. Hill coaxed it home to second, behind the Williams of his former team-mate Jacques Villeneuve. Diniz qualified 19th and retired while running 10th.

That race contributed six of Hill’s 1997 points and he left for Jordan at season’s end.

2. Mario Andretti, 1979

The Lotus 79 saw the team and Andretti drop out of contention

Photo by: Sutton Images

Wins: 0
Position: 12th

Andretti’s fall from dominant 1978 world champion to a lowly 12th the following year can largely be put down to Lotus’s decline. While other teams, chiefly Williams and Ligier, produced their versions of the revolutionary ground-effect Lotus 79, Colin Chapman tried to push the concept even further with the 80, designed entirely to be a ground-effect device.

Porpoising and sensitivity to track surface meant the car never really worked as intended and, after finishing third on the car’s debut in Spain, Andretti rejoined team-mate Carlos Reutemann in the 79. But that car, never the stiffest, had been overtaken by the opposition and Andretti also suffered many failures during the middle of the season.

His woeful run of unreliability, through no fault of his own, limited Andretti to just five top-six finishes, his 14 points only good enough for 12th in the final table.

Andretti and Reutemann were closely matched on qualifying pace but it was the Argentinian who got marginally the better results, ending up five spots higher in the standings. Reutemann managed two second places, one in the season opener in Buenos Aires while Andretti took fifth, and at Jarama he led home Andretti’s Lotus 80.

“His driving may have lost the extra sharpness which comes with continually fighting for pole position but his overall ability remains,” reckoned Autocourse, which had Andretti only 10th in its driver ratings, down eight from the year before. Reutemann was fifth.

1. Jody Scheckter, 1980

Scheckter tops this list with a bad car, a drop in performance and being well beaten by his team-mate

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wins: 0
Position: 19th

This has to be number one because it combined a poor car with a demotivated driver destroyed by his team-mate.

Scheckter had put together a fine 1979 campaign in Ferrari’s 312T4. Three wins and consistent scoring were enough to finish ahead of growing threat Gilles Villeneuve – who played the team game to help the South African secure the crown at Monza – and the Williams of Alan Jones.

But ground effect and turbocharging were moving things on apace. And even more so than Lotus in 1979, Ferrari plummeted from competitiveness in 1980.

The 312T5 was a logical evolution but the dimensions of its flat-12 engine severely limited the exploitation of ground effect. It was nearly 2% off on raw pace and was also far less reliable than its predecessor.

While the spirited Villeneuve battled on and managed four points finishes, Scheckter scored just once – fifth place, a lap down, in a race of attrition at Long Beach. He even failed to qualify at Montreal, where Villeneuve was more than 0.8s faster and then managed a remarkable fifth in the GP.

Finishing 19th with two points was a sad way for a great career to end, but Autocourse was respectful in its season review of the drivers: “It would be fair to say he had lost more than a little sparkle. Once he had announced his retirement, however, Scheckter appeared to perk up and throw his Ferrari around with abandon.

“His commitment to his team was unswerving under the most frustrating circumstances and, while his last races were perhaps the hardest of all, his professional behaviour set standards by which future champions should be judged.”

After announcing his retirement, the weight of the world appeared to lift off Schekter's shoulders

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images