Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari years were dominance personified. Five consecutive world titles and he very nearly came close to a sixth crown in 2006 before ultimately missing out to Fernando Alonso after retiring from the lead in the penultimate race of the season in Japan. In the 20 years since that fateful day at Suzuka, only one man has added to the Scuderia’s haul of world titles, and if the 2026 season is anything to go by, that collection won’t be added to later this year.
After a bright start that saw the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton reel off three straight podiums to start the campaign, the Scuderia have fallen back from the grid leaders. Mercedes continues to dominate at the front, winning all four races — three of them surprisingly coming from teenage prodigy Kimi Antonelli — while McLaren has also passed them by in recent races. As such, online betting sites no longer consider them a credible threat in this season’s championship challenge.
The latest odds from LuckyRebel currently price Leclerc as a 16/1 outsider, while Hamilton is a mighty 66/1 longshot. And as things stand, only one of them makes it on our list of the top three Ferrari drivers since Schumi’s departure. So, who are they? Let’s take a look.
Fernando Alonso
The car wasn’t good enough. It rarely was. And yet there was Fernando Alonso, two-time world champion, fresh from the wreckage of that catastrophic McLaren season alongside Hamilton in 2007, arriving at Ferrari in 2010 as arguably the finest racing driver on the planet. At least on a pound-for-pound level.
What followed was staggering — not for what he won, but for what he nearly did with so little. In that first season, the Spaniard had no right challenging both the Red Bulls and the McLarens in what was an absolute dog of a car. Instead, he took the Scuderia to the brink, somehow leading the championship into the final round in Abu Dhabi before everything went wrong. Not to a faster car or a better driver. To Vitaly Petrov. Stuck on the wrong strategy in a Ferrari that couldn’t pass, watching the title evaporate in his mirrors as Vettel’s Red Bull sailed away into the distance. It was the cruelest kind of defeat — the kind that requires almost perfect effort and still leaves you empty-handed.
2012 was arguably even more extraordinary. Alonso dragged a car that had no business competing for a championship into title contention across eleven podiums and three victories, none more iconic than Valencia — launched from tenth on the grid, threading through the field to win and take the championship lead on a day when Spanish patriotism was already flying high at the pinnacle of football’s UEFA Euro 2012.
In the end, however, the relentless Vettel would come charging back throughout the back end of the season, winning four races on the spin to pip Alonso to the crown on the final weekend… again. By 2014, though, the relationship had turned corrosive. He left by common consent, carrying 11 wins and 44 podiums. Did Ferrari ever actually give him a car worthy of his talent? The honest answer is no. And that failure belongs entirely to Maranello.
Kimi Räikkönen
Kimi Räikkönen is the only man to have won the World Championship in Scarlet Red across the last two decades. He didn’t do press conferences gracefully, didn’t play the media game, didn’t perform for Maranello’s theater. In fact, he famously missed Michael Schumacher’s Lifetime Achievement Award presentation in Brazil in 2006 without any sign that he cared.
What he did do, however, was drive the car faster than anyone else, collect his 2007 world title in the most dramatic of circumstances, and leave the politics for lesser people.
The Interlagos finale that year remains one of the most breathless afternoons in Formula 1 history. Räikkönen should have never even been in the fight, but Lewis Hamilton’s dramatic collapse in China kept him in contention. Still, he trailed both the rookie Brit and his teammate Alonso in the standings, needing a win and help from chaos. He got both — winning the race with characteristic ice-cold precision while Hamilton’s gearbox expired on lap eight, dropping him to the back of the grid. He climbed his way back up to seventh, but it wasn’t enough, and the Iceman had claimed the title by a single point.
Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel arrived in 2015 already a made man. He carried four world titles and Schumacher’s blessing to Maranello. He’d grown up worshipping Ferrari, and now his chance had finally come to lead his hero’s former team back to their former glories. The Italian press treated it as destiny. Here, finally, was the heir, and victory in just his second race in Malaysia solidified their belief.
The 2017 season briefly made believers of everyone. Five wins, a championship lead sustained deep into autumn, and the genuine sense that Schumacher’s ghost was finally being put to rest. Then Mercedes surged, and Ferrari — catastrophically, characteristically — began dismantling the opportunity from the inside. By 2018, it had become painful to watch. Vettel arrived at the summer break leading Hamilton by eight points and left the season defeated, undone by a combination of his own errors and Ferrari’s extraordinary capacity for strategic self-destruction.
The Germany spin while leading the race — in a wet Hockenheim, in title-contending position — became shorthand for everything that was going wrong. Then, Brazil 2019, the collision with his own teammate Leclerc, the internal relationship fracturing publicly. Ferrari didn’t formally offer him a 2021 contract. The split was announced in May 2020 as a joint decision. It wasn’t. It was Maranello choosing its future over its past, and Vettel — the man who had arrived as Schumacher’s anointed successor — left as the latest casualty of prancing horse politics.
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