Multi 21, when Red Bull almost broke out

After his near-fatal accident at the Nurburgring in 1976, Lauda was infuriated when Ferrari arranged an early showing for the Brabham Reutemann driver, who would replace the occasionally quick Clay Regazzoni in 1977. Lauda scrambled out of his hospital bed, forcing Ferrari to line up three cars at Monza, and quickly overtook their teammates. Asked the following year whether he considered Reutemann a teammate or a rival, Lauda replied: “Neither.” Reutemann won the second round in 1977, but Lauda took the championship, while his teammate dropped to fourth place.

There are two reasons to think of this: either Prost was a master at bending a team to his will to the detriment of his teammate, or he was an absolute genius at mind games that Mansell’s paranoia couldn’t handle. By the time Prost joined Ferrari for the 1990 season, after his turbulent relationship with Senna at McLaren, Mansell was already settled in and fancied himself a “number one” driver. Midway through the season, Mansell literally hung up his gloves and announced he was retiring from the sport, enraged that he felt Prost (who had bothered to learn Italian, unlike Mansell) had turned the team against him to the point to win preferential treatment and equipment.

As a window into the future, Senna played his first political tricks in 1985 by harassing the Lotus team management to focus their efforts on him instead of the charismatic De Angelis. Senna managed to persuade the team to swap out renowned engineer Nigel Stepney and a couple of mechanics he wanted for his car, and De Angelis soon felt undervalued in what had been his ‘home’. The drivers almost came to blows at Kyalami, the penultimate race of the season, as Elio, despite his charm, was also heating up. Following the Italian’s decision to leave for Brabham (a partnership that would end in tragic circumstances), Senna asked for a subservient teammate and thus vetoed the team’s choice of Derek Warwick. Ensuring that if they signed him, he would also go to Brabham. Imagine Angelis’s delight if that had happened!

Two-time world champion Alonso arrived at McLaren expecting an easy ride, as his GP2 champion team-mate would take a while to learn the tricks, wouldn’t he? Nope! Hamilton was a thorn in his side from the first corner in Melbourne, and after pushing Alonso much harder than he would have preferred in Monaco and putting up with him in a direct battle for victory in Indianapolis, the cards were put on the table in Hungary. There, Alonso tried to sabotage Hamilton’s qualifying attempt (this would later backfire, as the FIA handed him a grid penalty). Their infighting ended with them level on points, allowing Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) to steal the title from them by one point.

Not for the first time in his career, Clay Regazzoni found himself replaced on a winning team by Reutemann. And not for the first time, Reutemann found no welcome mat provided by his teammate. Jones didn’t like the idea of splitting the points with a super-fast teammate, even though Carlos had agreed to play a supporting role. So Jones, aware of how strong his Williams FW07B was in 1980, came to resent the fact that his teammate had gone into “90% mode” and wasn’t taking more points from his title rival, Nelson Piquet of Brabham. Tension finally exploded after the 1981 second round, in Brazil, when Reutemann disobeyed team orders, ignored Williams’ pit wall reminder and edged out Jones for the win.

After their crash at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix, this was always a strained relationship. Then came the 2013 Malaysia debacle: the incredulous Webber saying “Multi 21, Seb… Yeah, Multi 21” in the podium room is perhaps one of the steadiest clashes we’ve seen between teammates. Vettel had nowhere to hide when they said it to his face. Race leader Webber lowered his engine mode after the final pit stop, but despite being told in coded fashion “Map 2-1” (Webber’s number before Vettel’s), Seb ignored this order, and passed his partner, to win the race. Since retiring from F1, Webber accused Vettel in his autobiography of arrogance, saying he too was prone to “meltdowns” and would often blame the team if they beat him.

Hamilton and Rosberg were good teammates in their karting years. Despite their different backgrounds, they also hung out away from the court, playing soccer, computer games, and table tennis. But years later they became teammates with Mercedes in F1, and everything turned sour… Since Rosberg went off in Monaco during qualifying in 2014, he caused a yellow flag and therefore denied him Hamilton the opportunity to take away pole, the relationship worsened to the point that they touched at the Belgian GP at Spa that year. Although that incident benefited Rosberg at the time, Hamilton came back stronger. As time went on, they seemed to annoy each other more and more. Rosberg threw a cap at Hamilton’s head as Lewis won his third title in Austin. The climax was his first lap and double DNF in Spain in 2016, but in Austria a few races later, Rosberg tried to run Hamilton off track and broke his own front wing. They were barely speaking by the time Rosberg finally beat Hamilton for the title in 2016, in the Abu Dhabi final, where leader Hamilton defied team orders and blocked his teammate from those coming from behind, in vain. Even after Rosberg’s retirement, we still haven’t seen much evidence of them dating and playing computer games together again…

Until 1979 and 1980, Arnoux had shown the great performance he had offered in lower formulas, taking his first two wins, scoring a handful of pole positions and playing the ardent maverick alongside expert Jean-Pierre Jabouille at Renault. When J-PJ broke his legs in an accident, Renault signed the young Prost for 1981, and the F1 sophomore overshadowed Arnoux in terms of wins, pace and consistency. As Frenchmen in what was effectively the second French national team (along with Ligier), a rivalry began to boil over. Then, in 1982, Arnoux recovered his performance, but continued to have bad luck, so the team’s title hopes reverted entirely to Prost. But at Paul Ricard, Arnoux ignored a pre-race agreement to allow Prost to overtake him and left him winless. He didn’t mind as he was leaving for Ferrari for 1983.

Piquet joined Williams in 1986 as world champion, just as Mansell was finding his form in F1 and broke into the top ranks. They quickly learned to hate each other and the Williams garage was split in two, each jealously guarding any development from their teammate. With Frank Williams in hospital and unable to handle the situation, his drivers lost enough points to each other to allow Alain Prost to steal the title from them in a dramatic finish in Adelaide. Piquet smiled one last time winning the title in 1987, despite a terrible crash at Tamburello in Imola, due to Mansell having his own big crash at Suzuka, which ruled him out of the last two races. Just when I thought it was over (when Piquet joined Lotus), a Playboy interview surfaced in which the new champion noted: “The difference between me and him is that I won three world championships and he lost two,” before dismissing intelligence, technical ability and even Mansell’s wife.

Put two giants of the sport in the most dominant cars of their time and what could possibly go wrong? Much! Sparks began to fly in 1988 when Senna pushed Prost into the pit wall at the start of lap two at the Portuguese Grand Prix, and there were some bitter words in the press. But that was little compared to the 1989 season. For Imola, the McLaren drivers agreed not to fight through the crucial Tosa corner on the first lap, and would concentrate on getting away from their rivals. Senna had a better start, but the race was stopped by Gerhard Berger’s big crash. On the restart, Prost had a better start and did not fight back at Tosa, at which point Senna chose to ignore the pre-race agreement and passed him. He then rewrote the words of the agreement to fit his movement. Prost’s fury carried over into the decisive title showdown at Suzuka, when he deliberately hit Senna at the chicane to secure his third world title. Senna would subsequently point the finger at the FIA, for what he considered “manipulation” of the championship, and their animosity even increased after Prost joined Ferrari. Only after Prost left would Senna suddenly do a 180 on her feelings for him.

The up-and-coming Pironi came to Ferrari in 1981 to replace the retired Jody Scheckter and was joined by the dazzling Villeneuve in what should have been one of the strongest F1 pairings of the ’80s. Though he found Gilles a welcoming colleague fun-loving Pironi initially struggled in his new surroundings, especially with the Ferrari 126CK’s turbo. Didier was amazed to find himself lapped by his teammate in Monaco. Where Pironi really went to the limit was in his intelligence; he was a calculating character and was angry with the high officials of Ferrari. That proved crucial after the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, which Pironi won by passing Villeneuve on the last lap, despite both drivers being shown a “slow” pit sign, and the established orders of Ferrari for the team were that whoever was ahead when the team had a double in sight, should be the winner. Villeneuve, leading Pironi by 1.5 seconds, was ahead when the slightly quicker Renaults dropped out, assuming Pironi would not attack. He was proven wrong by what happened next. Not only did Pironi’s paranoia double down (he had his own version of what the “slow” sign meant), but he also tried to turn his own team against him. The director, Marco Piccinnini, later said that Didier had done nothing wrong. Gilles would take this anger to the grave. Having sworn never to speak to Pironi again, Villeneuve had just seen his team-mate beat him by 0.1sec in qualifying at Zolder when he set off on his second attempt.Then a misunderstanding with a lap lap lap, a fateful split-second decision, and suddenly the world’s fastest driver was gone. It is the latest tragic account of hostility from a teammate that led, albeit indirectly, to the untimely demise of one of them.