Long before Lewis Hamilton: Williams with Ferrari, an almost forgotten Brit

Lewis Hamilton will compete in the Italian Grand Prix with Ferrari on 6 September. A Brit in Maranello: how often has that actually happened? Twelve drivers from Great Britain have raced for Ferrari, but only two made it big – Mike Hawthorn and John Surtees, who were Formula 1 world champions in 1958 and 1964 respectively.

The last British driver to race for Ferrari as a full-time driver before Lewis Hamilton was Eddie Irvine. After Michael Schumacher suffered broken legs at Silverstone in 1999, the Northern Irishman came within a hair’s breadth of becoming champion ahead of Mika Häkkinen. (Oliver Bearman stood in for Carlos Sainz in Jeddah in 2024.)

Of the British drivers, Irvine has contested the most races for Ferrari (65); Surtees and Irvine have won the most races for Ferrari (four each); and Hawthorn and Surtees have secured the most pole positions (also four each).

Nigel Mansell drove for the world’s most famous racing team in 1989 and 1990. The Italians still revere him to this day for his daring driving style; back then, they affectionately nicknamed him ‘il leone’, the lion.

Among the almost forgotten Britons who served Ferrari is Jonathan Williams: on 31 August 2026, it will be twelve years since the Englishman passed away.

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Flashback – the Mexican Grand Prix went down in history as the finale of the 1967 season: Jim Clark won, whilst Denny Hulme secured the World Championship title thanks to his third-place finish, finishing behind his team leader Jack Brabham in the final race but ahead of him in the World Championship standings.

For Ferrari connoisseurs, the race was interesting from a completely different perspective: It was the only Formula 1 World Championship race for the Briton Jonathan Williams, and he was driving for the world’s most famous team, as a stand-in for his British compatriot Mike Parkes, who had suffered serious leg injuries in a nasty crash at Spa-Francorchamps.

Williams’ passion for racing had been sparked during a visit to Silverstone. After competing in a Mini, Williams toured the whole of Europe in Formula Junior from 1963 onwards. His mechanic at the time: a certain Frank Williams …

In the 1966 Italian Formula 3 season, Williams caught the eye of the great Enzo Ferrari. From 1967, he had seemingly emerged from nowhere to become a works driver and was given plenty of time behind the wheel: sports cars, Formula 2, Can-Am, F1 tests.

When Mike Parkes had his serious accident at Spa-Francorchamps, Ferrari needed a driver at short notice and promptly promoted Williams to Grand Prix driver.

Perhaps Jonathan Williams should have turned down the tempting offer: although he performed admirably with an 8th-place finish in Mexico, the gap between him and his Ferrari team-mate Chris Amon was too wide for Enzo Ferrari’s liking.

Die Ferrari-Werkspiloten Chris Amon und Jonathan Williams 1967

Foto: Grand Prix Photo

The Commendatore dropped him just as quickly as he’d hired him, especially after Williams had wrecked a prototype in Modena.

Williams subsequently kept his head above water by racing sports cars; film fans will recognise him as the driver of the Porsche 908 camera car at Le Mans in 1970 for Steve McQueen’s film.

Williams, who was born in Cairo, disappeared from the racing scene in the early 1970s; the death of his close friend Piers Courage had put an end to his enthusiasm for the sport, and for years nobody knew where he was.

Our reader Andreas Hackbarth tracked him down whilst researching a book about Mike Parkes and wrote: “I met Williams whilst researching Parkes in September 2009 in Estepona, on the southern tip of Spain, within sight of Gibraltar. He was living in this simple camper van with just a few changes of clothes and his CDs. He’d been burgled shortly before, which had further reduced his meagre possessions.”

“Williams always drives his camper van to places where it’s nice and warm and sunny: Spain, Portugal, France, Italy. For me, talking to him was a lesson in humility. He is a modern-day Diogenes and has quite deliberately reduced his life to the bare essentials. We were in his local pub in the harbour at Estepona, where he was well known and was warmly greeted by everyone. When I asked whether the people there actually knew that he had been a Ferrari works driver, his reply was typical of his unassuming manner: ‘No, why should they?’”