Michael Schumacher

Schumacher won seven world championships and ninety-one Grands Prix, records that stood until Lewis Hamilton matched and passed them. He took two titles with Benetton and then joined a Ferrari that had not won a drivers' championship in twenty-one years.

The rebuild took four seasons and ended in five consecutive titles from 2000 to 2004. He brought Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne with him from Benetton, and the working method they established — total focus on one driver, relentless testing, strategy as a weapon — became the template for the modern team.

His record also includes deliberate collisions with title rivals at Adelaide in 1994 and Jerez in 1997, the second of which had him stripped of his championship placing. He suffered a severe brain injury in a skiing accident in December 2013; his family has kept his condition private since.