Ferrari's top F1 drivers ranked ahead of Hamilton arrival

Lewis Hamilton will become the 98th driver to race for Ferrari in the F1 world championship when he lines up on the grid for the 2025 Australian GP. 

He is aiming to follow eight of them in becoming world champion, and in doing so, be the man to restore title glory to Ferrari - which has not won a title since the 2008 constructors' when he pinched the drivers' from Felipe Massa.

For the last drivers' crown, you must go back another 12 months to 2007 and Kimi Raikkonen, with the now-retired Finn kicking off our countdown in fifth place.

5. Kimi Raikkonen

The fact that Kimi Raikkonen is on this list is because he managed to deliver what contemporaries Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel could not: an F1 drivers' title.

Sure the Finn needed a dollop of luck in 2007, but to this day, nearly 18 years on, he remains Ferrari's last drivers' world champion. 

His peak years may have been at McLaren, but in claiming his final win at the 2018 United States GP, Raikkonen set a record only Alonso can beat.

Raikkonen is the only F1 driver to have won a race with V10, V8 and V6 turbo hybrid engines. 

4. Gilles Villeneuve

Enzo Ferrari famously never got close to drivers, but an exception was made for Gilles Villeneuve who drove every one of his 67 starts bar his first for Ferrari. 

He claimed six wins, including the iconic 1981 Spanish GP victory in a poor car and would surely have been world champion in '82 had he not been killed in qualifying for the Belgian GP at Zolder, catapulting over the back of another car when trying to be bitter team-mate Didier Pironi.

The argument had stemmed back from the San Marino GP, where, against a political back-drop that had reduced the field, Pironi defied team orders to steal victory from Villeneuve. 

13 days later, having vowed never to speak to Pironi again, Villeneuve was killed.

3. Niki Lauda

The driver responsible for the greatest comeback in sporting history from death bed to winning another world title.

As depicted in the film Rush, the no-nonsense Niki Lauda described the Ferrari of 1973 as a "shitbox", believing if the team listened to his comments, he could turn it into title contenders, with the Scuderia having fallen off the pace in the early 1970s. 

That came in 1975, before Lauda never truly forgave Ferrari for trying to replace him whilst he recovered from terrible 1976 German GP burns and scaring.

He returned to take his crown back off James Hunt in 1977, but by now the relationship between Lauda and Ferrari had cooled as he headed of to Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham for 1978.

2. Alberto Ascari

The first two-time F1 world champion, Alberto Ascari actually got closer to winning every grand prix in a single season than any other driver, Max Verstappen included.

In 1952, there were eight points paying world championship races, and Ascari won six of them. 

That would rise to six from seven if the Indy 500, which he actually competed in and missed the Swiss GP for, is discounted.

From the 1952 Belgian to the 1953 Belgian, only Ascari won a race as the first challenger to Juan Manuel Fangio's status came and went. 

Ascari would be killed in 1955 at Monza, crashing a sportscar while testing at the corner which now bears his name.

To this day, he remains Italy's last world champion and one of only two Ferrari drivers to win an F1 world-title back-to-back.

1. Michael Schumacher

Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls; Lionel Messi and Barcelona; Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad; Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean; Tiger Woods and Nike.

Even now, some 18 years after he last raced for the Scuderia, Michael Schumacher and Ferrari remains one of the most iconic sporting partnerships of all-time. 

Perhaps in a way no driver has ever managed to achieve, Schumacher at Ferrari cut through the public consciousness and everyone, even if they had no interest in motorsport, knew who Michael Schumacher was.

Not the fastest raw driver there has ever been, not even in his time, but Schumacher was dedicated to his craft in a way perhaps only Ayrton Senna had been before. His devotion was absolute and he was not afraid to dabble in the dark arts if it got him what he wanted.

11 seasons at Ferrari, 10 of them full, yielded five drivers' titles, two seconds, two third places and a fifth in his part 1999 campaign blighted by a broken leg at the British GP. 

The podium jump in the red suit was something burned into a generation to young to have seen Senna race. 

Unless Hamilton, or indeed Charles Leclerc goes on to shatter all his records, Schumacher will remain the greatest Ferrari driver.