# Hamilton vs Verstappen Head to Head: 7 Titles to 4, 14 Lists
> Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen on 14 rankings: Abu Dhabi 2021, the hybrid era, wet-weather greats, Monaco, team-mates and the most overrated champion.
*By YPB Team · Published October 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/articles/hamilton-vs-verstappen-ranked*
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Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, 14 rankings where they meet. Photos: Hamilton by Liauzh, CC BY-SA 4.0; Verstappen by Morio, CC BY-SA 4.0, both via Wikimedia Commons.
Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen hold eleven Formula 1 world titles between them, seven for Hamilton and four for Verstappen, and in 2026 the older man is the one winning again. Hamilton took the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix for Ferrari at 41, the oldest Grand Prix winner since Jack Brabham in 1970.1
Verstappen, who turns 29 on 30 September, finished second in Baku on 26 September. After that race, round 15 of 23, Hamilton stood third in the championship on 199 points and Verstappen sixth on 163.2 The fourteen lists below pair them with each other and, more often than either camp would like, with Senna, Schumacher and Fangio.
> Abu Dhabi 2021 settled one championship between them and nothing else: every list here still has to choose between Hamilton's nineteen years of winning and Verstappen's peak.
## Fangio, Schumacher and Senna: Hamilton and Verstappen among the 20 greatest
The widest question in Formula 1 is a list of 20 drivers, and Hamilton and Verstappen share it with Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Jim Clark and Alain Prost.
Hamilton's case is the record book. He has 106 Grand Prix wins to Schumacher's 91, and his seven titles equal the German's total.3
Verstappen arrives with 71 wins. That is fewer than Hamilton has, and more than Sebastian Vettel (53), Prost (51) or Senna (41) managed in full careers.
Fangio complicates both cases. The Argentine won five titles in the 1950s and was 46 when he took the last one, still the oldest champion in the sport.4 His supporters read the modern totals as a product of longer calendars and better cars, and they have a point about the calendars.
Hamilton against the five-time champion of the 1950s. Play it →
## Mercedes years vs Red Bull years: the hybrid era
The hybrid era ran from 2014, when Formula 1 switched to turbocharged V6 engines with energy recovery, to the end of 2025. This ranking asks who owned those twelve seasons.
Hamilton won six of his seven titles inside it, all with Mercedes: 2014, 2015 and four in a row from 2017 to 2020.
Verstappen won the next four for Red Bull, from 2021 to 2024, and missed a fifth in 2025 by two points to Lando Norris.5
Nico Rosberg in 2016 and Norris are the only other champions of the period. Vettel and Charles Leclerc are here for Ferrari's title pushes of 2017, 2018 and 2022, seasons that ended with a Mercedes or a Red Bull driver on top.
Twelve seasons, ten titles between the two of them. Play it →
## Abu Dhabi 2021 vs Interlagos 2008: the great title deciders
This ranking lists 17 races that settled a championship, from the 1964 Mexican Grand Prix to the 2025 finale at Yas Marina. Hamilton was in contention at six of them and Verstappen at two.
The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is the one they share. They arrived level on 369.5 points. A crash on lap 53 brought out the safety car, race director Michael Masi let only the five lapped cars between them unlap themselves, and the restart left one racing lap. Verstappen passed Hamilton on it and won the title 395.5 to 387.5.6
Mercedes withdrew its appeal after the FIA promised an inquiry. Its report, published in March 2022, called the result "valid, final and cannot now be changed", and Masi had already been removed as race director in February.
Hamilton's other deciders cut both ways: the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, won by one point at the last corner, and the 2016 finale, lost to Rosberg. Verstappen's second entry is the 2025 race, which he won and still finished the season second.
The night Hamilton lost a title against the afternoon he won his first. Play it →
## Hamilton 2020 vs Verstappen 2023: the best single season
Twelve seasons are on this list, from Fangio's 1954 to Fernando Alonso's 2012. Hamilton's 2020 and Verstappen's 2023 are the two most recent.
Verstappen won 19 of the 22 Grands Prix in 2023, ten of them in a row, and Red Bull won 21 of the 22.7
Hamilton's 2020 came in a season the pandemic cut to 17 races. He passed Schumacher's 91 wins at the Portuguese Grand Prix, clinched a seventh title in Turkey, and still missed the Sakhir Grand Prix after testing positive for the coronavirus.8
The case against both is the machinery. Red Bull's 2023 win rate of 95.45% was a team record,7 and Senna's 1988 and Nigel Mansell's 1992 are on the same list for drivers who also had the best car of their year.
A pandemic season against a record one. Play it →
## Hamilton vs Rosberg, Ricciardo vs Verstappen: the team-mate wars
A team-mate is the only rival in an identical car, which makes this list of 16 pairings the closest thing the sport has to a controlled test. Hamilton appears three times, against Rosberg, Alonso and Valtteri Bottas; Verstappen twice, against Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Pérez.
Hamilton and Rosberg raced each other in karting as teenagers and shared a Mercedes garage from 2013 to 2016. Rosberg won the last of those seasons and retired five days after the finale.
Verstappen's sharpest pairing was Ricciardo at Red Bull from 2016 to 2018. The two collided in Baku in 2018, and Ricciardo left for Renault at the end of that year.
Alonso vs Hamilton lasted one season. At McLaren in 2007 the rookie finished level on points with the double champion, and Kimi Räikkönen beat them both by a single point.
Red Bull's garage in 2018 against Mercedes' in 2016. Play it →
## Verstappen vs Alonso: Hamilton's greatest rivals
This ranking is built around Hamilton alone: 12 drivers who fought him on track, from Alonso and Felipe Massa in 2007 and 2008 to Norris and George Russell. Verstappen is one of the options here, not a co-subject.
His claim rests on 2021, the one title fight Hamilton lost on the final lap of a season.
Alonso's claim is the oldest. He met Hamilton as a McLaren team-mate in 2007 and was still racing him for podiums at Aston Martin in 2023, sixteen years later.
Massa has the cruellest entry: champion for about thirty seconds at Interlagos in 2008 until Hamilton passed Timo Glock. No equivalent list exists for Verstappen in this article, and Hamilton would head it.
The 2021 rival against the 2007 one. Play it →
## Vettel, Hamilton and Verstappen: the youngest world champions
Sebastian Vettel holds this record. He won the 2010 title at 23 years and 134 days, and the list of the 11 youngest champions starts with him.4
Hamilton was 23 when he won in 2008, his second season in Formula 1. Verstappen was 24 when he won in 2021, his seventh.
Verstappen owns the other youth records. He started his first Grand Prix in Australia in 2015 at 17 years and 166 days and won the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix at 18 years and 228 days, both still the youngest marks in the sport.9
The list measures age at the title, and there Hamilton got there younger and faster.
The 2008 McLaren rookie against the 2021 Red Bull champion. Play it →
## Prost vs Hamilton: the most consistent driver
Alain Prost built four titles on finishing races that faster drivers crashed out of, and he is the benchmark on this list of 13.
Hamilton has 207 podiums from 395 starts, a finish in the top three in more than half of his races across McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.10
Verstappen's rate is almost identical: 134 podiums from 248 starts.9 His 2021 to 2024 run of titles came without a single season in which a team-mate beat him.
The Professor against the driver with the most podiums. Play it →
## Hamilton vs Valentino Rossi: the most iconic figure in motorsport
This list leaves Formula 1 behind. Its 16 names cover MotoGP, NASCAR and rallying, with Valentino Rossi, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty and Sébastien Loeb next to Senna, Schumacher and Enzo Ferrari.
Hamilton's case reaches outside the sport. He was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours,10 is still the only Black driver to win the world championship, and has spent years campaigning on diversity in motorsport.
Verstappen is here as the face of an era and of the orange grandstands at Zandvoort, which returned to the calendar in 2021 after 36 years away.
Rossi is the hardest name for either to pass. He won nine world titles on two wheels and took MotoGP to crowds that had never watched a motorcycle race.
Four wheels against two. Play it →
## Senna vs Verstappen: natural talent
Talent is a different question from results, and this list of 13 is where Senna, Gilles Villeneuve and Jim Clark gather.
Verstappen's case starts with his arrival. Red Bull promoted him four races into 2016, and he won the Spanish Grand Prix on his debut for the team.
Hamilton's is similar in shape: third place on debut at Melbourne in 2007, and a first win at the Canadian Grand Prix that June, his sixth race.3
Senna needs no statistic in this company, which is why he is the hardest opponent either of them faces anywhere in the article.
Senna's McLaren against Verstappen at Red Bull. Play it →
## Graham Hill and Senna: the Monaco specialists
Monaco has its own hierarchy. Senna won there six times and Graham Hill five, and the list of 14 is built around them.
Hamilton won Monaco in 2008 in changing wet conditions, and later added two more wins at the harbour. Verstappen won there in 2021, the year of his first title.
Neither owns the place. Charles Leclerc won his home race in 2024, only the second Monégasque driver to do it, and Kimi Antonelli won the 2026 edition with Hamilton second.11
Mr Monaco against a three-time winner. Play it →
## Interlagos 2016: Verstappen, Hamilton and the wet-weather greats
The 16 drivers on this list are judged on rain, and the benchmark names are Senna, Schumacher, Jackie Stewart and Jacky Ickx.
Both subjects have their best wet race on the same afternoon. At the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, which ran for more than three hours with two red flags, Hamilton won from the front. Verstappen dropped to 16th after a pit stop with 16 laps left and finished third, setting the fastest lap on the way.12
Verstappen added a second Interlagos wet drive in 2024, winning from 17th on the grid. Schumacher's 1996 Spanish Grand Prix, his first win for Ferrari, is the standard both are measured against.
São Paulo 2024 against Barcelona 1996. Play it →
## Silverstone and Monza 2021: the most controversial champion
Controversy has a long list of candidates in Formula 1. This one holds 14 champions, with Schumacher for Adelaide 1994 and Jerez 1997 and Senna and Prost for Suzuka.
The 2021 season supplies most of the evidence against Hamilton and Verstappen. On the first lap of the British Grand Prix the two touched at Copse, and Verstappen hit the barrier with a 51 g impact. The stewards gave Hamilton a ten-second penalty, and he won the race anyway.13
At Monza eight weeks later Verstappen's car was launched over Hamilton's at the first chicane, and the halo took the impact. The stewards put that one mostly on Verstappen.
Abu Dhabi hangs over both, although neither driver made the decisions that settled it.
Copse corner and the Monza chicane, one season apart. Play it →
## The most overrated world champion: the case against both
Every champion's record can be discounted, and this list of 13 collects the ones people discount most, among them Rosberg, Jenson Button and Damon Hill.
The case against Hamilton is the car. Of his 106 wins, 84 came with Mercedes, most of them in the seasons when the team won everything.3
The case against Verstappen is the same argument with a different badge: three of his four titles came in the dominant Red Bulls of 2022 to 2024, and the 2025 title went to a McLaren.
Their defenders answer with the other chapters. Hamilton won 21 races and a title at McLaren before Mercedes were a front-running team, and Verstappen beat Hamilton's Mercedes in 2021.
Eleven titles between them, and the same accusation for each. Play it →
## One lap in 2021, and a rivalry still running
The fourteen lists split along one line. Where the question rewards a long career, Hamilton's McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari wins carry him; where it rewards a single season or a teenage debut, Verstappen's 2016 and 2023 carry him. Yas Marina in 2021 is the single lap on which the two cases collided directly.
The rivalry has time left: Verstappen's Red Bull contract runs to 2030.9 Each ranking here is decided the way a Grand Prix field is not, [pair by pair rather than as a full grid](/articles/bracket-vs-pairwise-voting), and a list of your own drivers, seasons or circuits takes a few minutes to build.
## More rankings, more angles
- [Hamilton vs Schumacher: Who Is the Greatest F1 Driver? 14 Lists](/articles/hamilton-vs-schumacher-ranked) — seven titles each, and a Ferrari between them
- [Senna vs Prost Rivalry: The McLaren Years on 14 Lists](/articles/senna-vs-prost-ranked) — Suzuka twice, and the other great team-mate war
- [Is Fernando Alonso the Best F1 Driver Ever? Two Titles, 15 Lists](/articles/how-many-ways-to-rank-fernando-alonso) — Hamilton's 2007 team-mate, still racing
Sources
Formula 1 — reaction to Hamilton's first Ferrari win at the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, oldest winner since Brabham in 1970: formula1.com (checked 2026-09-27)
RaceFans — 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix result and championship standings: racefans.net (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — List of Formula One Grand Prix winners: career wins, Hamilton's wins by team, first and latest victories: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — List of Formula One World Drivers' Champions: oldest and youngest champions: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Formula 1 — 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix report, Norris champion by two points: formula1.com (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: points before the race, safety-car restart, final margin, FIA inquiry and Masi's removal: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — 2023 Formula One World Championship: race count, Verstappen's and Red Bull's wins, win percentage: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — 2020 Formula One World Championship: race count, Sakhir absence, Portugal and Turkey milestones: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — Max Verstappen: youngest starter and winner, podiums and starts, contract length: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — Lewis Hamilton: podiums and starts, knighthood: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — Monaco Grand Prix: most wins, Leclerc's 2024 home win, 2026 result: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix: red flags, race length, Verstappen's recovery from 16th: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
Wikipedia — 2021 British Grand Prix: first-lap collision at Copse, 51 g impact, Hamilton's penalty and win: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-09-27)
