14 of the coolest cars F1 champions have owned

Aston Martin allotted 275 build slots for its $3 million Valkyrie supercar, and more than one went to a Formula One champion. Current Aston Martin F1 driver Fernando Alonso has one, and defending champion Max Verstappen does as well. Verstappen’s Valkyrie made headlines when he was allegedly caught speeding in it in 2023. 

The Mercedes-AMG One is a $3 million supercar with an actual F1-derived engine and hybrid unit. We recently tested it head-to-head against the Valkyrie, and survived.  

Only 275 owners were selected to buy one and the list included former F1 champions Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, who both won championships for the Mercedes F1 team during their careers. It was a derivative of Rosberg’s 2016 championship winning 1.6-litre V6 turbo engine that’s actually fitted to the car.  

The Rimac Nevera has all kinds of brag-worthy stats, including being part of F1 champion Nico Rosberg’s collection. The Nevera is a near-2,000bhp electric hypercar, with acceleration so whip-fast that you’ll hit highly illegal speeds before the accelerator gets near the floorboard. 

The electric supercar blends stratospheric power with Rimac’s cutting-edge torque vectoring tech, making it the closest thing out there to a spaceship on wheels. 

If you’re a car person of a certain social and economic status, it’s expected that you’ll have a Ferrari Enzo in your garage somewhere. The Enzo is a V12 icon from the early 2000s, and, 20 years later, it sells on the used market for about $5 million. F1 champions like Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button, and Michael Schumacher have all had Enzos in their collections. 

The first-generation Honda NSX is, among car enthusiasts, one of the great supercars of the 1990s and 2000s. It’s a mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive precision tool with timeless styling (and a manual transmission), and one very famous F1 champion known for developing and owning it. In fact, Aryton Senna’s NSX came up for sale last year for a cool £500k. 

The Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is one of the most famous vehicles ever made, and it regularly sells for seven figures. It’s a two-seater from the 1950s, with its long hood and classic gullwing doors and impeccable racing history. If you like cars and have the money, it’s probably in – or has been in – your collection. Nico Rosberg has one. Blimey, how many cars does Nico have? 

Max Verstappen, who has driven under the Honda banner for a significant portion of his racing career, owned an FK8-generation Honda Civic Type R hot hatch – you know, the one that looks like a Battle Bot. It sold in 2022 with 36,000 miles on the odometer. When asked about front-wheel-drive cars three years later, Verstappen called them “anti-driving”. The turncoat! 

Lewis Hamilton recently sold off his car collection because he prefers to collect art these days, but one vehicle specifically made for him was the Pagani Zonda 760 LH. His personalised Zonda had a 750-horsepower V12 engine with a manual transmission, as well as a bunch of purple accents. 

The Bugatti EB110 is a 1990s-era, mid-engined, V12, quad-turbocharged supercar that became the fastest production car of its time, courtesy of a 3.26-second run from 0 to 62 mph and a top speed of more than 200mph. Michael Schumacher famously had a bright-yellow example, and it went up for sale in 2010 with 2,875 miles on the odometer.

McLaren’s famous hybrid supercar, the P1, is a popular item among car collectors. But F1 champion Mika Häkkinen has an ultra-rare example of the car: a prototype used in the testing program for the P1. 

Bonhams listed the car for auction in 2024, saying it was one of seven “Validation Prototype” cars built. With the purchase of the car, the listing said the winning bidder got a one-day driving program taught by Häkkinen.

Back in 2021, now-retired F1 champion Sebastian Vettel sold a chunk of his car collection shortly after he moved from the Ferrari F1 team to Aston Martin. One of those cars was a BMW Z8, a turn-of-the-century roadster with beautiful styling and James Bond prestige. Vettel’s Z8 was silver, just like a Bond car, and went up for sale alongside other cars like Vettel’s Ferrari Enzo and F50. 

The 1990s McLaren F1 is one of the most iconic vehicles in history, with its screaming BMW V12 and central driving position. These days values have skyrocketed past $20m, but if you’ve got the scratch it’s still THE car to have. Lewis Hamilton has bagged one, apparently. 

Also part of Lewis Hamilton’s extensive car collection was a 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, which is from the first generation of Ford’s iconic muscle car. When new, the car had a 7.0-litre V8 engine. The first generation of the Mustang was hugely popular for Ford. The company expected to sell about 100,000 in the first year, but wound up selling more than 400,000. 

Recently, RM Sotheby’s auctioned a 1985 Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.3-16 for $230,000. Why so much? Well, it was owned from new by Ayrton Senna, and driven home from the factory alongside fellow Brazilian Formula 1 driver Maurício Gugelmin. He bought it to celebrate his victory at the 1984 Nürburgring Race of Champions, where he drove a similar car in the same colour and whooped the field of established F1 drivers. It announced his arrival as the biggest talent on the F1 grid.