Gilles Villeneuve competed for Ferrari in all of the races in his F1 career – all of them? No, there is one exception! The photo gallery shows drivers who started at McLaren
There are drivers that you associate with a particular team, even though they started out with a different racing team. Even after his move to Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton will always be associated with Mercedes, where he celebrated six of his seven world championship titles and shaped a true era.
But the record world champion actually started out with McLaren. Ron Dennis signed him when he was young and introduced him to Formula 1. Hamilton made his debut alongside the newly crowned double world champion Fernando Alonso with this team in 2007.
However, the rookie did not play the willing number 2. On the contrary: although he still lined up behind the Spaniard a few times in the first few races, Hamilton quickly began to seize his own title chances. The duel degenerated in such a way that in the end Kimi Räikkönen in the Ferrari was the lucky third.
Many Formula One fans are no doubt aware that Hamilton’s career began at McLaren, but perhaps not everyone is as familiar with a true Ferrari legend. And that is Gilles Villeneuve.
The father of the later world champion Jacques Villeneuve completed all of his 67 Grand Prix starts for Ferrari – with one exception. The Canadian actually drove his first race for McLaren in 1977!
Villeneuve impressed the Formula 1 elite at a Formula Atlantic race and was offered the chance to compete in five races in a third car by McLaren. Despite finishing eleventh, he put in a good performance on his first appearance at Silverstone, attracting the interest of several teams.
However, McLaren did not want to continue working with Villeneuve because they had the feeling that he could become too expensive – instead, they relied on Patrick Tambay. Ferrari, on the other hand, seized the opportunity when Niki Lauda suddenly left the team two races before the end of the season. From then on, he was only supposed to drive for Ferrari.
