The seven Formula One cars that changed everything

In recent history, it’s the next-level Red Bull RB19, which in 2023 won all of but one of its 22 races.

What follows are snapshots of the seven cars that have made their mark, and their power and race-victory scoreboards.

The first Formula One world championship had barely begun in 1950 when the sport discovered its first dominant machine. The Alfa Romeo 158, which was shaped like a cigar on wheels, won all six of the Grands Prix it entered that season, including three with future five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio at the wheel.

And its successor, the 159, would be just as successful. But the most amazing part wasn’t their speed. It was that the Alfa Romeo that powered to the 1950 world championship had originally been designed 12 years earlier, in 1938.

Perhaps the most revolutionary car in the history of Formula One, the Lotus 72 showed the world that aerodynamics wasn’t merely a gimmick: It represented the future of the sport.

The brainchild of British engineer Colin Chapman, one of F1’s mad scientists, every part of the car was conceived to maximize “ground effects," shaping the airflow around the car to keep it pressed to the road at high speeds and prevent it from spinning out of corners. Though it was plagued by other safety issues, the Lotus 72 would influence F1 design for decades.

By rights, the MP4/4 should have been a catastrophe. For the 1988 season, McLaren tore up a playbook that had delivered three titles in the previous four seasons, abruptly ditching its engine supplier in favor of a deal with Honda and hiring a new chief designer, Gordon Murray. Four months before the season, there wasn’t even a vague sketch of what the car would look like.

When it was finally unveiled, however, it was worth the wait. The MP4/4 won 15 of the 16 races that year as McLaren stormed to the title.

The FW14B wasn’t so much a racing car as a 200-mph supercomputer with a spoiler on the back. Equipped with the sport’s first on-board computer system, almost every part of the car was at the cutting edge: Microprocessors controlled the suspension, the throttle, the traction control, even a semiautomatic gearbox.

At a time when no other F1 team was working with silicon in this way, the FW14B was faster, better and smarter. Williams won each of the first five races, clinching the world title with one third of the season still to run.

When Enzo Ferrari founded the racing team that bears his name in 1929, his ambition was to achieve a level of supremacy unlike anything seen. In 2002, Ferrari did exactly that.

Utilizing a lightweight chassis, a powerful V10 engine and bespoke tires from Bridgestone specifically designed to match Michael Schumacher’s driving style, the F2002 powered the German driver to the world title by a then-record margin of 68 points.

The Lewis Hamilton dynasty at Mercedes defined the 2010s. And when he was at his best, only one other driver could get anywhere near him. It was teammate Nico Rosberg, and the reason he kept things close was that he happened to be driving the same all-conquering car.

In 2016, the W07 won all but two of the season’s 19 Grands Prix and went 1-2 in eight of them. The surprising twist that year was that Rosberg managed to nose in front of Hamilton for the world championship.

The RB19 was one in a long line of masterpieces by legendary F1 designer Adrian Newey. But combined with Dutch prodigy Max Verstappen in the cockpit it became one of the greatest race cars of all time.

In 2023, Verstappen took the checkered flag a staggering 19 times in 22 races. His teammate Sergio Perez guided the RB19 to two victories of his own. The only non-Red Bull to win a race all season was Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.

Email Joshua Robinson, a Wall Street Journal editor in New York, at joshua.robinson@wsj.com. Email Jonathan Clegg, the Journal’s sports editor in New York, at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com.