7 times younger drivers challenged more experienced team mates

Kimi Antonelli has challenged George Russell’s authority at Mercedes in 2026 – the Italian teenager making it back-to-back Grand Prix wins at the Japanese Grand Prix and moving ahead of his established team mate to sit at the top the Drivers’ Championship standings.

It is far from the first time such a scenario has presented itself in F1 history, with plenty of young, up-and-coming talents providing a test for more experienced drivers over the years, as F1.com highlights…

Antonelli vs Russell

First on our list, adding to that introduction, is the developing intra-team battle between Antonelli and Russell, who were put together by Mercedes in 2025 at very different stages of their careers.

Teenage Antonelli made his F1 debut last season after being fast-tracked through the single-seater ranks, while Russell, 28, has been in the sport for the best part of a decade, starting out at Williams and then going up against Lewis Hamilton at the Silver Arrows.

Russell was very much the team leader during their first term together, which included a rocky mid-season spell for Antonelli, but the youngster has stepped things up in 2026 – tying in with Mercedes’ return to the fore under new F1 regulations.

After three rounds, the head-to-head tally reads two pole positions and victories for Antonelli and one apiece for Russell, with the prospect of another exciting scrap between team mates for the F1 Drivers’ Championship already brewing…

Leclerc vs Vettel

Charles Leclerc reached F1 with support from Ferrari and it took only one season at Alfa Romeo to convince the famous Italian marque that he was ready for promotion – the youngster slotting in alongside four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel in 2019.

Fresh from challenging Hamilton and Mercedes for a fifth crown, Vettel had been expected to lead the way as Ferrari’s experienced pair of hands, but it was Leclerc who ended the year on top by scoring more points and a pair of victories to the German’s one.

Following that season, and half a decade racing in red, it was announced that Vettel would be leaving Ferrari at the end of the 2020 campaign – a particularly difficult year for Ferrari across which the veteran racer scored 33 points, and Leclerc bagged 98.

Verstappen vs Ricciardo

Red Bull have a reputation for in-season driver changes, with the biggest example coming back in early-2016 when they promoted sophomore Max Verstappen from the then-named Toro Rosso team (now Racing Bulls) and sent Daniil Kvyat the other way.

Verstappen immediately made his mark at the senior team next to multiple race winner Daniel Ricciardo – brilliantly taking victory on an alternate strategy at the Spanish Grand Prix and pushing the Australian hard for the rest of the season.

The fight intensified and delivered several flashpoints over the next couple of years, including clashes in Hungary 2017 and Azerbaijan 2018, until Ricciardo sought a new challenge at Renault and left Verstappen to assume Red Bull supremacy.

Vettel vs Webber

Vettel and Mark Webber were the subjects of another Red Bull intra-team battle in the late-2000s and early-2010s – the former stepping up for 2009 after a season-and-a-half at Toro Rosso, and a spectacular win in the wet at Monza.

Webber had been with Red Bull for a couple of seasons, pushing hard on and off the track to turn the squad from points scorers into race winners and title challengers, but when that moment arrived through 2009 and 2010, Vettel stole the show.

While Webber got agonisingly close to the crown in 2010, it was Vettel who became Red Bull’s first F1 champion – and the youngest in the sport’s history – to kick off a sensational run of four successive Drivers’ titles.

Their five-year stint as team mates featured plenty of dramas, including that collision at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix and the ‘Multi-21’ team orders controversy at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, before Webber called time on his career and Ricciardo took over.

Hamilton vs Alonso

Talking of tense situations, McLaren’s 2007 pairing of Hamilton and Fernando Alonso produced a fair share – the former debuting as the GP2 (now F2) champion, and the Spaniard arriving as the reigning two-time F1 champion.

While Alonso expected to lead the team’s charge, Hamilton showed he was no number two from the outset, going around the outside of his team mate at Turn 1 of their very first Grand Prix together, and soon taking his first pole positions and victories.

Relations soured as the race for the title developed, with an infamous moment coming during Qualifying in Hungary, when Alonso blocked Hamilton during a double-stack pit stop which prevented the Briton from completing a final run in Q3.

Amid further incidents, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen made decisive moves in the Drivers’ Championship, taking three victories from the last four rounds to win the title by a single point, with Alonso leaving McLaren thereafter.

Villeneuve vs Hill

Taking it back to the 1990s, Williams blended youth and experience in 1996 with Jacques Villeneuve (who moved over to F1 as the IndyCar World Series champion) and Damon Hill (starting his fifth F1 season, and having finished as runner-up in 1994 and 1995).

While Hill won four of the opening five rounds to establish an early championship lead, Villeneuve made a statement with pole position on his debut and was soon claiming victories himself – doing enough to stay in the title picture until the season finale.

Hill ultimately got the job done with victory in the Suzuka showdown, before departing the team over the winter and opening the door for Villeneuve – son of legendary F1 racer Gilles – to bag the championship in 1997.

Senna vs Prost

Alain Prost was a multiple champion with McLaren when the outfit and new engine partner Honda signed rising star Ayrton Senna (who had impressed at Toleman and Lotus) as his team mate – the dominant 1988 MP4/4 and 1989 MP4/5 cars ensuring they were in a fight of their own for the title across both seasons.

After Senna edged out Prost to take the ’88 crown, tensions boiled over through the ’89 campaign, with incidents ranging from a heated early-season disagreement at the San Marino Grand Prix to their dramatic coming together at the penultimate round in Japan (see this feature for more).

Having reclaimed the title in ‘89, Prost left McLaren for Ferrari over the winter, but the rivalry continued as the pair went head-to-head for the ’90 title at their opposing teams – settled in the Brazilian’s favour with his controversial first-lap tactics at Suzuka.