What was the best F1 season of all time?

But one thing won’t change: freak occurrences aside, all 21 races will be won by one of just three teams, because that’s what’s happened for the last six seasons. So let’s have a quick look back to when the contest was somewhat closer and see if we can find the greatest Grand Prix season of all.

There are so many contenders. Can you believe that as recently as 2012 the first seven races were won by seven different drivers, from five different teams? It seems like another age. In 2010 the championship was led by six different drivers at various stages through the season, but never by the bloke who actually won it, Sebastian Vettel, who only topped the table after winning the last race of the season, who was one of four people who could have been champion before the race started.

The 1986 season was interesting but mainly for the last race which saw Mansell’s apparently certain title exploded along with his rear tyre at Adelaide, handing it to a very grateful team-mate Nelson Piquet, but only until Williams decided to check his tyres too, crowning Alain Prost the actual champion in the process.

Many would nominate 1982, which brought 11 different winners from seven manufacturers and a run of nine races with a different winner (seems unimaginable today, doesn’t it), but I can’t because it was also the season in which my hero Gilles Villeneuve was killed, as was Ricardo Paletti, and Didier Pironi had a career-ending accident.

Of course there’s 1976 but I think anyone who’s ever expressed an interest in F1 knows about the Hunt vs Lauda battle. For me it was a very exciting season but not quite as great as is made out, because all the evidence suggests that had Niki not nearly died at the Nürburgring, missed two races and not been back on top form for two more after that, Hunt would not have had a sniff at the title. 

I am very tempted to go for 1958 because to me it showed racing at its sporting, chivalrous best. The championship had ten rounds (excluding the Indianapolis 500), bringing five different winners. But three of them, Hawthorn, Trintignant and Collins won just one round apiece, while Tony Brooks won three and Stirling Moss four. So the title should have been those two great Britons. But it wasn’t. Brooks only finished four races that season, so it’s fairly incredible he won three, but he was out of contention. Hawthorn, by very stark contrast, may have only won one round, but he was on podium no fewer than seven times. 

But one of those races was the Portuguese Grand Prix from which he was disqualified for reversing on the track after a spin. He only got re-instated when the only person who could beat him to the title – Moss – spoke in his defence at the appeal and said he was not on the track but the pavement at the time. Moss bought Hawthorn seven points that day, and lost the title to him by one…

Even so, I’m going for 1964 as my season of seasons, probably because it involved more of my heroes than any other and few, if any, would have predicted the eventual champion at the start of the season.

It looked for all the world like it would be a straight fight between the BRM-borne Graham Hill and Lotus’s Jim Clark. They had dominated the two previous seasons, taking turns to win and come second in the title fights. Hill won the first round, Clark the second and third. Dan Gurney then took Brabham’s maiden win in France, closely followed by Hill while Clark retired, but normal service resumed in Britain which Clark won with Hill second. Five races down, five to go.

But then things turned on their head somewhat: Clark, with three wins out of the first five, would not see so much as a podium for the rest of the season, as the Lotus unreliability curse struck once more. And suddenly, with no more than couple of podiums to show from the first half of the season, up sprang Ferrari’s John Surtees.

Always a whizz at the Nürburgring, Big John took his first win in Germany, but Hill was only seconds behind. Neither finished in Austria but Surtees won again in front of the tifosi at Monza, while Hill blew his clutch on the start line. Suddenly there was a three-way fight for the title. It was Hill’s turn to win at Watkins Glen, but Surtees was second, meaning that for the last round in Mexico, not only did both have a shot at the title, but so did Clark, whose early season advantage had been massively eroded, but not entirely wiped out.

Clark needed to win the race and duly shot off into the lead, but Hill only needed to finish 3^rd to be champion and settled comfortably into that position. Surtees was seemingly out of the hunt. But Surtees’ team-mate Lorenzo Bandini then punted Hill into a spin effectively ending his race and, it seemed, his championship bid. Clark would now claim the title. Or would he?

On the penultimate lap fate struck, a pipe split on the Lotus, Clark’s oil pressure fell to zero and he was out. Which, curiously enough handed the title back to Hill who was languishing down in 11^th place, two laps down. Which is where Bandini came back into play, allowing Surtees to overtake him to claim the second place that would make him World Champion by a single point. The irony is that Hill actually scored more points that Surtees that season, but under the rules of the day, only your six best finishes counted towards the title.

Will be get another such nail-biter this year? I’d love to think so but, if I may be allowed to mix my metaphors somewhat, I’m not holding my breath.