The greatest F1 season

Both 2008 and 2012 went down to the final round with an incredibly tense and dramatic final in both cases. Lewis Hamilton managed to pass Timo Glock on the final corner of the season to steal the title from under Felipe Massa’s nose after a season-long slugfest between the two top teams. Throw in the strong cameos from Robert Kubica’s BMW and Fernando Alonso’s Renault, including the controversial Singapore ‘crashgate’ race, and we really had a season that had it all.

In 2012 Fernando Alonso put together what may be the most brilliant season-long performance by any driver since Jim Clark in 1965, driving a Ferrari that wasn’t really good enough to battle eventual victor Vettel.

And of course not much will ever beat the intensity of the 2021 title battle. By now the world of social media had well and truly taken over and every fan in their living room was wading into the discussion. For Lewis and Max to arrive at the final after 21 races equal on points was something even the best writers at Netflix couldn’t script. The on-track crashes and battles raged all season long, with the off-track insults between both teams getting nastier by the week. Being in the commentary box with David Croft and Martin Brundle for those controversial final eight laps is something that none of us will ever forget.

But all of these brilliant battles were beaten in my ranking chart by the 1997 season. So much was happening on and off the track with so many drivers and teams. Six drivers from four different teams won races that year, but even more remarkably nine out of the 11 teams that completed the season managed to get at least one of their drivers on the podium at some stage.

Bridgestone had arrived in the sport, which kickstarted a tyre war, whilst the Lola team managed to erode a huge amount of goodwill for one of motorsport’s great marques by failing to qualify for any races before disappearing from the paddock. Two F1 greats with seven World Drivers’ Championships between them became team owners for the 1997 season. Alain Prost took over the Ligier team while Sir Jackie Stewart showed Lola how to do a start-up properly and arrived onto the grid as a team owner backed by huge brands such as Ford and HSBC.

The reigning World Champion, Damon Hill, was sacked by Williams in 1996 and landed a drive with Arrows, using a Yamaha engine which was truly awful. Who can forget Murray Walker’s commentary as Damon scraped onto the grid for the opening race in Melbourne, just about breaking the 107 per cent time to qualify for the race? Unbelievably a few months later, on a hot day aided by Bridgestone’s tyres that were better suited to the track than the blister-prone Goodyears, Damon nearly won the Hungarian Grand Prix, deprived only by a throttle sensor issue in the last few laps.

Jordan could have challenged for victory in Argentina (the drivers hit each other!) and Hockenheim (puncture for Fisichella) whilst Barrichello took a superb second place for Stewart GP in Monaco. Olivier Panis in the Prost GP briefly even looked like a title contender after finishing in the top five at four out of the first six races and challenging Jacques Villeneuve for the win at the Spanish Grand Prix on merit in the dry. But then he crashed in Canada, broke his leg and that was the end of the fairy tale.

David Coulthard won the opening race in Melbourne and his teammate, Mika Hakkinen, should have won at least twice before finally breaking his duck at the final round in Jerez. Gerhard Berger took his final F1 victory in Hockenheim as his mercurial teammate Jean Alesi continued his usual trend of brilliance mixed with races where he was completely anonymous.

The main storyline though was the titanic battle between Williams ace Jacques Villeneuve in his second season of F1 versus Michael Schumacher in his second season at Ferrari. I loved watching how the momentum ebbed and flowed between the two major protagonists. Villeneuve and Williams started the season on brilliant form but then made a series of errors as the year started to unfold, allowing Schumacher and Ferrari to get in the fight.

The Canadian took seven victories against five for the German but Williams technical boss, Patrick Head, was quick to stress that Jacques made it harder work for himself given the technical superiority of the FW19. The penultimate round in Japan was a good example of this, when Villeneuve failed to slow for yellow flags during qualifying, something he had done repeatedly that season and earned himself a ban from the race. He competed under appeal but only finished fifth after being outfoxed tactically by both Ferraris. Williams withdrew the appeal, which meant that the circus headed to the finale in Jerez with the contenders just one point apart.

I remember having a watch-along party with my friends in India that weekend. Unbelievably, Villeneuve, Schumacher and Frentzen all did exactly the same laptime of 1:21.072 in qualifying. Could you imagine the madness on social media if that happened today in a title decider? The grid was set by the order in which they did their laps, with Villeneuve on pole from Schumacher and Frentzen. I remember talking to Jock Clear, Jacques’ race engineer at Williams that season, about this a few years ago and apparently the teams had their own data which went to four decimal places. It showed that the order would have been the same.

With Adelaide 1994 still reasonably fresh in people’s minds, there were a lot of light-hearted jibes in the build-up to the race about Williams needing to beef up its suspension. It was a brilliant tactical Grand Prix with Frentzen and the McLarens getting in amongst the fight. What became clear later on was that Frank Williams and Ron Dennis had done a deal whereby the McLaren drivers would try and help Jacques to win the title, but would be rewarded with a win if the opportunity arose. On lap 48, it all came to a head when Jacques went for a tiny gap, Michael tried to turn in on him and ended up stuck in the gravel.

The Williams took quite a whack on the sidepod and just about made it to the finish, with the battery wire hanging on by the smallest of connections. The car is still in the Williams museum, complete with tyre marks from the Ferrari on the left hand sidepod. Michael got off lightly with exclusion from that year’s title – not that he cared about a second place anyway.

Writing this column and remembering the details of that season has made me want to relive the year. Time to dig out the season review DVD!

My top 10 seasons since 1984: 

1997

1986

2008

2021

2010

2012

2003

2009

1999

1991