We’re often told that F1 has never been more competitive, but is this really true? When was Formula 1 most competitive?

The current F1 grid is incredibly close. Lets take Monaco as an example as the circuit has remained around two miles long, give or take, since the first Grand Prix was run there in 1929. In 2023 the spread from Pole to last place on the starting grid was 2.5 seconds. In 1983 it was 4.6 seconds (not counting those who didn’t qualify). The evidence is irrefutable. In terms of lap time the grid has never been closer. When was Formula 1 most competitive? Now? This Second?

Why then are we, by most accounts, in one of the most static and predictable eras of the sport? Why is it that, despite the slowest car on the grid being closer to the fastest than at any other time in 70 years plus of motor-racing do we see the same winners again, and again, and again? Why is the sport at risk of losing the audience it has recently gained by embracing new, younger, viewers and social media? Or is it all imagination and rose tinted glasses? Has it always been like this?

Just what is going on? When was Formula 1 most competitive?

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What is Competition?

I’m just as bored as many with the 2023 season. This isn’t Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s fault. They are doing a better job than anyone else. They deserve their success. However why is that success so crushing and easy for Red Bull to maintain? What gives?

The first thought that struck me when considering this, is how do we define a competitive season? Yes, the closeness of the field must be part of it, but it’s not the only way to consider it. Far from it. Cars being close to one another on the circuit means nothing if there’s no possibility for the order to change because of human performance.

This is obviously personal, but my feeling is that a competitive season should have most, if not all, of the following;

• A close battle for the driver’s title
• A close battle for the constructor’s title
• Multiple drivers able to win races (ideally not just those involved directly in the title fight)
• Multiple teams able to win races (ideally not just those involved in the title fight)

When was Formula 1 most competitive? Well it should be an era with the above.

Bottling The Concept

I think that’s pretty fair. Certainly if we had a season with that going on, nobody would complain. Well . . . we’re F1 fans, of course we’d complain, but it would be about something else other than a predictable races where we know that the result is going to be a benefit concert for a single team or Driver.

My next thought was, is it just imagination that it’s duller and more predictable now than it used to be? Well, short of a time machine the best way to resolve that is to dig into the results. And that means getting your calculator and race results out. So I did.

What follows is a bait “mathsy”, so apologies for that. I decided, in lieu of a functioning social life, to look at each Decade of the sport in turn and see if I could grade it for how competitive it was. Feel free to skip the next section if it’ll bore you, but for those who want to know how I came up with this ranking it’ll explain somewhat.

The Geeky Mathematical Bit

So, how do we determine when was F1 most competitive? I wanted to consider who won what. I wanted to look at how many different drivers won at least one Grand Prix each decade. How many constructors did the same. How closely the drivers and constructor’s titles were contested in terms of wins in those decades.

Wins, of course, are not the whole story, but they are the main event, and a variety of Grand Prix winners seems to be what the neutral fan wants to see. It’s what makes a great season, or decade, or era, and it’s what drives interest.

So. With this in mind, I looked at the number of winners in each decade of the sport as a percentage of the total races run. I did the same for winning constructors. Then I looked at the number of races in that decade won by the Champion driver and constructor, vs the runner up in both competitions (excluding 1950 to 1957 when there was no Constructor’s title) and expressed both of those as a percentage of the overall races in that decade. Lastly I looked at the number of different drivers and constructor’s championship winners in that decade and expressed those results as a percentage.

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Laying It Out

So when asking the question “When was Formula 1 most competitive?” we have;

• Percentage Of Different Race Winning Drivers In Decade (A lower % means a different winner came home more often. I.e. if there are 3 race winners in a decade the score is 33.33%. If there are 4 it’s 25%)
• Percentage Of Different Race Winning Constructors In Decade (See above)
• Percentage Of Races Won By World Champion Driver Minus Percentage Of Races Won By Runner Up (I.e.. if the World Champion driver won 25% of races in a decade and the Runner up 15% of races the score would be 10%, and the closer the title fights the smaller the %)
• Percentage Of Races Won By World Champion Constructor Minus Percentage Of Races Won By Runner Up (See Above)
• Percentage Of Different World Driver’s Champions In A Decade (A lower % means a different Champion more often. So if there were 2 different champions in a decade the score would be 50%, if there were 5 it would be 20%)
• Percentage Of Different World Constructor’s Champions In A Decade (See Above)

Then I averaged them all to give what I call a “Predictability Factor”. The lower this score, the more unpredictable the era of racing. Does that make sense? Hopefully? Is it perfect? Of course it isn’t. It is I hope a good starting point for a discussion though.

So what are the results? Which decades in F1 were the most competitive and unpredictable? When was Formula 1 most competitive? Well the full results if you want to see the chart are at the bottom of this article. However, decade by decade in reverse order . . .

Brace yourself guys. This isn’t pretty and it may force you to confront your recency bias.

8th Place – 2020 to 2022

Predictability Factor – 33.01%

Yes. I know. This decade is less than half way through, but already the trend is concerning. Put plainly this decade is on course to have the fewest number of different drivers and constructors win races per start and titles per year in the sport’s history. In the three complete seasons to date we’ve seen, on average, the largest gaps (in percentage win terms) between the World Champion Drivers and their runners up. In constructor’s terms it’s the second worst decade of the sport (though improves to third worst if you factor in the two seasons of Constructor’s Championships in the 1950s).

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Why is this? Well maybe that’s a topic for an article in itself. For all the lap times are close though, the bullet proof reliability of the machinery and the lessening human factor in race performance is making for the most static and predictable racing we’ve ever had. Of course, if Ferrari, Mercedes, or maybe someone else, can get their act together in 2024 this could change, but the trend is worrying.

7th Place – 2010 to 2019

Predictability Factor – 29.67%

Hardly a surprise really. If you weren’t in a Red Bull or a Mercedes in this decade you weren’t winning a title. Heck, you’d struggle to win a race. Only 12 drivers did so in the whole decade and most of them were in a Silver Arrow or a flying energy drink can. Only 49 of the 198 races won in this decade were won in anything other than a Red Bull or a Mercedes. McLaren had flashes of competitiveness in the early part of the decade. Ferrari struggled valiantly with first Alonso then Vettel after leaving Red Bull. Neither had a title in them. Even 2012 and the Pirelli Lottery hardly makes a dent.

Once the Red Bull and Vettel show stopped, the Mercedes steam-roller took over. Nobody else really got a look in. The drivers championships themselves were mostly one sided as the only really close intra-team fight was Rosberg vs Hamilton in 2016. On average the World Champion won 23% more races than his runner up. This is worse than in any other decade than the 1950s (with Fangio and Ascari smashing up all other comers for most of the decade) or the 2020s to date. Worst of all however is the Constructor’s Championship. On average the WCC won nearly *46%* more races than the runner up. The least competitive constructor’s titles in the sport’s history. It’s the car anyone?

6th Place – 2000 to 2009

Predictability Factor – 19.01%

Very much a decade of two parts. The first part of the decade was a parade for Ferrari, Bridgestone and Michael Schumacher unchallenged from within his team. They swept all before them in imperious fashion. The second half of the decade saw sweeping rule changes (notably a radical aero overhaul, the end of the tyre wars, and the removal of a raft of driver aids) which hit the Scuderia hard and opened up the field allowing for some years which proved to be classics. Renault and Alonso broke the Ferrari stranglehold and 2007, 2008 and 2009 notably saw some pretty open competition, with the major surprise of Brawn GP rounding out the decade.

2005 to 2009 will be evaluated as comfortably the most open competition we’ve seen in the 21st century, and it would be interesting to study why later at length. It feels like something of a perfect storm with no one manufacturer having a crushing technical advantage, half the grid not being handicapped by being on the wrong tyre brand, and drivers suddenly in charge of their cars again in a way not seen for a while (ousting the traction and launch control that had crept back into the sport was, in hindsight, a massive deal).

Twin this with the teams yet to fully grasp a new generation of driver aids, electronic control, real time telemetry and race simulation and calling technologies and you had race days where things could, and did, go wrong. Drivers and teams not being able to rely on technology to help avoid errors is a crucial factor in the closeness of competition as we will see.

5th Place – 1990 to 1999

Predictability Factor – 17.26%

It’s important to note that next few decades are all very close in terms of overall results. Indeed if the 1950s had had a constructor’s Championship for the whole decade we could probably safely swap the 50s and the 90s in this ranking (more of that when we reach the 50s). The 90s is an odd era for the sport. They act as a bridge between the Constructor led era which had been the way since the 1960s, and Manufacturers becoming more and more heavily involved (notably McLaren’s relationship with Mercedes developing through the second half of the decade).

What you got was an era of wildly different dynamics. The early 90s began with an 80s Hangover, Senna vs Prost, McLaren vs Ferrari vs Williams as the first real electronics revolution in F1 took hold. Then there was 1992 and 1993 with Williams cracking the active ride Rosetta Stone and taking a quantum leap in performance with Renault help. McLaren got stuck with wheezy engines and Ferrari post Prost decided that returning to early 1970s levels of awful would be fun (it was, I find it much easier to like Ferrari when success for them feels like a miracle). This led to the first major driver aids purge, with really only semi auto gearboxes surviving.

Post 94

Then the tragic chaos of 1994 saw a new generation of driver emerge, with Schumacher, Hill, Villeneuve and Hakkinen providing real fireworks for the second half of the decade. We see this in the stats with those drivers sharing laurels surprisingly evenly, with McLaren, Williams, Benetton and Ferrari all getting their moments to shine over the course of the 10 years. Consider this. Between 1995 and 1999 there were four different constructor’s Champions and four different driver’s Champions. Between 2015 and 2019 there was one constructor’s Champion and two drivers Champions. Why? We’ll come to that.

4th Place – 1950 to 1959

Predictability Factor – 16.32%

The 50s are weird (and utterly fascinating). With so much of the Sport’s DNA settling it presents a number of anomalies. This, for example, was an era when drivers could share cars and points. You could enter cars with full bodywork. 1952 and 1953’s World Championships were actually run in Formula 2, not Formula 1. The World Constructor’s Championship didn’t even exist until 1958 (therefor I’ve not made it part of the overall score for this decade, but I’ve included the two years it was run on the chart below).

It’s easy to think of the 50s as uncompetitive. Certain teams with massive advantages. Fangio beat everyone because he was always in the best car didn’t? However looking a bit more closely at it, this doesn’t really hold up too well, in fact it appears to be nonsense. While there were spells of enormous dominance for certain teams, these never, ever lasted very long. Certainly not to the extent we’ve seen recent dynasties like Mercedes or Red Bull.

A Patchy Kind Of Domination

True, the World Championship began with only one real competitive team, Alfa Romeo but they left after two years and two titles. F1 as a set of rules was in a parlous state. Nobody had the money and resources to build a reasonable number of cars for the top category. So the World Championship moved to Formula 2 with only Ferrari having anything remotely competitive car wise and Alberto Ascari cleaned up. In 1954 the World Championship returned to F1 and Mercedes decided to throw their hat in the ring. Twinned with Fangio they moved the sport on massively, however only until 1955 when, in the aftermath of the horrific Le Mans Disaster, they withdrew from all motorsport.

The later 50s are, surprisingly, very open and hard fought. Ferrari (who’d had a massive shot in the arm when they took over Lancia’s F1 program) took the fight to Maserati and, later Vanwall (who became the sport’s first Constructor’s Champions). And we end in 1959 with Cooper and the rear engine revolution. 1956 to 1959, when you actually go back and look at them, are astonishingly and competitive seasons. Hell, 1959 ends with the Champion pushing his car over the line! Championships are won by narrow margins, the grid is packed with talent, and technically the sport leaps forward.

A huge amount happens in those years. It is a *very* overlooked era. These years improve the score massively compared to the first five or six years of the World Championship. Across the decade as a whole, more drivers won races in the 1950s than in the 2010s. And with far fewer races overall. Food for thought when people point to lap times alone as a measure of competition.

3rd Place – 1980 to1989

Predictability Factor – 16.21%

When I began this exercise with a calculator, the Motorsport archive, a bottle of Famous Grouse and an excel spreadsheet, I thought the 1980s would come out on top. Many people, with good reason, hold it up as the sport’s golden age. Titanic talents at the wheel, iconic teams, the first turbo era, controversy, drama, tragedy, and perhaps most importantly the first decade to be televised as a whole. The narrative the 1980s created, especially on TV, Cemented F1 as a Global sport.

Certainly, in terms of fights for drivers titles it’s the closest. In fact, fractionally more races were won by the runner up in the World Championship over the course of the decade, than by the Champion. The only decade that has ever happened. Which is pretty impressive when you stop to think about it Many seasons from the 1980s are classics. 1982’s tragic year is probably the most openly competitive in the entire sport’s history with so many drivers and teams producing winners. 1984 is immense, with canny Lauda using guile and racecraft to beat out a younger, charging Prost, by the narrowest of margins. Then you have the legendary Piquet vs Mansell and, of course, Prost vs Senna battles of the second half of the decade. In terms of drivers fighting it out for the title it deserves all the plaudits thrown at it.

The Change Starts Here

However that’s not the whole story, because the 1980s also sees a subtle, yet crucial shift. From the mid 80s onwards something happens. The number of teams able to win starts to decline. Think about the number of successful constructors who, after this era, would never win again and would disappear into the 1990s. In 1988 we’d see the first truly crushingly dominant team in the sport as McLaren and Honda teamed up win 15 of 16 races that season (and it came very very close to being all of them). By the end of the decade only really McLaren, Williams and Ferrari were in the hunt for any wins, with Benetton occasionally snaffling scraps from the table here or there. Lotus and Tyrrell, both proud Champions, would never win again.

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The 80s see the beginning of heavier manufacturer involvement, the start of the electronic control systems replacing the mechanical, sponsorship money and commercial revenue being syphoned towards the bigger teams. This is the watershed as the power to win becomes concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer teams, and the driver’s importance in the overall performance of the package begins to diminish.

We see this in the results. It’s a sort of reverse 1950s. It starts open and begins to close down. It’s fitting as they both sit next to each other in this list. If I was a grumpy old man (and I’m fast becoming one) I’d suggest that this is the end of “classic” Motor-Racing and where F1 becomes more of a business than a sport. Certainly, from here on, the number of teams who can win, and the drivers who can win for them begins a decline we’ve not seen arrested.

2nd Place – 1960 to 1969

Predictability Factor – 15.25%

Arguably more changed in the 1960s than in any other era. We began the decade with many front engine cars still on a grid of mostly national colours. We ended it with everyone with rear engines and sponsorship paintjobs. In between we see three different engine formulas and a huge variety of technical leaps, some abortive (four wheel drive and 16 Cylinder H Pattern engines anyone?) and some still with us (monocoque chassis and wings to name but two).

A fascinating era technically, yet one where the actual driving of the car was left, mechanically, wholly in the hands of the driver. They were physically linked to brakes, throttle, steering and transmission. Racing on savagely dangerous circuits this decade gave drama which, had the TV Camera’s been looking, might put some more recent stuff in the shade. Imagine if the 1964 Mexican Grand Prix had been televised and twitter had existed . . . It would’ve been insane.

Building Winning Teams

What immediately grabs you about the stats in this era though is just how many constructors were competitive. 9 constructors won races. 6 won the World Constructor’s Championship (the most in any decade in history). There were even a few privateer teams here and there winning in customer cars (Rob Walker winning in Cooper’s and Lotus’s most notably, those wins are considers as wins for the constructors in this analysis).

The competition of the 60s gave us the equal least predictable Driver’s Championships and the least predictable Constructor’s titles. To put it in context from 1961 to 69 there were no consecutive WDCs and only one consecutive WCC (Brabham in 1966 and 1967). Lotus, Ferrari, Cooper, Matra and BRM all won titles along with Brabham. Eagle, McLaren and Honda all produced race winning cars too. 20 drivers won in 99 races in the 60s. Compare that with the 2010s, with 12 winners in 198 starts.

Cheap Spectacle

What caused this? Again, a more detailed discussion at another time perhaps, but certainly the following things helped. Motor-racing was, by the standards of today, comparatively cheap, with the bar for entry at all levels being less expensive. You can make the argument that financially the sport was much more egalitarian (if far less profitable). You couldn’t buy an advantage as easily.

At the same time there was still room for enormous innovation, but machinery was still fully manual, if it wasn’t maintained, it broke. Sometimes it just broke anyway regardless of how well you maintained it. The cars were still comparatively primitive and mechanically simple. They were in the hands of the driver with no aids and no pit wall support. Grip levels were low. Circuits were unforgiving. There was no safety net. Things went wrong. If someone makes a mistake, someone else can capitalize. That is the essence of sport. Of course, as with the 50s, 70s and 80s this made for huge dangers and the results were often tragic. Nobody could ever accuse it of being dull though.

Oh, and this isn’t a discussion for here but it’s worth saying something about Jim Clark’s effects on these results. In what is the second most open era of the sport’s history, he won over a quarter of the races in it. Take him out of the picture here and the Driver Predictability score would drop massively and the 1960s may well top this list. You can never prove who the GOAT is, but stuff like this makes you wonder.

1st Place – 1970 to 1979

Predictability Factor – 12.49%

And so we come to it. Perhaps surprisingly. Perhaps not. The 1970s were the most competitive decade we’ve ever seen. In ten years 29 drivers and 14 constructors won at least one Grand Prix. This was achieved in just 144 starts. There were seven World Champions. The only area in which the 1970s isn’t clear of the others is in World Constructor’s Champions where there are “only” four (Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren and Ferrari). Still more than in any decade since.

As with the 60s this was a cheap era (as cheap as motorsport can ever be at any rate). It was fully manual and, perhaps most importantly, much of the grid had access to a competitive, reasonably priced, engine. The incredible Ford DFV, variants of which powered winners from 1967 to 1983. The teams were a healthy split of privateers, constructors and manufacturers. Engineering approaches were diverse and inventive.

In The Shadow

Without a dominant driver like Clark the wins fell more evenly around the grid. 1970s is probably the toughest era to pick a “best” driver from. Is it Stewart? Is it Lauda? There are those who’d point to Fittipaldi too. What about a wildcard like Peterson? And Andretti wasn’t exactly a slouch either was he? All have a shout and all had their moment in the sun one way or another. Of course, it was also unacceptably dangerous. Those first few decades of the World Championship were awash with blood and fire, and it’s those images which come cluttering to the front of the mind when many consider the 70s.

Perhaps because the images of that time *are* in colour (after all the two worst accidents in F1 history in terms of casualties occurred in the 50s and 60s in the black and white era of reporting). Much of what is captured from the 70s are strips of film of cars slithering past burning wrecks and twisted metal. It is a shame that these associations are what overlay what is the most hotly contested era of the sport. When was Formula 1 most competitive? Well, the 1970s if this is anything to go by.

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What Does It All Mean?

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have an era of the sport which is as competitive as the 1970s were, but as safe as the 2020s? How could we do this? Why is the sport so static now even when the sector times between all the drivers and cars are the smallest they’ve ever been?

Well, we can, and perhaps should, talk about this at much greater length. However, three things leap out at me immediately.

F1 Is Boring – Electric Boogaloo

First, the introduction of electronic control systems has reduced the human element in the sport. Humans make mistakes. Electronics don’t. Consider this. Up until the mid to late 1980s every shift, by every driver, in every Grand Prix, had to be made manually. It had to be rev matched and not missed. If you missed it the results could be catastrophic. Miss an up shift and you may lose a place. Miss a down shift and you might well end up off the road. Get it *very* wrong and you could blow the engine or strip the gear. It was hard. These aren’t standard soft meshed manual transmissions remember. We’re taking about fragile crash boxes. People made mistakes with it under pressure. Mistakes lead to more mistakes. Drivers get ragged. Ragged drivers can’t be as consistent. Inconsistent performance means the order changes.

All Those Buttons

And that’s just *one* driver aid. The semi automatic sequential gearbox. Let’s consider all the other stuff on a driver’s steering wheel that is legal in the current era. They haven’t put it all there to make the driver’s life harder now have they? Let’s look at the diff map settings the drivers can currently play with on the fly.

An adjustable diff is used to adjust car behavior on corner entry and exit, you can tweak out understeer and oversteer as the chassis and tyre behaviors change during a Grand Prix. The result? It’s easier to be consistent as the car behaves more consistently. Prior to this technology the driver would have to drive around his changing handling as fuel levels dropped, temperatures fluxed and tyres wore. He did this by altering his braking, entry, line and throttle application. He’d have to do it by feel. That’s hard. If it’s hard, people make mistakes. Mistakes lead to more mistakes. The order changes.

And what about car to pit telemetry? Prior to these live streams of constant data, the driver had to diagnose and solve issues with the car himself. He had to cope with them using the tools he had at his disposal. He did not have a room of engineers monitoring all his temps and pressures live giving him advice on what was happening with the car and what to do to correct it. That’s hard. If it’s hard, people make mistakes. Mistakes lead to more mistakes. The order changes.

The Robot Doesn’t Love You

I could go on. The consistency now provided by fly by wire inputs as opposed to mechanical or hydraulic ones which would change over the course of the race. Drivers now constantly being kept aware of what everyone else on the circuit is doing at all times, thus the potential to be taken by surprise or second guessed being far reduced. Drivers having strategy run through simulators and called for them from the wall . . . And so on.

The electronic revolution in the sport has meant that the order now changes far, far less than it used to because it has all been focused on making things more consistent. A good chunk of the electronic racing car development of the past 40 years has been to take tasks away from the driver so he can’t make the mistakes he might once have and can concentrate more fully on what he does control. In so doing the human part of the sport diminishes. Thus we have a situation where everyone finds they can get on their limit much more consistently . . . but still can’t do anything about the guy in front because he finds it much more easy to be consistently on his. For F1 to be at its most competitive that has to change. The human touch has to come back.

As Reliable As The Sun Setting . . . And Just As Predictable

The second thing which leaps out at me is reliability. Compare the retirement rates of the 1950s with the retirement rates today. Even into the 1990s it wasn’t unusual for more than half of the cars in a Grand Prix to retire through mechanical failure. This might be due to drivers being too hard on their machinery, or just plain old bad luck. However the prospect that even the best package on the day may be felled by a mechanical issue kept races alive. This possibility is now, mostly, gone except for once in a blue moon.

Now, there are those who would say that cars retiring is a bad thing for the show. They need to see everyone fighting to the end. Do we really though? Especially given that the order now doesn’t change to the same extent that it used to. Think how many classic races of the past were enlivened because someone made a mistake or something broke. Yes, it’s rough on the person who it affects . . . but it can bring the sport to life. Am I alone in this?

We all understand the need for sustainability. However is F1’s focus on reusing parts, engine limits and running to deltas hurting more than it helps? This isn’t endurance racing after all, and nor should it be.

Money, Money, Money

And lastly, money. As motorsport has become more and more expensive. As teams have gone from a dozen employees to thousands (literally), is it any surprise that fewer and fewer people can afford to go racing at the higher levels? And is it a surprise that fewer and fewer of them can afford to be competitive? Of course, this is a very old tune. F1’s known it has a skewed financial playing field for a long long time, but the less it’s corrected the worse the lack of competition in the sport will get. It’s why the budget cap needs to be policed properly and ruthlessly. Short of a better idea it’s our best hope of bringing back at least something of the meritocracy of the 60s and 70s. Of course that’ll mean fewer profits for some people . . . so I’m not optimistic.

Maybe you are? I suppose we need to ask not “When was Formula 1 most competitive?” but “How can F1 be more competitive?”.

The Full Results, If You’ve Got This Far

And yes, for uber geeks like me who might be curious, I’ve included Schumacher’s wins from 1997 and McLaren’s wins from 2007 in the runner up scores, as these were results on the road, despite ultimate disqualification.

And no, I haven’t included the Indy 500 wins from 1950 to 1960. They would lower the predictability significantly for the 1950s, but I felt this would be disproportional.

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