Not every Formula 1 season is like 1986, when Williams duo Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet took points off each other and, with a little help from a blowout on the streets of Adelaide, Alain Prost stole the world championship in the inferior McLaren. Yet conventional wisdom would have you believe it is.
That season is most often cited as supporting evidence for the strategy of a team having a set number one and number two driver. For while Piquet and Mansell did battle within Williams, Keke Rosberg played second fiddle to Prost at McLaren in the final year of his F1 career.
But what's happening in 2017 risks exposing the assumption that the number one/number two system is the one-size-fits-all solution that will always pay off in a title race for the folly it is.