Eight times the battle for the drivers' crown has been decided by a single digit - 1958, 1961, 1964, 1976, 1981, 1994, 2007 and 2008 - but only once has it been settled by less.
One might argue the 2008 battle between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa was closer - in the sense Massa crossed the Brazilian Grand Prix finish line as 'champion', only for Hamilton to steal it back again with a last-gasp move on Timo Glock moments later. But in the statistical sense there remains none tighter than the 1984 contest between Niki Lauda and Alain Prost.
Theirs was a classic 'young pretender versus old master' dynamic as McLaren team-mates. Lauda had been around the block many times already of course - winning the championship for Ferrari in 1975, coming back famously from near-death in '76 to do it all again in '77, retiring altogether after two troubled years at Brabham, now two years firmly back in the game with McLaren and a proven race winner once more.