What are the closest seasons in F1 history?

The 2017 battle between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel for the Formula 1 world championship may have ended prematurely, but we know there was the potential for it to go down to the wire.

Had Ferrari and Vettel not made some key errors, chances are we would have had an Abu Dhabi showdown.

But how close has the season really been when it comes to pure speed? Thirteen poles and 11 wins for the Mercedes suggests the W08 has had a real edge over the SF70H, even if getting it into the sweet spot proved difficult on several occasions.

Autosport decided to compare Mercedes' advantage with that of other cars in the history of the world championship based on supertimes, to see just where it fits in.

Supertimes are based on the fastest single lap by each car at each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%) and averaged over the season.

No statistic is perfect and there are caveats here when looking at the supertimes.

First of all, because they are based on the best lap time of a weekend, this usually means qualifying. And qualifying pace does not, of course, always translate into race pace.

For example, the Ferrari F2004's supertime advantage over the BAR 006 in second place was only 0.218%, yet it dominated, winning 15 of the 18 races.

Partly that was due to its incredible finishing record - advantages further back in F1 history have sometimes been squandered by poor reliability - but largely it was because Ferrari's Bridgestones were better race tyres (albeit worse in qualifying) than the Michelins on the rival cars.

The need to qualify with fuel loads required to start the race also meant some cars ran lighter than others, further skewing the figures for the 2003-2009 period for which those rules were in place.

Ferrari was comfortably close enough for Vettel to have been able to snatch the 2017 crown

Similarly, drivers are not constants, so they will also have an influence on some of the gaps.

However, if one agrees that the margins between top drivers are always small, this should still give us a good idea of the relative pace of the top cars over the years.

The top two cars

The gap between Mercedes and Ferrari so far this season (up until the Mexican Grand Prix) is 0.164%.

The average gap between the first and second-fastest cars in the 67-season history of the world championship before this year was 0.593%. The closest era, in terms of major rules, is the 2009-2013 period, where the average was just 0.258%, but even this is higher than the Mercedes-Ferrari gap we have seen in 2017.

In fact, the 2017 season is currently on course to be the 20th-closest of the 68 F1 championships to date. And of those ahead of it, 1954 shouldn't really count because the quickest car - Lancia's D50 by 0.142% - only did one race. The gap between the real top car, the Mercedes W196, and Ferrari was a more representative 0.464%.

Seeing as the 2017 gap has often been just over 0.2% during the campaign, it seems fair to look at all the championships in which the gap was 0.25% or less, excluding 1954.

This leaves 23 seasons. Remarkably, of those, the drivers' title was taken by a driver NOT in the quickest car across the year 12 times before 2017.

In other words, Ferrari was comfortably close enough for Vettel to have been able to snatch the 2017 crown. In previous seasons reliability, strategy and the odd virtuoso driving performance have been enough to overturn a similar pace deficit more than 50% of the time.

Sadly for Ferrari, Mercedes and Hamilton did a better job at making the most of what they had this year, particularly when it came to getting the car to the finish.

The closest seasons

We can take this further and use this approach to see which are the closest seasons in F1 history in terms of the raw speed of different teams.

When it comes to points scored, the narrowest drivers' championship was 1984, when Niki Lauda pipped McLaren team-mate Alain Prost by half a point. The closest battles between drivers in different teams came in 1958, 1964, 1976, 1981, 1994, 2007 and 2008, all of which were decided by one point. The closest since the start of the 25-points-per win era in 2010 was 2012, when Vettel beat Fernando Alonso by three points.

The closest constructors' battles were 1964 (three points), 1999 (four) and 2006 (five), but the supertimes comparison highlights some other seasons.

The table below shows the 10 closest seasons in terms of the pace difference between the fastest and second-fastest cars. This list can be reduced when other factors are brought in to play.

Smallest gap between the quickest cars

2000 Ferrari - McLaren - 0.008%
1979 Ferrari - Ligier - 0.009%
1960 Cooper - Lotus - 0.042%
1964 Lotus - Brabham - 0.047%
1955 Mercedes - Lancia - 0.049%
2008 Ferrari - McLaren - 0.059%
1984 McLaren - Brabham - 0.072%
1965 Lotus - BRM - 0.089%
1994 Williams - Benetton 0.092%
1980 Williams - Ligier 0.094%

The Cooper-Lotus battle of 1960 can be discarded because the fastest Lotus 18 driver - Stirling Moss - missed three races thanks to his Belgian GP practice crash, leaving the way clear for Cooper's Jack Brabham.

The 1955 figure is remarkable, given Mercedes' domination of the season, winning all but one of the points-paying GPs. That can be put down to the German team's greater funding and the fact that it had comfortably the best drivers in Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio after Lancia lost Alberto Ascari to a Ferrari testing crash early in the season.

Similarly, the 1984 figure is completely at odds with the race-day superiority enjoyed by McLaren, largely thanks to the MP4/2's fuel efficiency and the woeful reliability of the BMW-engined Brabham BT53.

Finally, the 1994 figures are misleading, owing to top Benetton driver Michael Schumacher missing two rounds and the tumultuous season suffered by Williams.

That leaves 2000, 1979, 1964, 2008, 1965 and 1980. The 1964 season deserves a special mention since it is the only season on the list where both the drivers' and constructors' championships were not won by either the fastest or second-fastest cars.

Ferrari, with which John Surtees took the crown, was 0.403% slower than Lotus and down in third, only 0.019% quicker than fourth-placed BRM.

The spread of the top five cars

Although the old adage 'it only takes two cars to make a race' has some truth, a championship is undoubtedly more interesting if there are more players in contention.

This is not a good time to be a midfield team looking for the odd podium, let alone victory

Expanding the supertimes analysis to encompass the top five manufacturers in each season gives a good indication of the overall health of the grid. Are the leading two teams only narrowly ahead of the rest, or are they way out front, leaving no chance for any interlopers?

This is where there is a warning to current F1, backing up the calls of many - including Ross Brawn - that something needs to be done to allow the midfield to get closer to the front.

The gap between Mercedes and fifth-quickest Force India in 2017 is currently 2.213%. That is the biggest gap in F1 since 1993 (3.764% between Williams and Sauber), before all the driver aids were banned and the field closed up.

The average gap between 1950 and 2016 is 2.401%, but if the first 10 years of the world championship are discarded because of the bigger gaps common to the period (a subject for another day), the average is just 1.611%.

This is not a good time to be a midfield team looking for the odd podium, let alone victory.

At the other end of the scale, there have been 13 seasons in which the first-to-fifth gap was less than 1%:

Smallest gap first-fifth quickest cars

2009 Red Bull - Ferrari - 0.398%
1979 Ferrari - Brabham - 0.554%
2012 McLaren - Mercedes - 0.652%
2008 Ferrari - Renault - 0.703%
2004 Ferrari - McLaren - 0.713%
1977 Lotus - Wolf - 0.729%
1975 Ferrari - Shadow - 0.785%
1972 Ferrari - Matra - 0.875%
1976 Ferrari - Ligier - 0.878%
1974 Ferrari - Tyrrell - 0.89%
2003 Ferrari - Jaguar - 0.893%
2005 McLaren - Ferrari - 0.903%
2006 Ferrari - Toyota - 0.982%

Of these 13, six can be discarded on the basis that the gap between the first and second fastest was too big - 2004, 1977, 1975, 1974, 2005 and 2006 - though, remarkably, on four of those occasions the fastest team squandered its advantage!

The 1976 campaign also drops out because Niki Lauda missed two races following his German GP accident and was, understandably, not at his best when he returned, leaving James Hunt to catch up in the championship.

The incredibly tight 2000 battle between Ferrari and McLaren, which topped the previous table, could be described as the closest duel, but the rest of the field was too far behind. That is underlined by the fact that no other team won a race.

Although 1964 doesn't make the list, it is worth pointing out that 0.422% covered the top four teams (Lotus, Brabham, Ferrari and BRM). Although not quite a record, it is remarkably close for the era, backed up by the narrow points margins in both the drivers' and constructors' tables.

The 1982 season - in which a record seven constructors famously scored wins - is also absent because it is actually in the bottom third of both the first-to-second (0.747%) and first-to-fifth (2.168%) closest lists. The appalling reliability of the turbo cars (particularly the pacesetting Renaults) and the serious accidents that afflicted Ferrari allowed cars to win that would not normally have been quick enough - it was simply not a close season on raw pace.

The only two seasons on both lists are 1979 and 2008, but 2009 (0.112% between first and second quickest) and 2012 (0.154%) are close enough to be considered. The 2009 season is also remarkable because just 1.241% covered all 10 teams.

We may have to wait for the 2021 rules before we see the 1970s and 2000s challenged

In terms of the number of different teams that won races, the two standout years are 2012, in which six cars won in 20 events, and 1972, which had a remarkable five winning cars from just 12 rounds. That leaves us with 1972, 1979, 2008, 2009 and 2012 as the closest seasons in F1 history.

It is no coincidence that the earliest two of these years were during the Cosworth DFV era and the other three came amid a freeze in engine development.

The increasing professionalism throughout the field did the rest to close up the gaps in the later era, despite a change in the aerodynamic regulations. That contributed to the tight margin covering all 10 squads in 2009.

Ferrari converted its narrow advantage into drivers' and constructors' titles in 1979, but failed to win either in 1972. Emerson Fittipaldi and Lotus won both championships that year, despite the Lotus 72 only being fourth fastest, 0.296% behind the Ferrari 312B2.

The Italian team did secure the constructors' crown from the 0.059% advantage of its F2008 in 2008, but Felipe Massa dramatically lost the drivers' title to Hamilton in the closing seconds of the campaign.

Points leaked to Brawn early in 2009 meant Red Bull failed to take either trophy, despite the RB5 ending up 0.112% faster across the year than the BGP 001.

Finally, McLaren's reliability woes and the operational improvements from Red Bull overturned the MP4-27's 0.154% edge over the RB8 in 2012.

In terms of the lead battle, this is perhaps the most similar to this year's fight, but the Hamilton-Mercedes combination simply didn't give away points like the Hamilton-McLaren partnership did. The RB8 was also the quickest car on more occasions than the SF70H has been this year.

It is clear that the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari was small enough for a potentially different outcome this year, but after that the spread over the rest of the field has been too big for it be up there with the closest seasons in F1 history.

Given the complexity of the current regulations, that is unlikely to change, so we may have to wait for the 2021 rules before we see the 1970s and 2000s challenged.

But, as this year shows, if Ferrari and perhaps Red Bull can stay close enough to fight Mercedes, the battle at the front could be as tight as ever in 2018.