Big debate: When was F1's real greatest era?

People often hark back to the 'golden age' of Formula 1 while criticising the current state of grand prix racing. But when was that high watermark?

Was it when the front-engined cars still had a classic racing-car shape, the simple pre-wing machines of the 1960s, or the closely fought years of the Cosworth DFV? What about the raw power and driver ability on show in the '80s, or the flat-out sprints that came a decade later?

To help answer these questions, Autosport asked leading motorsport journalists to argue the case for their favourite era. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the 2006-08 years are absent, falling between the end of the V10 era and the return of slicks.

1950-1960
By Paul Fearnley

It's little wonder that the most famous and evocative grand prix photograph was taken during this period - when unadulterated cars were at their most beguilingly beautiful, unadorned circuits their most picturesque and unprotected drivers their most heroic.

Five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio is for many the greatest; his 1957 Maserati 250F (driven by Jackie Stewart in 2011 above), shaped lovingly by a fat man with a hammer, is held as the ideal of aesthetics blending with, rather than bending to, competitive function; and the sequence of downhill sweeping bends beyond the pits at Rouen was a formidable challenge of courage and skill.

There was a cinematic sweep to GP racing before it had to adapt to small-screen demands and changing appetites

Fangio performed this 130mph balancing act - without the aid of safety net - every lap for three hours; fully 313 miles. Yet this wasn't even his greatest GP victory. That would come one month later between the hedges and ditches of the Nurburgring.

Fangio's was a black art yet to be subjugated to the Deep Blue of technology and the resultant mystique is why his arrival never failed to reduce a thronged room to reverential murmuring; and it's why his natural successor Stirling Moss remains the British public's racing driver archetype.

For these were men apart - obviously so in their short-sleeved shirts and exposed cockpits - at a time before widespread (let alone universal) car ownership and affordable jet travel (let alone an orbiting cosmonaut).

There was a cinematic sweep to GP racing before it had to adapt to small-screen demands and changing appetites. Epic is: topping 190mph on an undulating Route Nationale fringed by golden corn; cleaving the claustrophobic foothill villages of 16-miles-to-the-lap Pescara; and centrifuging Monza's gut-wrenching bankings.

There was too - although not always (for every good story needs a baddie or three) - a chivalric code: Alberto Ascari's declining to take over Jose Froilan Gonzalez's car as the latter was on the verge of scoring Ferrari's maiden world championship GP victory; title aspirant Peter Collins selflessly stepping out and aside in favour of team-mate Fangio; and Moss testifying persuasively on behalf of disqualified title rival Mike Hawthorn.

There were fundamental truths to it: no need to pretend it was any more dangerous than it was; no need to concoct rivalries as cars carried national colours vivid in black and white; and no need to conjure excitement from processes constitutionally dull.

Mercedes-Benz's lowering of sensational, silver-glinting Stromlinienwagen from darkened transporter in 1954 signalled not only the arrival of cutting-edge science (rather bluntly blended with past glories in this case, admittedly) but also was a genuine geopolitical moment since unmatched in the sport.

For not only had the cornfields of Reims recently felt the destructive force of German engineering might - much of it powered by Mercedes-Benz - during Blitzkrieg but also it had been the scene of the Nazis' final surrender. And now, nine years later, it lay at the heart of peacetime rehabilitation.

Britain's rehabilitation was reinvention also. Uncertain of its global role in the aftermath of a ruinous victory, and Empire being dismantled, its men in sheds forged (and fabricated) a new path that would become the prototype fast track.

Short of confidence - as well as bacon, ham, sugar, loose tea, meat, cheese, butter, lard, margarine and sweets - to begin with, but long on ideas and military surplus from salvage yards, they avoided the complacency and institutional inertia that held back several of the country's other, more established, sports immediately post-war, and learned the hard way, ie the best way, before turning GP racing from front to back - in terms of architecture and methodology if not yet ideology - to seize its high ground.

Something that two or three years beforehand would have been thought unlikely verging on laughable.

That this paradigm shift occurred when it did - when GP racing was a big deal from within rather than an agglomeration of big deals from without - is why the empire it founded has lasted.

Every GP era since has stood on the shoulders of these giants who risked it all, as well as those of the brave Davids, or rather Charlies, Colins and Johns, with a plan to overcome and/or knack of dodging the slings and arrows.

Not every GP was a thriller - winning margins often were measured in minutes - but those that were shone. And shine still. For they had a deeper meaning and were not only precious because of their rarity - just 94, including 11 Indy 500s, were held during this period - but also prescient because of their powerful influence as the epitome - catalyst, crucible and proving ground - of a more optimistic, altruistic application of progress.

Its human price - age shall not weary Eugenio Castellotti, Collins, Stuart Lewis-Evans, Onofre Marimon and Luigi Musso - was heavy but, in light (and darkness) of what had gone before, not yet deemed unsustainable. Inhumane out of context but compellingly, overwhelmingly human, in.

Stats

Races (excluding Indianapolis 500s)
83

Number of winning drivers
16

Number of winning constructors
8

Average pole margin
1.204s (0.685%)

Average winning margin
59.4s

1961-1973
By Nigel Roebuck

'If you can remember the 1960s,' the saying goes, "you really weren't there..." Well, I was, and I can - the feeling in the air, the music, the movies, and the motor racing. Enchanting, exciting and dangerous, it was a mirror image of the times.

Two days after my 21st birthday, I saw the newly released Grand Prix in Leicester Square, and the next day watched Dan Gurney beat Lorenzo Bandini by half a second in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch.

A month later I was at Oulton Park, where Jack Brabham won the Spring Trophy, and a fortnight after that saw Mike Parkes take the International Trophy at Silverstone.

Even with the advent of wings, cars were routinely steered on the throttle, and overtaking was commonplace

In 1967 there were five Formula 1 races in this country, so the British aficionado was indeed well served. For a couple of quid a time, I had a paddock pass at every race, and there was no hiding in motorhomes because there weren't any - as I walked in on practice day for the British Grand Prix, the first person I saw was Jim Clark, that weekend as ever happily staying at The Green Man. I treasure my collection of signed programmes from those days: no need for a 'Fan Experience' back then.

At the same time, in part because there was little TV coverage of F1, the drivers - although readily available for an autograph - retained an exotic, mysterious, quality long lost now. Beyond a few words over a circuit's PA system, you never heard the voices of Jochen Rindt or Pedro Rodriguez, much less saw them playing infantile games for the camera.

Undeniably there was a romance about that era, and it stemmed in part from a continuing sense of history, with grands prix still run at traditional theatres of battle like Spa-Francorchamps and the Nurburgring.

Save at Monaco, the word 'chicane' was virtually unknown, although by 1972 that was starting to change, and their introduction at Monza sadly ravaged the nature of the Italian GP.

From 1961-65 the 1.5-litre F1 was in force, and if the cars were small and underpowered, still they raced superbly, allowing such as Clark and Stirling Moss to display their genius: with downforce not yet thought of, a car's ultimate cornering speed was dependent much more on the delicate skill of the driver.

The 1966 season, heralded as 'The Return to Power', saw the introduction of the three-litre F1, and it was lauded on all sides, for now the cars had more power than grip, and - with opposite lock much in evidence - it was a fine time for the spectator.

Shaped by designer's pen rather than windtunnel, the cars were invariably elegant, and they sounded sublime, too, with V12s from Ferrari, BRM, Honda, Matra and (Eagle) Weslake - each distinctive one to another - competing with Cosworth's V8.

Downforce did not raise its head until 1968, when Amon's Ferrari appeared at Spa with a tiny rear wing - and took pole by four seconds. "I couldn't help but wonder," he said, "what can of worms we were opening here..." His fears were well grounded.

In 1968, too, commercial sponsorship appeared for the first time in F1, but if it was sad to see the green and yellow of Lotus replaced by the red and gold of a Player's fag packet, the spectacle didn't change.

Even with the advent of wings, cars were routinely steered on the throttle, and overtaking was commonplace. As time went by, the increasingly ubiquitous DFV gained ever more of a stranglehold, but still the 'twelves' had their days in the sun.

The drivers of that generation earned reasonable money, but no more than that, and usually they travelled together on commercial flights, further strengthening the sense of camaraderie that then existed, not least because life in F1 was tenuous: if we looked upon them as gods, our feelings were amplified by uncertainty that we would see them again.

While definitively a golden era in the sport's history, not everything was good.

In the 13 seasons of which I write, only four went by without at least one fatality: 14 lives were lost at grand prix weekends, and a further seven F1 drivers were killed competing in other categories. Remembering the loss of Clark, Amon spoke for all his fellows: "If it could happen to Jimmy, what chance did the rest of us have?"

Back in the day of course it was always a shock when a driver died, but not a surprise: that was how racing was - how it had always been.

Jackie Stewart, three times world champion in this era, took it upon himself to change the whole thinking about safety in motor racing: every driver of the past 50 years is in his debt.

Stats

Races
141

Number of winning drivers
28

Number of winning constructors
12

Average pole margin
0.751s (0.477%)

Average winning margin
39.6s

1974-1982
By Marcus Simmons

The beauty of this era was that it was just so damn unpredictable, but paradoxically the early years of it were arguably those of the biggest technical stagnation F1 has ever experienced.

When the 1974 season opened with qualifying in Argentina - on January 11! - the field was minus the colossus of the preceding years: Jackie Stewart had retired after clinching his third world title in '73.

The field now comprised a wealth of excellent F1 drivers, although none were as great as Stewart, and a rich seam of exciting young talents who would become the superstars of the next decade.

Most of them were driving cars of all shapes and sizes - yes, you could identify a Surtees TS16 from a Brabham BT44 if the liveries were all the same - powered by the Ford-badged Cosworth DFV V8. Ranged against them were the resurgent 12-cylinder Ferraris and fading BRMs.

What was fantastic about this era was the sheer number of leading drivers, that lack of technical progress allowing each of them a shot at winning at some point during their careers, seemingly without it mattering which team they were driving for.

There were three races during this era where no fewer than 21 past and future grand prix winners sat on the grid - that is a record still unbeaten - and the first of them was the 1978 French Grand Prix.

OK, that race at Paul Ricard wasn't exactly a thriller, but when did any era of F1 ever have wall-to-wall edge-of-seat racing throughout?

But on the grid were poleman John Watson and Niki Lauda (Brabham-Alfa Romeo), race winner Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson (Lotus), James Hunt and Patrick Tambay (McLaren), Jody Scheckter (Wolf), Carlos Reutemann and Gilles Villeneuve (Ferrari), Jacques Laffite (Ligier-Matra), Jean-Pierre Jabouille (Renault), Riccardo Patrese (Arrows), Patrick Depailler and Didier Pironi (Tyrrell), Alan Jones (Williams), Emerson Fittipaldi (Fittipaldi), Clay Regazzoni (Shadow), Rene Arnoux (Martini), Vittorio Brambilla (Surtees), and Jochen Mass and Keke Rosberg (ATS).

If you stayed for seven or eight seasons that was regarded as a long career. Convert that to today, and Max Verstappen would be retiring at the age of 25

When did any era ever have this strength in depth?

Four races in 1978 had 22 past and future GP winners attempting to qualify, and that's also a record. The first of them was the Monaco GP, won by Depailler, where due to the nature of the circuit only 20 cars were allowed to qualify.

What do Hans Stuck, Rupert Keegan and Rolf Stommelen have in common? They were the only drivers on the grid that day in Monte Carlo who never won a grand prix. Five winners failed to qualify, among them Rosberg and Arnoux, who didn't even make it past pre-qualifying...

By this stage the technical developments were progressing. Lotus had pioneered ground-effect, and Renault had introduced the turbocharged RS01 as well as Michelin radial tyres at the 1977 British GP, an event where 36 entries attempted to qualify and just 1.87 seconds covered the 26 who made it onto the grid.

Turbos would go on to take over F1, but until the end of this particular era the technology remained unreliable.

The Cosworths too weren't exactly bastions of non-stop motoring, as various tuners attempted to squeeze more and more power out of an engine introduced in 1967, but which was still able to propel Williams driver Rosberg to the '82 title, 15 years after its introduction.

Rosberg clinched that crown with just one grand prix win to his credit - the artificial Swiss GP held at Dijon in the French Burgundy region, which the Finn led just the final two laps of after passing the ailing Renault of Alain Prost.

But in a season where no-one took more than two victories - and where there was an all-time record of 11 winners over the course of the 16 races - that lack of race-winning success wasn't a massive handicap in his quest.

That 1982 season was memorable also for sad reasons, with the deaths of Riccardo Paletti and the amazing Villeneuve, as well as the serious injuries sustained by Pironi. During this era a season was regarded as a happy one if it passed without a fatality, as the cars got quicker and quicker and circuit safety struggled to keep pace.

This also contributed to drivers retiring after they had accomplished their goals - think Hunt, Lauda, Scheckter - without elongating their fading careers indefinitely as the stars do today, thereby keeping deserving young drivers out of F1.

If you stayed for seven or eight seasons that was regarded as a long career. Convert that to today, and Max Verstappen would be retiring at the age of 25.

The closing years of this era played out amid political strife, with the pages of Autosport filled with talk of breakaway series as Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, on behalf of the teams, took the fight to the governing body.

Who'd have thought that they'd become the establishment to become toppled a generation later? But for the fans, it was an age of wonder, colour (oh, those cigarette liveries...), noise and gladiatorial heroes.

Stats

Races
138

Number of winning drivers
28

Number of winning constructors
13

Average pole margin
0.350s (0.384%)

Average winning margin
18.7s

1983-93
By Andrew van de Burgt

This was an era when the most powerful Formula 1 cars of all time roamed the race tracks and unbridled technology transformed the way the cars behaved. There has never been, nor will there ever be, an era like it.

It started with the cessation of a political war that had been waging for the previous three seasons. The Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone alliance had won, and while Jean-Marie Balestre remained in charge of the FIA (and would continue to exert a meddling hand throughout the period), the commercial future of the sport had been secured.

With booming revenues and TV audiences, sponsors and manufacturers flocked into the sport in greater numbers than ever before and drove the technological change.

In 1983 Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ferrari and Renault took on the remaining Cosworth hordes, but by '85 the final remnants of '70s garagista F1 had all but disappeared as turbo power took over and Ford, Honda and Porsche had joined the party.

Dynos struggled to measure the full-boost power outputs, which easily exceeded 1200bhp, and anecdotally breached 1500bhp.

Tyres were shredded as under-aeroed cars struggled to harness the flame-spitting grunt, especially in qualifying. The fact that rubber was chewed with almost careless abandon as mid-race refuelling redefined strategy, and race lap times were miles off those in qualifying as the thirsty cars had to be held back in races, mattered not a jot.

It's amazing how many things that were great in the past are perceived as problematic now.

We were also treated to better coverage than ever. Bernie's joined-up vision meant a consistency of TV broadcasting previously lacking.

Now UK audiences would get Murray Walker and James Hunt (even if they were often in a White City broom cupboard) at every race and the stars of the era - Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda, Keke Rosberg - were famous faces with unique personalities that were either loved or loathed depending on which side of their rivalry axis you sat. It could never be accused of being dull or boring.

The final part of the era was home to an explosion in creative thinking

A combination of cars that had more power than grip, engines that were liable to go pop at any moment, manual gearboxes that punished a mis-shift with the ultimate price, and tracks that were as unforgiving as the gearboxes meant the races were unpredictable, and random winners and late-race heartache were commonplace.

As the era wore on and the turbo speeds needed reining in the fuel-restrictions created a different type of racing, rewarding the smart guys who could manage a race as much as sheer outright pace.

This came to a crescendo in 1988 when two of the greatest drivers in history, Senna and Prost, went head-to-head in a car that was head-and-shoulders above the rest. That a McLaren would win the race was never in doubt - which one would prevail made for transfixing viewing.

The mandating of 'atmo' engines for the season that followed was accompanied by the first raft of hi-tech electronic development. The semi-automatic gearbox in John Barnard's gorgeous Ferrari 640 was the trailblazer that presaged technological advances that would become commonplace in road cars.

From paddleshifting to active suspension to ABS and technology that would never ultimately race, such as CVT gearboxes, the final part of the era was home to an explosion in creative thinking.

With Renault (and Camel) backing, and Adrian Newey pushing the boundaries, Williams was at the vanguard. This also gave us a sensational coda to the Prost/Senna battle as the Brazilian took a McLaren that lacked the horsepower of its rival, but was very much its equal in the technology stakes (something often conveniently overlooked when Senna's stellar opening lap at Donington is fawned over).

This was Senna at his brilliant best. Fighting against the odds, against a rival he respected yet detested (although that enmity would thaw as Prost confirmed he was retiring once and for all).

As the era drew to a close, Senna was off to his tragic tie-up with Williams, Prost joined Lauda, Piquet and Rosberg in retirement, while Mansell remained in limbo as the charms of CART were starting to wear thin.

The cars too were about to be reined in. 'Driver aids' as they had been pejoratively labelled were out, as F1 deliberately sought to distance itself from driving forward mechanical technology.

It was about to become an aero formula, sowing the seeds for the dirty turbulent air that continues to inhibit overtaking in races to this day.

The time of giants ruling the Earth was over and F1 would never be the same again.

Stats

Races
175

Number of winning drivers
17

Number of winning constructors
8

Average pole margin
0.470s (0.558%)

Average winning margin
23.3s

1994-2005
By Glenn Freeman

This spell of Formula 1 is defined by Michael Schumacher. It opened with him stepping into the breach left by the death of Ayrton Senna as the dominant force on the grid, and ended with him being dethroned by Fernando Alonso.

Schumacher moved the goalposts for F1 drivers, both on track and off. His preparation was second to none, and the standards he set in the gym and the debrief room are accepted as the norm today.

On track, his relentless ability to rattle off entire stints of 'qualifying laps' played perfectly with the reintroduction of refuelling for 1994, which turned grands prix into short sprints between pitstops. His ruthlessness in battle with others, and the amount he got away with, set a new, arguably low, bar for what was acceptable in wheel-to-wheel combat.

The sprints between fuel stops are looked back on fondly in the current era of fuel and tyre saving in F1. While the amount of on-track overtaking during a race went down with the change, it at least allowed drivers to push closer to the limit throughout a GP.

And it gave teams an extra tactical element to play with, as race strategy became a decisive weapon in races. F1 became more of a team effort than ever - with a driver like Schumacher at its disposal, a clever team could effectively win a race from the pitwall.

Subsequent failed alterations to the format have spooked F1 into being far more cautious than it was with decisions that made a real difference in 1994, 2003 and '05

The majority of the era featured a tyre war, which gave F1 a performance variable it no longer has. Bridgestone came in for 1997 and, despite initially only taking on teams further down the order, its performance spooked Goodyear out of F1 after just two years.

In 2001 Michelin rejoined the fray, providing the Schumacher/Ferrari/Bridgestone combination with some stern competition that would eventually topple the red empire.

The great thing about a tyre war was that it could alter the competitive order from race to race without any interference that could be considered artificial.

The 1998, 2003 and '05 championships were particularly influenced by tyres: Goodyear and Bridgestone fought with Ferrari and McLaren respectively in '98, Michelin thrust Williams and McLaren into contention with Ferrari and Bridgestone in '03, and the banning of in-race tyre changes for '05 caught Bridgestone out, finally ending Schumacher's run of consecutive titles.

The significance of 1994 in shaping F1's history will never be forgotten, although its ultimate legacy became safety following the deaths of Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola. Car and circuit designs changed significantly in a matter of months.

The year started with the reintroduction of cars devoid of driver aids, which were banned after the 1993 season. The idea was to bring driver skill back to the fore, although by the early 2000s basic assists such as traction control returned as the FIA struggled to police workarounds the teams were coming up with.

Also in 1994, F1 still boasted V8 engines racing against V10s and Ferrari's screaming V12s - a form of variety fans still call for today. By '96 the whole field was using V10s, the sound of which became more spectacular as the revs they were capable of grew rapidly around the turn of the century.

Today there are regular calls to go back to the V8s that were introduced for 2006, but in comparison to their howling predecessors they sounded flat.

While Schumacher set new standards for drivers, the make-up of F1 teams was transformed during this era too. Minnows such as Pacific, Simtek and Forti all lasted no more than two years in the mid-1990s, and the 107% qualifying rule was introduced to rid F1 of off-the-pace chancers trying to sneak onto the back of the grid.

Staffing levels in teams boomed into the hundreds as more money sloshed into F1 and manufacturer involvement increased. By 2005, Renault, Mercedes, Ferrari, Toyota, BMW and Honda all had a major presence on the grid that went beyond simply supplying engines.

Schumacher's dominance with Ferrari also spurred F1's decision makers into tinkering with the sacred F1 weekend format. The changes were sparked in 2003 with the introduction of one-shot qualifying and using race-start fuel loads for those laps and, while such changes went down poorly with purists, there's no disputing that it shook things up. Six drivers took pole positions that year, and eight won races.

Despite the success of those bold changes, subsequent failed alterations to the format have spooked F1 into being far more cautious than it was with decisions that made a real difference to F1 in 1994, 2003 and '05.

This F1 era ended with one of the greatest races of all-time at the Japanese GP. The penultimate race of 2005 at Suzuka is remembered for Alonso's pass around the outside of Schumacher at 130R and Kimi Raikkonen stealing victory on the final lap.

The scene was set when rain mixed up the grid for qualifying - now there's a change F1 will probably always be too afraid to implement on a full-time basis.

Stats

Races
202

Number of winning drivers
19

Number of winning constructors
8

Average pole margin
0.298s (0.338%)

Average winning margin
14.5s

2009-18
By Edd Straw

The present can never live up to memories of the past. How could it? The dirty realities of living in the moment, of experiencing every minute, the vast majority of which will be fundamentally unmemorable, can't compete with the nostalgia of sepia-tinted ages past, when all that was good could be crystallised into a five-minute highlights montage in your mind's eye and the bad discarded as if it never happened.

The past has it easy, because the long stretches of tedium between the brief highlights fade to nothing. Why else would people romanticise eras where, objectively, so many aspects of daily life were objectively worse?

These are objectively the fastest, fittest, most accomplished grand prix drivers we've ever seen. And with one tragic exception, they've all made it this far alive

The perception is also polluted by our own lives. It's impossible for the period when you first became enamoured with motorsport not to hold an enduring appeal. For many, that was usually at a time before adult responsibilities and the trudge of everyday life soured the experience. Veneration of the past often reflects something more deeply personal.

Despite that, if you evaluate Formula 1's greatest era objectively, the past decade or so is not just a strong contender, but must come out on top for so many reasons. Modern grand prix racing has its problems, including existential ones that raise doubts about its long-term viability.

But it also has a day-to-day wondrousness we all too easily become blase about for the simple reason that familiarity breeds contempt.

First, the drivers. During this period, we've been thrilled by Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen - not to mention a talented group who never won the title but were capable of swashbuckling drives. For a while, there were six world champions on the grid, which is unprecedented.

To be fast and win championships in these cars against that standard of opposition is as challenging, if not more so, than ever before. These are objectively the fastest, fittest, most accomplished grand prix drivers we've ever seen. And with one tragic exception, they've all made it this far alive.

Next we have the cars. These are the fastest grand prix machines we've ever seen, able to generate astonishing corner speed and braking distances that seem impossible. They are high-speed, intricate works of art, exhibiting a design team's mastery not just of what they can see but the unseen vortices and airflows both on and off the car.

This may not have the romanticism of a lone genius and his drawing board, but the sheer force of expertise and knowledge embodied in these machines is mindblowing. It's difficult to comprehend, but put the effort in and you will be rewarded.

It has also never been easier to follow what's going on, to hear from drivers and teams, to absorb expert comment and analysis. Never before have we had more insight into the character of the drivers, their mindset, the way they do things.

Does it make them bland PR machines compared to the heroes of the past? Perhaps the edges are a little smoother, but the world has changed and the drivers with it. If you actually take the time to listen - really listen - to many of the drivers, not least Hamilton, you will find the depth many denounce as non-existent having not bothered to look.

The on-track racing isn't perfect, but when has it ever been in F1? Yes, it's tough to follow thanks to the intricate aerodynamics, but our memories - and YouTube - play tricks on us when it comes to the spectacle of wheel-to-wheel racing in F1.

There are famous examples such as Gilles Villeneuve v Rene Arnoux at Dijon in 1979, or the Mike Hawthorn v Juan Manuel Fangio battle at Reims in '53, but they are celebrated precisely because they are so unusual - even when they happened.

And in the case of the '53 French Grand Prix, it's easy for an unseen battle to be more dramatic than one you can watch every moment of.

Romanticising the unseen can make it more thrilling than the reality ever could be, but there's so much more to be drawn from something real than mythologised.

It's not just the drivers who are better than ever before. So, too, are the teams. Take objectively the worst team on the 2018 grid - Williams. It was, on average, 3.6% off the pace. Head back to the team's most glorious year, 1992, and that pace would have put it fourth in the ranking.

Speaking of that period, I seem to remember plenty of criticism that things 'ain't what they used to be'.

Today, people rightly venerate a machine like the Williams-Renault FW14B rather than complaining that it made the racing boring.

It's only when something is gone that we appreciate its true value and that's certainly the case with contemporary F1.

It's not perfect, but nothing ever is, and perhaps we should all spend more time appreciating the brilliance of today rather than waiting for a few decades and only then looking back wistfully at an incredible era.

Stats

Races
194

Number of winning drivers
12

Number of winning constructors
7

Average pole margin
0.253s (0.282%)

Average winning margin
8.1s