Why 2010 wasn't the greatest season ever

Yes it was a magical season - and probably the most intense and fascinating that I have covered - but is 2010 going to go down as the great season in Formula 1 history? My simple answer to that is a resounding: NO!

It may have been the first time in history that we have had a four-way driver shoot-out at the final round of the season. And it may be one of the many seasons when in the cold light of day we can easily point out the missing points and small changes of circumstances that would have handed the world title to any of the five men who had a proper shot at it. But what excited me most is not what we saw this season - but where F1 is heading to.

Ever since the Schumacher-Todt-Brawn-Bridgestone alliance was ripped apart, F1 has been engulfed in ultra-close campaigns and some great end-of-season drama. And it is remarkable that the title fight has gone down to the wire four out of the last five years - although only in 2007 was this anything other than a straight head-to-head.

This year though was something really magical - for there were a whole host of dynamics at play. And while, as so often happens in F1, the quickest driver in the quickest car came out on top at the end of the season, boy did he leave it all in the last chance saloon.

It has been a campaign of high drama and fluctuating fortunes. Throughout it all Red Bull Racing has had the fastest car, but at no point over the campaign was there ever a feeling that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were ever going to run away with it.

That was partly fuelled by the early season finishing record. But then coming into play were the mid-season team-mate tensions that erupted so publicly in Turkey and Silverstone - before they made their final death roll on the eve of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

From the outside, Red Bull Racing never seemed a team at ease with itself until the final week of the season - when the final delivery of the constructors' championship and a totally on-form Sebastian Vettel left few doubting that the right man and team had come out on top in the end.

Red Bull is expected to build on its strengths in 2011 © LAT

Red Bull's challenges throughout 2010 certainly helped make the season for the fans - because as rival teams loved to point out time and again, had the team delivered its qualifying form in the race then the world championship would have been done and dusted by the Belgian Grand Prix.

But despite loving almost all I saw throughout the campaign, and the happy reflections that we will all have over the winter months as the excitement and drama soaks in, I am convinced that 2010 is not going to go down as the best ever. My reason? Simply that there is so much untapped potential in F1 on both the team and driver front that I am convinced the future is going to be even brighter than the campaign we have just witnessed.

This was a year pretty much dictated on the technical front by the F-duct and blown diffuser - two design concepts that became the focus of huge resources within the teams throughout the campaign, and the formbook was pretty much laid down by how effectively they had got their designs working.

For next year, with rules that are actually quite stable despite some major technical changes - including the banning of double diffusers and F-ducts - there is a good chance that the relative competitiveness of the teams will be far closer than this year.

And while some may fear that Red Bull Racing will be an even more formidable force after taking on board the lessons of 2010, there appears to be no reason why McLaren and Ferrari cannot equally move forward from the errors they made this season. And then do not forget the might of Ross Brawn - whose team wrote off much of this year to focus on its new car. Remember what happened the last time he did that?

So with the teams all likely to get closer, the driver equation is equally going to move forward. Sebastian Vettel will be a more mature and mellower man next year, and the mistakes that proved so costly at times this year should be ironed out as he goes for it again against his team-mate Mark Webber.

That prospect will result in the likes of a wiser Lewis Hamilton, a more comfortable Jenson Button, a fired-up Fernando Alonso, and a determined Felipe Massa all doing their bit to close the German and Australian out of it.

F-ducts are banned from the beginning of 2011 © Sutton

And if Brawn does his job at Mercedes GP, then could Michael Schumacher - whose form at the end of the season showed significant progress - make the return to the front alongside Nico Rosberg? And don't rule out Renault and Robert Kubica.

We have never really never had it this good. But better than that, is the fact that there is little reason to believe that the good times are not going to roll. Instead there is evidence to point to the current driver line-up going for a few more years yet - and in doing so, get better.

And five to ten years down the road, we have the prospect of men in their true early-30s peaking, like Hamilton, Vettel, Kubica, and Rosberg.

That is still a little way away yet. Before then, it's now just 16 weeks until the Bahrain Grand Prix. I cannot wait. It could be the best season ever...