Best ever F1 year? Opinions.

[Apocalypse2112]

What was the best ever F1 season?

Unfortunately I don't remember 1985 but that year SEVEN (yes seven) past or future World Champions took part in the races.

Niki Lauda
Alain Prost
Keke Rosberg
Ayrton Senna
Alan Jones
Nelson Piquet
Nigel Mansell

How about 1991?

Past of future champions:

Mika Hakkinen
Michael Schumacher
Ayrton Senna
Nelson Piquet
Nigel Mansell
Alain Prost

and spectacular Jean Alesi who didn't win much but was so exciting to watch. (Biased as he was one of my personal favorites).

Year 2012 was pretty remarkable too. There were six World Champions. And 7 consecutive races won by a different driver.

Kimi Raikkonen
Lewis Hamilton
Fernando Alonso
Sebastian Vettel
Michael Schumacher
Jenson Button

Did some other year surpass these in overall class and excitement? Well 1986 was the craziest turbo year but Lauda wasn't around anymore. Only six champions that year plus top drivers like Berger, Alboreto, De Angelis, Patrese

Opinions?

 

[Jimlaad43]

I have watched F1 since 2000 intermittently as I was a child, but properly got invested in 2006 and have followed properly since.

The best seasons in that time were:
2006 (Alonso Vs Schumacher was incredible)
2007 (McLaren Vs Ferrari on a knifedge)
2008 (Hamilton Vs Ferrari and so many underdog performances and utterly mad races)
2010 (3 teams all battling for the title)
2012 (Peak Pirelli meant the podium was always a dice roll)
2016 (Hamilton Vs Rosberg, plus the three tyre compound rule really spiced things up)
2021 (We don't talk about the final race, as the controversy which both title contenders were blameless for spoiled what had been one of the fiercest championships ever)

 

[Apocalypse2112]

1998 Hakkinen vs. Schumacher and then prime Kimi Raikkonen vs Schumacher (I think 2003) were also pretty good years.

 

[Antony Snook]

I love F1 in 2023. Yes people moan about how uncompetative it is ans so on. But that happens every year. If you like the driver leading or doing well it's the best season ever. If you're driver is struggling like Hamillton then you're down because you are on the back foot. In 10 or 20 years from now F1 fans will call this the best season ever. Our brains always consider stuff from the past either really really good or just plain terrible. I hear people say i am done with F1 but they still come back next season. So there must be something keeping them hooked.

 

[Apocalypse2112]

Yeah. There is a lot of people who enjoy the new F1. That's great.

I'm just not that excited anymore. First it was Mercedes now Red Bull. Only 1 car and 1 driver so dominant. It's not the "old vs new" thing though.

When Hakkinen quit 2001, Schumacher didn't have any real challengers as McLaren's were so unreliable and it was total Ferrari dominance. That was just as boring. Then Alonso and Kimi got their stuff together and it was exciting again.

My point was that in those some older seasons you had plenty of capable drivers and teams who were able to win races. Also the reliability issue was much bigger back then. It brought some extra excitement too.

And when McLaren was totally dominant in the 80's at least Senna and Prost were equal in the same team. And sometimes Mansell and Piquet managed to squeeze a win, even those days.

Last weekend at COTA looked promising for Norris but then it was the same old in the end. Not Verstappen's fault as he drives superbly, but it's hard to watch that.

 

[jgf]

Every season offers something, but I tend to prefer F1 thirty or more years ago than recently. There was more variation in cars and engines, there was more variety in tracks, it was rare for one team to be as dominant as today, many championships were not determined til the end of the season, and there was less of the elitism so associated with the series now.


Consider the 1978 season. The year Lotus stunned the F1 community with its innovative ground effects model 79 and sent the other teams scrambling to develop their own versions in a futile attempt to remain competitive while Mario Andretti "drove off into the distance". Brabham's response was the notorious "fan car", so effective it was banned after only one race. The year Renault, amidst much derision, fielded a tiny 1.5L turbo V6; it screamed like a banshee, produced amazing amounts of power from such a meager displacement, and exploded mid-race with monotonous regularity. The year Arrows scored their first GP points (despite ongoing litigation with the Shadow team over "stolen" chassis designs ...Shadow won, and Arrows went on to produce one of the ugliest F1 cars ever to compete), the year Williams first appeared as an eponymous team, and the year the colorful Hesketh team folded. Two unknowns made their first races in 1978 - Nelson Piquet and Rene Arnoux - and rising star Ronnie Peterson lost his life after a multi-car crash on the first lap of the Italian GP. The year Gunnar Nilsson, slated to drive for Arrows, was unable to participate due to ill health, finally losing his battle with cancer twelve days after the Canadian GP; he was only 29.
All in all, 1978 set the stage for the "turbo years" of the eighties, when diminutive, high-revving, turbocharged engines of nearly 1000hp and massive ground effects produced harsh rides and alarming lap times - before both were banned by the FIA, and F1 returned to flat bottoms and normally aspirated engines.

 

[Apocalypse2112]

Yes I've been watching those 70's and early 80's races too. Very interesting. Andretti was hell of a driver. Also Fittipaldi is very underrated. That man won almost everything in motor racing. Was also Senna's idol.

Renault's Turbo was also groundbreaking in F1. At first the other teams didn't want turbos and preferred Cosworths but when they saw Jabouille and later Arnoux taking poles with it, other teams followed.

Brabham and Renault were super fast in the early 80's but the reliability was poor. Williams got turbo only in 1983 (I think), among the last of the top teams. It was relatively fast but very unreliable 83-85.

For me personally the 1986 is the pinnacle. That might be the craziest year of them all. Gerhard Berger reported wheel spin on his Benetton-BMW at 345 km/h. Nobody really knows how much power those cars had but some estimations say 1450 hp.

I've seen the car frames. Those guys definitely had some serious balls. I don't know how they fit into that small cockpit.

 

[Durge Driven]

That would be the year that inconsiderate yobbos stop posting Race Spoilers in the Latest News.

Took us years to get admin to stop doing it ffs.

 

[jgf]

......
I've seen the car frames. Those guys definitely had some serious balls. I don't know how they fit into that small cockpit.

While that is spartan compared to todays cockpits, it is quite refined compared to '78. This is the '78 Arrows -

 

[Apocalypse2112]

What a great video of the 1985 season!

 

[BillyBobSenna]

I enjoyed the 1986 season with Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, and Nelson Piquet all winning and fighting every race.

 

[Apocalypse2112]

I think 1986 was my favorite too. The last race at Adelaide was pretty spectacular.

I was just a kid back then but it really made a huge impact on me. Mansell's tire explosion, etc.