The Factors
Our analysis of the Best Season in F1 History used the following eight factors to assess season quality:
- Highest number of winning drivers in a season
- Highest number of drivers to lead the World Drivers Championship during a season
- Most changes in championship leader during a season
- Highest number of marques to win a race in a season
- Smallest average delta in top 10 qualifying times
- Smallest average delta in race time for top 3
- Highest number of drivers to get a podium in a season
- Highest number of drivers who could have won the Championship in the last race (Double Points!!! – see our notes on the scoring system)
For a detailed explanation of the individual factors and a discussion of the associated analysis please click on the factor links above.
Clearly we place a high degree of importance on the level of overall competitiveness in a season. No doubt some will feel we’ve ignored some important aspects of season quality. One notable omission is an analysis of overtakes during a season. In the end we decided not to include overtake analysis as there was insufficient data on the early years and our analysis suggested they wouldn’t impact the overall results significantly. For those interested in overtakes, there has been some interesting discussion on this topic recently and F1 Bytes will put overtakes under the microscope in a future post.