Level of interest/boringness of past seasons

[Schummy]

The general idea is this season is not going to be exactly a classic one, at least regarding the uncertainty of who is going to get the title and win races (hint: his name is not Sebastian).

So, always ready to increase the boredom about F1, I had thought in putting more numbers about it. Number, numbers, who doesn't love it?!

IM(NotSo)HO, a good indicator of the predictability in a season is the percentage of races won by the most winning driver (not always the winner of the title). Usually a season with more than half of the races won by one driver is a not very interesting season (the caveat is the word "usually").

Between MotoGP races I have time to spare, so I have calculated such a ratio for the last 50 seasons. Yes... it is right 50 seasons! That put in perspective the sad life I live.

I pretend to put here the graph showing the results. I say "pretend" because I hope it works well following the right format for adding images. Higher values imply "usually" more boring seasons... lower values mean... well, you get the idea.

Most 70s and most of 80s were great regarding unpredictability, with lost of winners in a season. But 90s, with the episodes of domination by McLaren and Williams, and beginnings of 00s, with the Ferrari-Schummy(yep!) steamroller were rather dreadful. I remember getting desperate with those Williams...


Then there was that unexpected transition period Alonso-Kimi-HamiltonI-Button, even the first Vettel title, without Titanics and Bismarcks supercars, were very interesting to follow.


But happiness is never long in this planet and the Big Money Lords came back again, first with Red Dull (sorry for the harmless joke) and then with TotoBenz. With them F1 again was so unpredictable as a summer in the Sahara desert. But of course they are not guilty, they have done a great job. Sadly, the nature of things is the great work of engineers is the downside for epic racing.


It is interesting to note that actually, the 4-year Red Bull period was not as bad as I could remember. The first year was an incomplete domination, actually interesting, and the third year was impressive, with 8 winners and Alonso, Hamilton and others doing their share of great races.


Counting as "bad" years whose with a percentage greater than 50%, 70s only gets one, 80 only gets "a half", 90s has 2 bad and 3 halves (let's say 3.5 bad years), 00s has 4 and 10s has 6 bad years!


Yes, we are (were) in the worst decade of F1 regarding uncertainty. The solution is easy: ban for one year the winning team. Or perhaps lock them in an American privately-owned jail.