One of the most fun things about digging in to old races is the odd juxtapositions and parallels that come up, sometimes years or decades apart. So I wanted to compile a list of some of my favorites! Please enjoy this list of 5 different race pairs with different sorts of parallels.
2002 Austrian Grand Prix & 2002 United States Grand Prix
I learned about Austria 2002 fairly early on as an F1 fan -- the notorious over-the-line drivers swap that led to team orders being banned in Formula 1 for a decade. What I didn't know about was the bizarre accidental inverse of this which happened several races later that same season; at the US Grand Prix, Schumacher attempted to execute a photo finish, but he accidentally gave Barrichello the win instead. It's bizarre, and it's glorious, and it's so much more fun because it happened the same season as Austria.
2003 Brazilian Grand Prix & 2025 Brazil Sprint Race
In wet conditions, the same turn takes out several cars in these two races 22 years apart. The gradual accumulation of the car graveyard in Brazil 2003 is honestly a little comical. I think one of the most interesting things about this juxtaposition is that it highlights potential problems with these older tracks: Interlagos had and continues to have incredibly poor drainage.
2005 San Marino Grand Prix & 2006 Turkish Grand Prix
These two races have thrilling wheel-to-wheel action in the final stages between Fernando Alonso and Michal Schumacher -- in 2005, it's for the win, and in 2006, it's fighting for P2 while Felipe Massa soars to his maiden victory up ahead of them. Both races left me looking at Alonso and saying that he was driving like a champion.
2007 European Grand Prix & 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix
Honestly the similarities are almost eerie with these races -- they start in the wet, and then enormous pile-ups result in red flags, after which the track is drying. The conditions and the chaos amongst the front runners lead to surprising race leaders (unless you already know about this race, I can almost guarantee you've never even heard of the driver who leads several laps in 2007, as it is quite literally his only race start in F1). I am such an emphatic fan of both of these races.
2010 Turkish Grand Prix & 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix
I couldn't make a list of race parallels and not include this one... What if Sebastian Vettel was attempting overtakes on 2 different teammates down the straight on 2 different tracks 9 years apart and both times he caused a race-ending collision? What if in one race his star is rising and in the other he is visibly entering the sunset of his career? It's delicious!
Plus some honorable mentions with smaller details I enjoy:
Silverstone 2003 & Baku 2017: The actual impetus for this list, but not interesting enough to justify including above; David Coulthard and Lewis Hamilton's headrests become dislodged mid-race and they have to pit to fix them. These are the only races I've ever seen this happen in, and I happened to watch them within a week of each other.
Australia 2006 & Spa 2019: Jenson Button and Lando Norris have mechanical failures just by the start line on the final laps of the race.
Monaco 2006 Qualifying & Spain 2025: Controversial moves from Michael Schumacher and Max Verstappen which many point to as specific instances in which they otherwise could have won that year's title.
It's multi21 day, so I must naturally use the occasion to draw more eyes to my favorite moment of the cooldown room, when Mark finally walks in and Seb, quite plaintively, says, "Mark." It never makes the clips people pass around, but to me, even this small attempt from Seb to clear the air is Everything.
I've written about this before, but it really illustrates, I think, that the actual implosion happening between them as teammates right here is that Mark has ignored team orders on other occasions and justified it with the argument that they deserve to race each other. Seb has historically agreed. Of course Mark deserves to have a go at him, because that's good, hard racing. Of course.
And even though things were getting so very tense between them in so many ways, and they were looking for more opportunities to one-up each other and get back at each other for perceived slights, I think it took Seb until "multi21, Seb," to realize that this part of their relationship was built on a double-standard. That's why he cited it afterward as the thing that made him lose all respect for Mark as a person. It's. Exquisite.
inspired by @darkisms asking for race recommendations, i've decided to jump in and do something i've been thinking of for a while now and put together a race watchlist!
as of this post, i've watched a vast majority of races since 2002 with a handful of gaps totaling about 70 races (missing some races from 2004, 2022, 2023, and 2024). my focus here was primarily on pulling out races that (1) had good on-track racing, and (2) had relatively consistent excitement throughout the grand prix.
i've broken down my top recommendations into lists of wet and dry weather races, bolding some of my particular favorites. below that, i also include some driver-specific recs for some of the guys i'm personally most invested in. these are primarily my favorites of their race wins, but there are also a few particularly impressive non-winning drives on the list.
i imagine i'll update this post as i continue to close up the gaps in my knowledge, but based on what i've watched thus far, i consider this list pretty complete.
not to make DTS about mark webber but there are cathedrals everywhere for me those with eyes to see
and in this case those cathedrals are that, after getting a bit more of a behind the scenes glimpse at how flavio handled both jack and franco last season, it makes so much more sense to me why mark would always deflect responsibility for his mistakes onto external factors, be it another driver or the car or the conditions or what have you.
because with a guy like flavio as your manager, clearly there is literally no room for error. to flavio there is such a thing as a faultless driver, and anything else is a waste of his time. which means that if something goes wrong for his drivers, there had better be a damn good reason they can point to for why it isn't their fault; otherwise the only possible explanation is that they don't deserve their seat.
i think this applies to how mark reportedly handled the 2025 season, too. because considering how emphatically mark believes in oscar and is living vicariously through him of course he looked around for other explanations for what happened to put the blame on anyone besides oscar. when you're starting from a place of believing that there's no room for error, you're taking as a given that some drivers can be perfect. and for many people who believe that – mark, yes, but also dare i say some oscar fans – the only real course of action is to seek out any evidence to justify that expectation of perfection in the person they support, even if it leads to an incredibly skewed perspective on what actually happened in a race or a season.
moot asked for my opinion on what instrument drivers would play in band/orchestra, and since I spent so long thinking about it, I'm actually posting my list. pls enjoy this incredibly unserious meta
current grid
lando: oboe (started on clarinet)
oscar: tenor sax (started on alto)
george: clarinet
kimi: cello
max: trumpet
isack: trombone
lewis: violin
charles: flute (he tells ppl he picked it to meet girls but he really likes it)
alex: bass clarinet (started on b-flat; george took it a little personally when he switched for reasons that are indiscernible to them both)
carlos: viola (sainz sr is a famous violinist and carlos had to do something similar but different)
liam: percussion
(arvid omitted since I don't know him yet)
fernando: trumpet
lance: alto sax
esteban: oboe
ollie: french horn
gabi: bassoon (started on clarinet)
hulk: cello
pierre: tuba (started on trombone)
franco: violin (partially because of lewis)
valtteri: percussion
checo: violin
retired drivers also under the cut
mark: trumpet
seb: trumpet
jenson: percussion
nico: flute
kimi: percussion
schumi: trumpet (which is why seb picked it)
rubens: clarinet
daniel: trumpet
grosjean: bass clarinet (I actually feel so strongly about this lmao)
☕️ hi, this is like... so late😅 but as one of the webbah experts I know. I am interested in your thoughts on whether or not Mark would be more competitive if he's at least 7-10 years younger (as to be closer in age with everyone, esp Seb)
He did debut late (25 or 26 I think) and I always saw him as someone who's very much also racing against time.
send me ☕️ + [topic] and i’ll tell you my opinion on it!
Hehe well first of all I love talking about my opinions at all times, especially where Mark Webber is concerned, so you are not late at all actually. 😁
I think age was one of a few things working against Mark, along with his height (I doubt I have to elaborate for a fellow fan of a certified tall boy 🫡) and some big changes to the cars and the regs that happened once he got into a competitive car—pretty sure I've talked about this elsewhere, but I def think he was hindered by the move away from refueling, and I will never miss an opportunity to rail against the Pirelli switch in 2011.
It's quite possible that age augmented the other issues; I wouldn't be surprised if he was naturally skinnier when he was younger, and it's pretty commonly accepted that drivers def lose some of their adaptability as they get older. Like Mark has talked about being an old-fashioned driver who was happier in the 2000s cars, but maybe if he were younger he could have transitioned better.
That said, Mark getting to F1 younger also implies that he'd probably have followed a more traditional pipeline, so there's immediately a question mark there for me of whether his performance would have been as strong. I suspect he really benefited from some experience outside of single-seaters.
One other thing I think is worth musing on here re: Mark's age is the Renault seat that almost was—Flavio wanted him in as Fernando's teammate in what ended up being a championship-winning car, 5 years before what ended up being Mark's only meaningful title fight. What would that fight have looked at when Mark was more in his prime? Of course, due to the Flavnando of it all I'm not sure Mark would have had a fair fight there, either, but it's another possible place where the age question might have been answered.
☕️ this is a question i always want to get more opinions on especially from people who actually watch races: from both a logical and illogical (i.e. your gut feeling) standpoint do you believe the lack of parity in WDCs is a consistent feature of f1 (discounting absolutely ancient eras like pre 80s ig) and how likely do you think might this continue into the future?
send me ☕️ + [topic] and i’ll tell you my opinion on it!
OH!! I got so excited about this question but also had to think about it for a while. I don't feel like I can pass a proper judgement on how title fights worked prior to the earliest season I've watched (which is currently 2002). That means I'm thinking about the following WDCs and their title fights: Schumacher, Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton, Button, Vettel, Rosberg, Verstappen, and Norris.
Because I think this is a conversation worth "showing my work," as it were, I first want to reel off the individual circumstances that I think made a difference for each of them, and then I'll talk about the implications for what I think we might see in the future.
In his Ferrari years, Schumacher benefited from being #1 driver of all time; this helped him even more than it could help a driver now because there were fewer regulations and conventions around things like practice time in the car. The lack of a cost cap in this era also meant that once Ferrari won they were in a better position to keep winning, and since Schumi was their guy, he would inevitably be the one winning titles for them.
Alonso was another driver who had the full backing of his team; in the middle of 2002, Flavio unceremoniously announced that he was booting Jenson Button from Renault so that he could give a seat to his special boy, and when they ended up with the best car on the grid in 2005, it wasn't really a contest who would fight for a championship with it. They may not have pulled the same level of favoritism that Ferrari did with Schumacher, but I've been struck when watching older races that there was much more of an understanding than there even is now that teams pick a #1 if there's a remotely close battle between multiple teams. And Fisi could compete with Alonso on individual weekends but not across a season. In the context of this convention, Alonso was the clear and justified choice but the Flavio favoritism is hanging over it for sure. I also will say I think Alonso's wins emerged partially out of McLaren's poor reliability and strategy, and Schumacher's diminishing consistency in 2006 in particular.
I genuinely couldn't care less about Raikkonen, but when I tell you it's frankly miraculous that guy didn't win more titles. He was a powerhouse at McLaren, but the reliability of that car was trash. His luck at Ferrari in 2008 was also bad enough that Ferrari had no choice but to prioritize Massa despite the fact that Raikkonen was arguably the more reliable and consistent choice. The 2007 WDC certainly illustrates that consistency; I think the critical flipside to McLaren letting Alonso and Hamilton race is that their car was SO dominant that they could not have been beaten if there weren't another driver so consistently up there with them. (This is a difference between 2007 and 2025.)
Hamilton went into 2008 with the team that had been the best last season, where he'd tied with his teammate but did beat him on countback. I think McLaren has proven many times since 2007 that letting their drivers race is integral to their ethos, but with Kovalainen that was not a problem. Meanwhile the Ferrari drivers were taking points off each other til Spa. I also think it's worth mentioning what Hamilton emphasized as a big difference between his 2007 and 2008 fights: he learned from his mistake of going for the win in China 2007 and losing it, and started thinking more practically about risk-taking.
Button is undeniably the odd man out in this group. He'd had a lot of buzz around him in his earlier seasons but never even got a podium in 2007 or 2008 because the BAR was so abysmal. I think the critical thing about his win is that it shows how much a regulation change can shake up the grid. But because Brawn couldn't keep up with development, Button's title also is a story of consistency to me, regardless of how much the narrative around it is that he choked. His problem is that Red Bull had firmly developed into the best car – they won half of the races from Silverstone onward – and Brawn's inability to keep up with development was a blow to his confidence that was worsened as he stopped feeling as comfortable in the car. He still won before the final race of the season.
Like Hamilton in 2008, Vettel came into 2010 with the car that had been the best at the end of the previous season. Red Bull ostensibly let their drivers race, but various incidents in 2010 illustrate well enough that Vettel had ultimate backing from team leadership; he had such a significant pace advantage in the team head to head that I think the team wanting to keep him in the fight was frankly justified. And then from 2011 to 2013 the car remained, overall, the best car; 2012 is complicated but this post is long enough without me getting into it. The tl;dr is that Alonso was doing things with a flagging Ferrari that I don't think any other driver could do, but an excellent driver can only overcome so much. Meanwhile, Webber couldn't compete with Vettel in the same machinery for a few reasons—like I said, Vettel had him on pace, but the evolution of F1 was also going away from Webber in a number of ways (the Pirellis my enemy) at a time when he was toward the end of his career, struggling with adaptability, and feeling increasingly demoralized by the power dynamic in the team.
Hamilton WDC 2.0—he was at by far the dominant team in a set of brand new regulations that suited his driving. I'll comment on the Rosberg battle in a second, but the longevity of Mercedes dominance here is critical and something that I don't believe we'll ever see again due to the cost cap and the advantage they had with their extra special engine modes. After 2016, Hamilton also benefited from having a teammate who couldn't match him across the season and from Ferrari and Red Bull not being able to present a meaningful challenge.
Okay here's the thing about Rosberg. Hamilton was better than him. It was close! But Hamilton always had the edge. 2016 illustrates that when drivers are meaningfully allowed to race, given the right circumstances and a little bit of luck, the underdog can win. But it's hard; there's a reason Rosberg only beat him 1 out of 4 seasons they were teammates.
In 2021, Verstappen benefited from having a strong rear gunner who could race up at the front but who Red Bull also was completely willing to put up as a sacrificial lamb depending on what they needed in any given race; he also benefited from Hamilton having long Covid. From 2022-2024 he had the Adrian Newey advantage and clear #1 status. I do think once Newey left Red Bull and they no longer had the person around who knew how the car worked, Verstappen was the one that made the difference and was able to put a very difficult to drive car into a championship-winning position when McLaren and Ferrari's performance began to surpass Red Bull's.
Norris won a title in the car that had won the constructor's the season before and that was also the best car overall last season as well—although I do not believe that McLaren was the "rocket ship" people act like it was, especially by the end of the season due to the fact that they fully stopped development when it was clear they were winning the WCC. Despite the narrative in the first half of the season, Norris's advantage proved to be his ability to be competitive even when he was uncomfortable with the car and with individual tracks; Baku was the only track where he finished below 4th place.
Across all of these victories, there are a few measurable trends that jump out to me:
Team dominance is the most critical feature of WDC wins, and teams are rarely dominant for just one season. Brawn is absolutely the exception to the rule here. If a driver wins with a dominant team, it doesn't make much sense for them to leave when they could stick around and try to win another. I don't believe that we'll see a team with the same level of dominance as the Schumacher Ferrari years or the Hamilton Mercedes years due to the cost cap, but 2022-2025 suggests to me that we'll still likely see teams able to sustain some level of dominance for a few seasons in a row, which of course implies multiple WDC chances for their drivers.
Most teams will pick a #1 driver in a title fight, and most teams will prioritize their WDC driver from the start of the season. The Hamilton v. Rosberg years are the exception, but they also reflect the fact that even between close teammates, there is one driver who generally has the edge not just across a season but across their time as teammates.
Consistency makes the difference in a close battle. Every points-paying position matters. Luck is also a non-zero factor in the consistency conversation but is certainly not everything; Hamilton in 2016 and Norris in 2025 had some comparable moments of terrible luck, but one of them won and one of them didn't.
There's also 2 more vibes-based trends which come up at least semi-frequently in the discourse and which I do believe have some impact, although it's difficult to say how much.
The mentality buff the drivers get from winning one championship. "I know I can do it because I've already done it."
"The best drivers end up in the best cars." For some arbitrary reason, this talking point has gone away since the McLaren became the best car. To this point, the thing I find quite notable looking at the list of WDCs is that so many of these drivers didn't just jump into a championship-winning car but worked in their teams to build the cars they won their championships in, which leads me to believe that development skills are one indicator of strong, well-rounded drivers with championship potential. That said, this is the engineering sport and drivers are not the ones designing the cars, so a driver who's weaker on development like Alonso can still win if the team gets the car right because he has so many other things going for him as a driver.
All of that adds up to a sport where multi-WDCs are likely, but they are not inevitable. I suspect the structures that created 7-time world champions are gone for good. But prioritizing one driver over the other is so integral to the sport. I'm personally of the belief that the two #1 drivers approach at McLaren currently seems to be working, but I also think they've caught lightning in a bottle with Piastri and Norris, and most teams wouldn't be able to mimic their approach. So the #1/#2 driver dynamic is never going away, and in title fights, that naturally increases the likelihood of one driver at a dominant team getting all of the titles while the #2 driver gets nothing.
There will also always be the fact that the individual driver can make the difference—that's where something like consistency matters, or raw pace. In a particularly close fight, it might be the thing that makes someone a multi-WDC. I think that's a key part in all of Alonso's title fights, as far as winning in 2005 and 2006 and keeping him competitive against at McLaren and Ferrari across full seasons even though he did end up losing. I think we very well could see other drivers get multiple titles through these sorts of close calls – if Norris wins again, this will quite likely be why, and last season also made me a Russell WDC truther because he was the most consistent out of anyone – but drivers also need the car and the team backing to get up there in the first place.
