When looking back at the 2008 Formula One season, it’s hard to know where to start. Often clichés and superlatives are overused in sport, but with this season you really do feel that they could be accurately applied.
It was an incredible season, one of the best the sport has ever seen, if not the best.
Let’s start by looking at the facts. Statistically, it was a highly unpredictable and competitive season, the best since 2003 with five different constructors winning a Grand Prix and seven different drivers winning races.
The sport also saw its first ever night race, widely hailed as a great success.
Throughout the season, fans were also treated to incredible drama and tension, unpredictability, controversy, bizarre incidents, rapidly changing and contrasting fortunes for both the drivers and teams as the season progressed.
And then, to top it all off, there were those amazing, jaw dropping, last few rain-soaked laps of the season finale at Interlagos. That was one of the most incredible finishes to an event I have ever seen, not just in Formula One, but in any sport.
This season was simply electric and personally it was my favourite since I started watching Formula One in the early '90s. It was even more enjoyable than the fantastic seasons of 1997 and 2003.
Whilst it can be correctly said that the standard of driving was not great this year, as many drivers, even Hamilton and Massa, had error-strewn seasons, in terms of entertainment value, it was one of the great seasons.
This fantastic season was part of what I think is fast becoming a vintage era of Formula One. 2007 was a good season, with those three superb and incident-filled races at the end of the season and with its nail biting, tense finale in Interlagos, where three drivers were challenging for the title.
2006 also had a healthy dose of drama, controversy and contrasting fortunes. And in 2005, although not a particularly great year, tarnished by the Indianapolis fiasco, the season finished at Suzuka with arguably the best race for many a year, a race that had two of the great passing moves of the modern era.
When you look back at the last few seasons, Formula One has just been getting better and better.
What a pleasure it has been to follow the sport over these past few seasons, especially if you watched the sport in the early part of this decade.
Think back to the 2001, 2002 and 2004 seasons. In these three seasons, Formula One was mainly monotonous and predictable. It was often known who would win the races, and especially in 2002 and 2004, you could guess after the first race who would be driver's and constructor's champions, barring some freakish major disaster.
The same driver won the Championship for five seasons in a row, thus removing the usual unpredictable nature of the sport.
These three seasons were everything the 2008 season wasn’t. They were predictable, they lacked tension and drama, there were little evidence of changing and contrasting fortunes as the season progressed and they lacked down to the wire and championship climaxes.
Sadly, as viewing figures and race attendances confirmed, many people became disillusioned with Formula One. For those of us who endured these dull seasons, it makes this latest season, indeed this latest period of the past few seasons all the sweeter.
The sport we love was in the doldrums. Now it’s back to its unpredictable, tension-filled, crazy, raucous best.
Hopefully with the new rules for 2009 which should help promote closer racing and overtaking, we have good reason to expect more of the same in 2009.
Because if this latest era of Formula One continues and we get another season similar to 2008, then we will be in for another massive treat.
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