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The 2023 F1 championship is looking at a very interesting phenomenon where Max Verstappen alone has got more points than the team that is second in the standings. The driver has been so dominant and consistent that even the second-best team cannot accumulate enough points with two drivers to surpass his tally.
Now this might seem like a novelty but that is certainly not the case. This is not a rare occurrence in F1 and as a matter of fact, this has happened quite often in the last two decades.
In this feature, we will take a look at the last five such instances where the driver's champion would have alone won the constructors' championship.
#1 2020 F1 championship
There have been a few that claim Mercedes' dominance was not as bad as Red Bull's dominance right now. We're not here to make a claim either way but the first entry on the list is from the last year of the team's dominance.
The 2020 F1 season was marred by Covid and we should ideally be thankful we even had a season of racing in those conditions. Racing was certainly what we did have that season and it was the last time we saw Mercedes dominate the field for an entire season.
Arguably one of the biggest testaments of the dominance was the fact that Lewis Hamilton missed a race that season and was still able to win the title with 347 points in the bag. What's even more interesting to see was the fact that Lewis alone outscored Red Bull, the team that finished second in the championship with 319 points to its name.
#2 2013 F1 championship
A season where Sebastian Vettel took dominance to a whole other level was 2013. Coming off an impressive title defense in 2012, Vettel was in his element in 2013. After staying consistent and picking off points wherever he could, the German was already leading the championship before the much-needed tire change was implemented, and that took his title campaign to another level. Vettel reeled off nine consecutive wins and buried his opposition into submission.
At the end of the season, he had a tally of 397 points which was 37 more than what runner-up Mercedes was able to accumulate in 2013.
#3 2007 F1 Championship
The 2007 F1 championship is more of a freak case than a demonstration of how dominant Ferrari was that season. Especially since a little jog down memory lane will help us remember that Kimi Raikkonen won the title from Lewis Hamilton in the last race of the season by just one point.
There is however a technicality here that meant Kimi's tally of 110 points was more than the team that finished second in the championship. That technicality was McLaren's disqualification from the 2007 F1 championship as part of the spy gate scandal.
As a result, BMW Sauber was the team that finished second in the championship and Raikkonen's 110 points would have been enough for him to beat BMW which had 101 points to its name.
#4 2004 F1 championship
Well, how can we compile a list of dominance in Formula 1 and ignore the seemingly invincible Ferrari era of the early 2000s. The peak of the Italian brand's dominance seemingly did come in 2004 when team leader Michael Schumacher raked up 13 wins and 148 points in the season.
The dominance was such that the second-placed BAR Honda could not get close to the German's points tally for the season. BAR scored just 119 points that season as Ferrari set new standards of dominance in F1.
#5 2002 F1 Championship
2002 was the first year when the world for the first time got to see what Ferrari's dominance looks like. Michael Schumacher dominated the entire season and by the time the season was over, the opposition was buried into submitting. This was a season where the grid had no worthy adversary for the German.
Mika Hakkinen had just retired and there was no one else who could hold a candle in front of him. At the end of it all, Michael Schumacher ended the season with a tally of 144 points while the second-best team on the grid, Williams had a tally of just 94 points.
