Favourite F1 Season?

[PolePosition_1]

Its the off-season (nearly over thank god), so just thought I'd create a topic we can all discuss.

What has been your favourite F1 season you've watched?

For me its hard to say, I look back very fondly to 1996,97 and 98, as a Damon Hill fan, these were important seasons and had great aspects to them, majority without doubt in 1996 and second half of 1998.

Though I'd probably say my favourite season was 2003, the 3 way battle with JPM, Schumi and Kimi.

But I have to pick 1996 as my favourite season I've watched.

Whats yours and why?

[harvick#1]

I'd say last year. cause we finally say a cars win outside of Ferrari and Mclaren. and having the championship come down to the final corner, it was quite spectacular to watch.

still loved watching Seb win at Monza, truely an awesome moment in F1 history

[HenryM]

2008.

[keysersoze]

From a standpoint of the quality of the broadcast, to the (relative) parity, to the surprises (Alonso and Vettel), it's hard to beat last year. The year before was compelling as well.

From a selfish standpoint, I'd say 1991, since my all-time favorite driver (Riccardo Patrese) had his best year.

[jens]

Have been watching F1 as a die-hard fan since 1998.

While 2003 was in a way the closest season I have been following 'live', I for some reason have a special respect for the year of 1999, which I could well nominate as my favourite. More faraway days, more nostalgia. :p : Top2 teams hit trouble on multiple occasions, which opened opportunities for several multiple underdog private teams to shine with great race results or - in Jordan's case - even with a remote championship challenge. Will never forget that year. :p :

[Tazio]

2000 was a fun season :)

http://pro.corbis.com/search/Enlargement.aspx?CID=isg&mediauid=%7B794A8016-9B0A-49F7-BA12-D64F8D35F212%7D

[Sonic]

1993. Senna pulling off 5 victories in a piece of junk McLaren. South Africa sticks in my mind as a wheel to wheel race

[Nikki Katz]

I've only been watching since 1997, but it would be a very close call between 1999 and 2008. I think I'd still go 1999 for nostalgia reasons, but if I watched them back to back now I'm not so sure.

[K-Pu]

Last year was good, but 2003 was better.

And it was my first "full season" in F1. I had been watching it sporadically since 1994, but in 2003 I started to follow Alonso´s career although I remember the good moments with Minardi... 2003 Was the best season, I think. My first full season, a close championship and some memorable races like Brazil

[wedge]

1993 - what Sonic said

1995 - I was and has since been a complete sucker for Schumi's attempts at redemption

Apart from 2001 & 2002, this decade has been absolute class. Even 2004 was great in terms of race for best of the rest.

[V12]

1991 - First season watching
1992 - First full season watching (plus Mansell's championship)
1993 - Can't put a finger on it, was just a fun season :)
1996 - Hill's championship

In recent times....hmm not many, 2004 was OK I guess...

[ShiftingGears]

As far as on-track battles are concerned, 2008. I have been watching since 2006, and the way that all the championship battles unfolded was fascinating even though there were many times where the racing itself was uninteresting.

Although I think the most interesting championship battle was 2006, simply because of a brilliant and solid season from both championship contending drivers.

[Ranger]

2009. ;) (I hope...)

[555-04Q2]

1989, 1991, 1993, 2007, 2008. All great years for me. 2007 and 2008 deserve special mention because of the close finishes :up:

[ioan]

1961

[Big Ben]

1996 was the first.
1998, 1999, 2007 were MY best.
2008 was probably the most interesting but I didn't care much for either of the contenders so I wasn't that interested in the outcome of the championship.

[F1boat]

1999 - terrific and dramatic year. 2003 was also amazing. But I like every F1 season, the sport is really fun :)

[Garry Walker]

2002 and 2004 :D

[SilverArrows]

1996 - Villeneuve making an instant impact, Damon finally becomes champ, Monaco, Schumi demolishing the field in wet Barcelona.
1997 - Villeneuve/Schumi rivalry, Japan quali and the title showdown in Jerez ( :o )
1998 - Hakkinen wins his first championship, Schumi winning the British GP in the pits :o :laugh: , that awful pile-up at Spa
2000 - Hakkinen makes a blistering start to the season and then Schumi fights back to make it a real fight, THAT move in Spa ;) , Japan (somehow I'll always remember that race)
2003 - Alonso finishes 2nd in Barcelona and wins his first race in Hungary, laps Schumi, 3 way title fight, Kimi and Fernando show they will be future world champions, unpredictable races.
2005 - Alonso wins his first championship :worship:, last 12 laps of the San Marino GP, Japan, US GP fiasco :o , refreshing change to see Ferrari out of the championship running for the first time since 1996.
2006 - Schumi fight back after an astonishing start by Alonso, dodgy FIA decisions (mass damper banned under the wrong clause, Alonso's Monza penalty), Kimi relaxing on his yacht after blowing up in Monaco!, Schumi winning 8th French GP
2007 - Hamilton being the first rookie to challenge for the title since Villeneuve in 1996, title going down to the wire with a 3-way fight. Would've been a brilliant season if it weren't so controversial.

[555-04Q2]

1961

How old are you mate :p :

[Dave B]

My favourite season is always the next one!

[ioan]

How old are you mate :p :

Good question! Is it OK if I answer when I remember my birth date? :)

[555-04Q2]

Good question! Is it OK if I answer when I remember my birth date? :)

If you cant remember your birth date, then you're old :p :

[Mifune]

1993. Senna pulling off 5 victories in a piece of junk McLaren. South Africa sticks in my mind as a wheel to wheel race


yup me too
plus 1982 for the best & worst reasons

[anthonyvop]

1976
Epic battle between Lauda and Hunt
Lauda's horrendous accident
7 different winners
Tyrrell 6 wheeler introduced and wins in Sweden
Lauda makes a miraculous return.
Ronnie Peterson winning in Italy
Watson wins in Austria
The Japanese GP in monsoon conditions. Mario Wins, Lauda refuses to go on. Hunt wins by 1 point

[blito]

1967 - purely becuase of playing Grand Prix Legends online for so many years :)

in living memory i`d say 1986 was my favourite - plenty of drama, some great racves and the cars just looked so right!

[Storm]

since only having seen F1 since 1993, (and skipped 94) for me the best seasons for different reasons would be...

1997, 2003

[Dzeidzei]

1989, 1991, 1993, 2007, 2008. All great years for me. 2007 and 2008 deserve special mention because of the close finishes :up:

I started watching regularly when Mika joined Lotus, but the last 2 years have been great. As the wdc gets decided on smaller and smaller margins, I wonder how will this year´s campaign end. Hamilton´s KERS breaks down in the last corner and Kimi overtakes just before the finish line to take the title?

Or the other way around?

Anyway, the closer the better.

[markabilly]

1967, without question, the last of really great racing, involving true masters of the art, in cars designed to let the driver show his stuff (no wings, so the faster corners were truly a question of feel for the car at high speed), and when drivers were still gentlemen who raced because they loved to drive and to win, not because they got all sorts of sponsor money...and the other usual crap....as even Mario said, became more like go karts with wings and bigger engines

[UltimateDanGTR]

gotta be 1982. 11 different winning drivers? in 16 races, enough said. shame I wasnt there to see it....

[emporer_k]

2008 was my faveourite with 2003 close behind.

[ChrisS]

gotta be 1982. 11 different winning drivers? in 16 races, enough said. shame I wasnt there to see it....

There are also plenty of reasons to make 1982 a very bad season

Driver death and injuries, politics, cheating etc...

From 1991 that I've been following F1, 96 and 97 are my 2 favourites

[PolePosition_1]

Wow, Markability been banned - what for? Does anyone know?

[gm99]

1997 - the title went down to the wire, emergence of young talents (Fisi leading in Germany, Trulli in Austria, Wurz finishing 3rd in Silverstone, Ralf Schumacher finishing on the podium) vs. last stand of the old guard (Berger winning in Hockenheim, Hill almost doing so in Hungary, Alesi finishing on the podium regularly), the return of the "silver arrows" (DC winning in Melbourne, Häkkinen's first victory at Jerez).
Also, the last season that F1 cars looked like true racing cars (though that is best discussed elsewhere).

[DexDexter]

1982, 2007, 2008. I don't remember that much about 82, except the final race in Las Vegas which was shown live on Finnish television because Keijo Rosberg had a chance to win the title. At that time people here didn't understand F1 and Keke was critisised for not finishing races because of technical problems! He was even given a nickname "keskeyttäjä-Keke", which would be something like "Keke who retires" in English. It was very pleasing to see Keke win the title after all the critisism.

[ClarkFan]

1961

Hill's winning was great, but Von Trips' accident at Monza takes much of the beauty out of that year.

I'd vote for 1976. Lauda's accident was terrible, but he came back to nearly win, with Hunt nipping the championship on the last lap in Japan.

ClarkFan

P.S. I loved 1963 and 1965 but those years were pretty one-sided. Bet you didn't find 2002 and 2004 boring.

[F1boat]

After the testing, I hope that this one will become my favorite :)

[philipbain]

Been an avid F1 fan since 1989 (the 20th anniversary of me being an F1 fan is coming up - April 23rd in fact!!) so i'll only pick from the 20 seasons I have watched "live" so to speak. 1999 & 2000 were both excellent seasons where title was fought out in extremely tight contest with the championship wide open in the final round in both years.

Having said that my nod goes to 2005, full of drama, excitment, unpredictability and to be honest it was a great big breath of fresh air after 5 years of monotonous schumi dominance threatened to drive away a big chunk of the audience. The '05 Ferrari was a turkey (interestingly a clean sheet Aldo Costa design - as is the '08 Ferrari, for '06-'08 they went back to evolving the Rory Byrne designs that served them so well from '99 - '04) and the Bridgestone tyre was never on a par with the Michelin. The only Ferrari win was the 6 car joke race at Indy, this was not infact caused by any fault with the Michelin tyres, than ran superbly everywhere else, but the fact that after re-surfacing the track the IRL cars were unable to take the corners flat out so rather than making the IRL teams run a little more wing they decided to diamond grind the track surface, giving the surface a finish similar to very cause sandpaper, making it probably the most abrasive racing surface to be found anywhere, indeed, F1 is not the only series to suffer from Indy's abrasive surface, it turned last season Brickyard 400 NASCAR race into a farce where NASCAR threw out a yellow flag every 15 laps for driver to change tyres for fear of a very messy high speed tyre failure, which happened several times despite the yellows. Anyway, i've digressed, back to 2005. Simply put, McLaren had the faster car for the balance of the season but the Alonso / Renault combo had racked up early season wins whilst McLaren were still sorting thier car out, fantastic reliability and a neat car winning the championship for the former. Also it was the last year of the by then brutally powerful V10s, whether we will experence this sort of power again in the sport remains to be seen, but I always saw the switch to V8s as a step backwards and one that was unnessacerily expensive which cut power and contributed to the the deficit in overtaking that we have experienced over the past 3 seasons.

[UltimateDanGTR]

There are also plenty of reasons to make 1982 a very bad season

Driver death and injuries, politics, cheating etc...

From 1991 that I've been following F1, 96 and 97 are my 2 favourites

I know, it was one of the most eventful seasons ever, good and bad. if you could get past the politics, cheating and deaths, then the actual racing was very good, and it was edge of your seat stuff to the last race. It was actually a bit like 2007, just 2007 had no deaths.

but there was something amazing about the 1982 season, so many highs, and so many lows. it was the most interesting lets put it that way.

1999 was also good come to think of it, ah the good days of Jordan (when they were competitive) and stewart. nurburgring, magny cours, irvine, hakkinen, fretzen, silverstone ah the memories........ :)

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Has to be either 1976, 1979, 1983, 1986 and 1999. I can't say 1982 because of not only the accidents but the politics that plagued those times. Anything past 2000 is generally a bit meh for me.

[cynisca]

My favourite F1 season was 2008, especially the last race.

My worst F1 season was 2002. Very very boring to be honest.