When Niki Lauda beat team-mate Alain Prost to the F1 title by half a point
Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are both striving to win the world drivers’ championship on Sunday but their contest is unlikely to be as close as the battle fought by McLaren racers Niki Lauda and Alain Prost in the 1984 season
Half a point. Just half a point. Sixteen races taking in four continents over seven months of intensive competition and at the end of it just half a point separating the two protagonists. The 1984 Formula One World Championship season involved a battle between two legendary drivers that went right down to the wire, the pair finally separated by the tiniest of winning margins. To the winner the spoils, and one last championship to crown his career that was inevitably drawing to an end. To the runner-up, more heartbreak, as for the third year in a row he was denied the title and the chance to be the first Frenchman to win the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship.
It was also a season that saw the emergence of another star who would feature prominently in the years to come and leave an indelible mark on the sport. A man who would join battle with his rivals in an era of the sport in which we were truly spoilt for driving talent and drama. It turned out that 1984 was not quite as bad as George Orwell had predicted.
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