In the likely event of Lewis Hamilton winning the 2015 title, I have to admit surprise in learning that this will represent the first back-to-back championships for a British driver. What's thrown me even further is the claim that no one has even come close, Sir Jackie Stewart being cited as the best example when he finished 16 points behind Emerson Fittipaldi in 1972.
Hang on! That can't be right. I remember reading about Brits fighting among each other (never mind any 'foreign chaps') for the title back in the day when Bernie's bank balance was a mere six figures. Then it struck me where these observations have gone wrong.
Each British champion - Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton - has been viewed in context of the following season. But what about the year before? That tells a very different story.
Jim Clark, for instance, won his first championship in 1963 and, as the statistics appear to show, he didn't figure in 1964. (We'll come back to this later.) But, in 1962, there was a thrilling fight with Graham Hill that stretched all the way to the final round in South Africa. Clark was the favourite, and proved it by taking pole at East London and leading more than half of the 82 laps until a bolt dropped out and released oil from the Climax V8 in the back of his Lotus. Hill's BRM emerged through the smoke screen to win the championship.
Clark would have been excused for having a complex about engine oil when, returning to 1964, he was on the point of taking the title for a second time when his engine seized on the very last lap in Mexico City. Had Clark pulled that off (coupled with the South African near-miss), Hamilton would be looking at matching four in a row (Clark having won the championship in 1965).
Sir Jackie Stewart claimed his first title in 1969 and, as a previous column relates, counted himself lucky to win a single race the following year after being saddled with the March 701. But if you step back to the end of 1968, the Scot was in the mix as he joined Hill and Denny Hulme in Mexico City in a three-way fight for the crown.
Championship statistics show that Stewart and his Matra-Ford (run by Ken Tyrrell) went on to finish 12 points behind Hill, but that does not begin to describe the drama. Hill led by three points going into the final round (Hulme, the outsider, would not come into the reckoning on race day), which meant Hill could finish first or second and still take his second championship.
Looking back, it's remarkable to think that 1968 was the Tyrrell team's first full season of F1 racing - and here they were, in with a shout of the championship. With nothing to lose, Stewart simply had to win this race. He and Hill played an intriguing game of cat and mouse as they took turns at the front (it's called overtaking, by the way) but then, just after half distance, Stewart began to slow.
The Matra was unique in not using bag tanks, the aerospace company choosing to store the fuel inside the actual chassis sides, which were coated internally with a rubber solution during the car's construction (hard to believe by today's standards). This had worked perfectly all year but, in Mexico, tiny balls of rubber had managed to get into the fuel system and effectively bring the car to a halt.
A rubber problem of a very different kind played a major part in denying another British double -- for Hamilton himself. It's easy to forget that Lewis lost the championship by just one point in 2007, his debut season marred by the mounting tension with Fernando Alonso within McLaren and that excruciating moment in China when Hamilton stayed out too long, his knackered tyres helping him into the gravel trap at the pit entrance.
'Ifs' and 'Buts'. We could argue all day about possible different outcomes to the championship. But there can be no denying that the British double came much closer than some might have us believe.