Greatest Driver Discussions: Food for Thought

But if one is forced to pick a yardstick for modern-day F1 drivers after the 2012 season, it would be hard to look beyond Alonso after the year he has just had.

In a demonstrably slower car, the Spaniard took the title to the final race of the season and - even allowing for the Spa incident, among others - would still have won had Vettel not been fortunate in being able to continue following a first-lap crash, for which he was at least partly to blame, that might have inflicted terminal damage to his car.

Likewise, Lewis Hamilton was in superlative form for McLaren, but poor reliability and operational mistakes by the team stopped his title challenge short. Does McLaren's poor reliability reflect badly on Hamilton's ability?

Let's put it another way. Had history turned out differently and Alonso had by now won four titles and Vettel one, would it make either a better or worse driver than he is?

And that's the point. Statistics don't mean everything. In fact, in the big picture, they mean very little. They're just numbers. They can't be ignored, but the real truth lies elsewhere.