The Yas Marina circuit held the final round of the season for the 14th time, and also witnessed its fifth decisive race for the drivers’ championship.

For the first time in four years the title changed hands, Lando Norris ending Max Verstappen’s run of consecutive championship wins. He did it by just two points.

This was not the narrowest championship victory in absolute terms. Besides the eight occasions when just one point separated champion from runner-up (or runners-up, as in 2007), Niki Lauda’s half-point win over McLaren team mate Alain Prost in 1984 remains the smallest winning margin.

However changes over the years to F1’s points system (from eight points for a win to 25) and calendar (from seven rounds per year to 24 plus sprint races) means a little maths is necessary to get a realistic impression of how close each season truly was.

Lauda won by 0.5 out of 99 points

For example, Nelson Piquet also won the F1 championship by two points, in 1983. But that year drivers could only score a maximum of nine points per grand prix and only count their best 11 finishes, so Piquet’s two-point winning margin represented just over 2% of a maximum score.

This year drivers could score up to 25 points in each of 24 grands prix plus another eight points in each of the sprint races. Their maximum potential score was 648 compared to 99 in 1983. Norris’s two-point winning margin was therefore just 0.31% of the maximum.

Arguably, that’s even closer than Lauda’s 0.51% winning margin over Prost. Here are the closest winning margins in terms of absolute points and percentage of available points:

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Year Champion Runner-up Winning margin (points) Available points Winning margin (percentage of available points)
2025 Lando Norris Max Verstappen 2 648 0.31
1984 Niki Lauda Alain Prost 0.5 99 0.51
2008 Lewis Hamilton Felipe Massa 1 180 0.56
2007 Kimi Raikkonen Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso 1 170 0.59
2012 Sebastian Vettel Fernando Alonso 3 500 0.6
1994 Michael Schumacher Damon Hill 1 160 0.63
1976 James Hunt Niki Lauda 1 126 0.79
2010 Sebastian Vettel Fernando Alonso 4 475 0.84
2016 Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton 5 525 0.95
1981 Nelson Piquet Carlos Reutemann 1 99 1.01
2003 Michael Schumacher Kimi Raikkonen 2 160 1.25
1999 Mika Hakkinen Eddie Irvine 2 160 1.25
2021 Max Verstappen Lewis Hamilton 8 567.5* 1.41
1964 John Surtees Graham Hill 1 54 1.85
1958 Mike Hawthorn Stirling Moss 1 54 1.85
1986 Alain Prost Nigel Mansell 2 99 2.02
1983 Nelson Piquet Alain Prost 2 99 2.02
1961 Phil Hill Wolfgang von Trips 1 45 2.22

*Half-points were awarded at one race in 2021

Norris won by two points out of 648

Lauda’s feat of winning a title by half a point is much less likely to be repeated following the changes made to F1’s points system, following the farcical 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, where half-points were awarded for a race which officially lasted for just one lap, spent behind the Safety Car. The reduced points awards for shortened races no longer include half-points.

The only way a driver could score half a point in F1 today is if they finish in a tie for position with another driver. This hasn’t happened in F1 before but did happen in a Formula 2 race at Monza last year: Gabriel Bortoleto and Dennis Hauger crossed the line side-by-side as they fought for eighth place, worth one point, and were officially timed at 0.000 seconds apart. They were awarded half a point each.

Of course this debate will be rendered moot if two F1 drivers ever end the season tied on points at the top of the standings. That may not have happened in F1, but it’s not unprecedented in motorsport. Juan Pablo Montoya won the 1999 CART IndyCar series in a points tie with Dario Franchitti.

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