Close competition?

[nokivasara]

Has anyone crunched the numbers on the time difference between pole and the best competing team, ie 1st and 3rd if the front row is only one team. 1st and 2nd if not.

The last years of the V8 was really close and since that is in fresh memory maybe we tend to think of Mercs superior speed as something unheard of. I've actually followed F1 since the early 90's and think that 0.5s or more was common back then. But i'm not sure if I can trust my memory

[mertol]

Yes but back then they didn't have to run a gazilion races with the same hardware so there were a lot more retirements and 0.5s was close enough to take advantage of any troubles the best car had. Now 0.5s pretty much ensures you victory everywhere.
Back then they didn't have insta-overtake buttons. So anytime the underdog took the lead they had a good chance of keeping it.
The time gap isn't what makes the season boring. It's the repeating of the same finishing order. That said you could call the current races more interesting if this fake overtaking is your thing.