The numbers work in a very different way when the points battle for a world championship is between two drivers in the same very dominant car. Take Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in their two seasons together at McLaren, 1988 and ’89: they won one championship apiece in that time, but if we look at how many times each of them beat the other, the score is heavily in Senna’s favour. Taking out mechanical issues and other circumstantial elements, in the 24 races where a straight comparison could be made over those two seasons, Senna beat Prost 17 times. Prost beat Senna seven times. But with just an arbitrary points difference between first and second, the points battle made the contest way closer than their respective performances merited. On performance alone, Senna annihilated Prost at McLaren.