As has been the trend over the past few seasons, reliability becomes increasingly more important. If we look at kilometers raced, Williams and Ferrari are clearly the class of 2002. The top two drove nearly 10% more than the number three on the list, Sauber. What is remarkable is that unlike popular belief the Honda powered teams aren't much less reliable than the others. Toyota, Jaguar, Jordan and BAR all raced between 7,100 and 7,400 kilometers in the past season.

Reliability helped Ferrari dominate this year, especially in the second half. Overall, Williams completed more laps, but with Michael Schumacher completing every lap of the Championship, Ferrari achieved yet another first. The reliability of the Williams brought them second place in the Championship. With the average number of points per classified result being almost equal - Williams's 28 versus McLaren's 20 classified results made the difference.

                       Points per 
          classified   Race Finish
Ferrari      29           7.62    
Williams     28           3.29    
Sauber       22           0.50    
McLaren      20           3.25    
Renault      20           1.15    
Toyota       19           0.11    
Jordan       18           0.50    
BAR          17           0.41    
Jaguar       15           0.53    
Minardi      15           0.13    
Arrows       9            0.22    

The table not only shows how the top teams were affected, it also shows how ineffective Toyota were in their first season. The 19 results are as good as could be expected, but too many times they missed the points. The new team scored the worst amount of points per finish.

Toyota driver Allan McNish was one of two rookie drivers not to score a point. Anthony Davidson, who competed in only two races, was the other one. Felipe Massa, Takuma Sato and Mark Webber were all successful. With thus 60% of the rookies scoring World Championship points, 2002 was a lot better for the debutants than 2001 (29%). In fact, in the last ten years it never happened that more than half of the rookies collected points in their debut year.

Remarkably, both Webber and Sato scored in their home Grand Prix. In total, 31 points out of a possible 165 were scored on home ground, with the German Grand Prix being the most successful for the local drivers: 15 out of 23 points scored. The least successful performance on home soil came from the British quartet, who all failed to score at Silverstone.

However, despite the good rookie efforts the season was overshadowed by Ferrari's dominance. The comparison to the 1988 McLaren team has been subject of speech all season. Looking at a number of key elements, however, it's clear that Ferrari fall short in most categories. Only in percentage of podiums and percentage of fastest laps the Maranello team can withstand the comparison to the legendary McLaren team of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

                 McLaren 1988       Ferrari 2002   
                 ---------------    -------------- 
Points *            214/16 (13.4)     221/17 (13.0)
Wins                 15/16 (94%)       15/17 (88%) 
Podiums              25/32 (78%)       27/34 (79%) 
Poles                15/16 (94%)       10/17 (59%) 
Front rows           27/32 (84%)       21/34 (62%) 
Fastlaps             10/16 (63%)       12/17 (71%) 
Laps led         1003/1031 (97%)    865/1090 (79%) 

* based on 10 points per victory

Discarding Ferrari from the Championship would have made things more exciting for sure. We would have had five Grand Prix winners - one more than we have now. Juan Pablo Montoya would have won five, Ralf Schumacher, David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen three each and Eddie Irvine would have been the winner of the remaining race.

Nevertheless, while the Championship would have been closer than it was now, it would have been pretty much a Williams domination with the team grabbing both titles plus second place in the Drivers' Championship. In qualifying things look the same, with 14 poles for Williams against 3 for McLaren.

The 2002 World Championship without Ferrari:

Drivers                       Constructors           
----------------------        ---------------------- 
 1. Montoya         85         1. Williams       149 
 2. R.Schumacher    64         2. McLaren        108 
 3. Coulthard       60         3. Renault         47 
 4. Raikkonen       48         4. Sauber          32 
 5. Button          28         5. Jordan          24 
 6. Trulli          19         6. BAR             21 
 7. Fisichella      19         7. Jaguar          18 
 8. Heidfeld        19         8. Toyota           9 
 9. Irvine          18         9. Minardi          4 
10. Villeneuve      13        10. Arrows           4 
11. Massa           13                               
12. Panis            8                               
13. Salo             8                               
14. Sato             5                               
15. Frentzen         4                               
16. Webber           3                               
17. Yoong            1                               
 =  McNish           1