The final standings indicate Downton had far and away the biggest performance advantage ever seen during the 2017 season, but was that the case? Their gap at the start of the season was much more pronounced than at the end as a number of teams started to come into the battle, but the teams towards the back were static throughout. Teams performance in 2017For pure outright one-lap pace, Downton were a class above in 2017. Every now and then Franklin stole the odd pole position and were pretty consistently closest one lap pace, but even they were some way off. This dominance allowed Downton to take 13 poles from 18 races, eclipsing the previous record jointly held by Franklin (2015) and DS Mathershaw (2014). Though it was incredibly close at times, Franklin always seemed to just have the edge on their other rivals when it came to one-lap pace. Such was their knack of pulling a lap out that combined with Downton's dominance they somewhat dominated front rows in 2017, as only five of the 36 front-row starters were not from the two British teams, and the only other outfit to get there more than once were the defending Champions. Races were seldom a different matter, but bad strategy calls cost Downton on a number of occasions, and opened the door for another team to steal the glory. Franklin in Australia, North Star in Canada and DS Mathershaw in the United States were all examples of the team having the pace, but making poor decisions that cost them. Nonetheless, there was seldom a race they looked like being beaten on pace, with the notable exceptions of Italy - save for Finn Schnyder's unfortunate late incident - and Turkey, where Adrien Simon fought off a tame Nathaniel Powers. Team performance change from 2016Unsurprisingly perhaps it was the three teams that joined in 2016 that made the most progress from 2016 to 2017, as all three leapt forwards in the field considerably. FIRST made the biggest jump but Holmqvist were right there, while North Star improved much less, but gained so much more. Somewhat obviously Downton and Westwood also notably improved while Ingram were the biggest losers - the team slipping quite some way from their impressive podium form of 2016. Team reliability in 2017Perhaps unsurprisingly, non technical failures were the biggest cause of retirements for teams in 2017, with 63 caused by some kind of incident compared to 33 for mechanical failures. Meteor and Ocelots drivers tended to be attracted to others the most as both posted 8 non-technical retirements, with the least coming from FIRST - who had just two. On the technical side it was Holmqvist who suffered - most notably with a lack of reliability from their Renault engine - as six of their retirements were mechanical. Impressively - and despite the continuing financial pressures on the team - AMR posted no technical retirements at all, with the car always making the finish unless involving in some kind of on-track incident. Team performance and reliability in 2017This graph shows team average gap to pole position plotted against their number of technical retirements. The closer a team is to the bottom, the more competitive they were over the season, while the teams closest to the left are those with less mechanical failures. This shows Downton did indeed have a strong gap, but it was over Franklin who only just finished third in the Championship, while the team they beat had just the fifth quickest car. DS Mathershaw secured second despite having a slower car than the triple Champions, and posting more technical failures, while somewhat obviously Ocelot were by far the slowest, nearly a second back from the next slowest in Ingram. The car to beat, 2015-17Since the series switched to rFactor2 and new cars in 2015, the Champions have always had the car to beat. The graph above shows how far their gap back to the second fastest was, and proves Downton did indeed have the most dominant car in this era, over half a second more dominant than the Franklin of 2015.
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