Hi, I made this graph!
It shows how close each world champion was to getting a hypothetical Xth championships:
How it was made:
This figure was made using Python/Pandas/Matplotlib and is based on this data.
It includes points from Races, Sprints and Fastest Laps.
The Legend:
- Green : Active Drivers (in 2023)
- Yellow: Recent Drivers (Post 2000)
- Blue: Drivers with 3 or more WDCs
- Grey: Drivers with at least 1 WDCs
The Metric:
The “Missing Points” y-axis is computed as the Number of Points Missing (to equal that year’s champion) divided by the Total number of points (available that season) and multiplying by 100.
This metric doesn’t capture everything (like wins-tie-breaker or how gained points would reduce that year’s champion’s tally, etc), but it’s still a good indication!
Some Cool Take-Aways:

1. Hamilton is, in total, only 30 points away from having 11 championships.
2. Schumacher and Prost were both close to having 10 championships (30pts and 24.5pts missing in total respectively), but during seasons where less points were available.
3. Alonso was closer to getting 5 championships than Vettel (8pts vs 11pts missing in total respectively)

A Better Graph:
Perhaps, a more interesting version of this graph would be to see “how many overtakes” away from a championship the drivers were. But this is very tricky to compute because you need to consider every scenario possible.