2004 Formula 1 Season

The 2004 season returned Formula One to total Ferrari domination, as Michael Schumacher produced perhaps the most statistically overwhelming campaign of his career to win his seventh World Championship, his fifth in succession. The Ferrari F2004 was an exceptional machine, and Schumacher began the year with extraordinary momentum, winning twelve of the first thirteen races, including the inaugural Bahrain Grand Prix, and reeling off victory after victory with mechanical precision. His only failure in that opening run came at Monaco, where he crashed behind the safety car after contact with Montoya.

Schumacher set a new record of thirteen race victories in a single season, surpassing his own previous best of eleven from 2002, a mark that would stand for nearly a decade. He clinched the championship at the Belgian Grand Prix in late August, sealing his fifth straight title and seventh overall on a then-record points tally of 148. The sheer scale of his and Ferrari's superiority recalled the runaway 2002 season, with the German rarely troubled at the front and the rest of the grid competing largely for the minor placings.

Schumacher's teammate Rubens Barrichello finished a distant second in the championship, thirty-four points adrift, underlining that Ferrari's only real competition came from within. The principal opposition from McLaren and Williams faltered through a mix of unreliability and a competitive deficit, while a resurgent Renault, with the rapidly improving Fernando Alonso, and BAR-Honda, with Jenson Button taking his maiden podiums, showed flashes of the form that would soon challenge the established order. Button's strong season in particular marked BAR-Honda's rise to second in the constructors' standings.

Ferrari once again swept the constructors' championship with consummate ease, capping the most successful sustained run in the sport's history, five consecutive constructors' titles and six straight drivers' crowns for Schumacher across the period. The 2004 campaign represented the absolute zenith of the Schumacher-Ferrari dynasty, a peak of dominance that, much like 2002, intensified calls for change. Few could have predicted that this towering display would be the last championship of Schumacher's first career, as the balance of power was about to shift dramatically toward a new generation.