Every year yields a champion, many campaigns feature a spectacular title battle, but few produce legends of heroic failure. Fernando Alonso’s near-miss for Ferrari in 2012 stands as one of the greatest heroic failures in three-quarters of a century of the Formula 1 World Championship. The epic Brazilian Grand Prix title decider, where Sebastian Vettel delivered a stunning drive to recover to sixth after somehow surviving turning in on Bruno Senna’s Williams on the opening lap, a triple impact leaving him with exhaust damage and facing retirement, was just one chapter of a titanic fight.

The Ferrari F2012 was far from a great car. I vividly remember watching it trackside in Barcelona during pre-season testing, admiring the way Alonso hustled and cajoled the unresponsive machine into changing direction between Turns 2 and 3. The car remained poor early in the year, with Alonso taking a heroic victory in Malaysia, and while a two-part upgrade that was phased in across the fifth and seventh races of the season in Spain and Canada turned the Ferrari into a more useful weapon, it was still only a machine that produced good – but hardly brilliant – performances in a year where even Red Bull was erratic. Alonso’s title bid depended on his work rate and capacity to produce great drives, notably the barrier-shaving virtuosity at Monaco, one of his greatest wins at Valencia and a brilliant pole position in the wet in Germany. This was the most relentless of seasons for a driver who built his reputation on pulverising pace.

Red Bull mastered the Coanda effect exhausts in the second half of the season. That allowed Vettel to take a string of four successive victories in Singapore, Japan, South Korea and India that were key to denying Alonso. So too were start crashes at Spa, courtesy of the misjudgement that earned Romain Grosjean a ban, and Suzuka, that eliminated Alonso. In the end, three points separated them and while Vettel was a worthy champion, Alonso was the season’s undoubted hero.

It was a glorious season to cover as a journalist not only because of this title fight, but also the supporting stories. Bafflement with the Pirelli tyres produced seven different winners in the first seven races that included the last Williams victory – Pastor Maldonado in Spain. A plethora of star names had their moments, with Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Mark Webber, Nico Rosberg and Kim Räikkönen excelling at times in a year when eight different drivers won. Aside from Vettel’s four-in-a-row, there were no back-to-back winners during 2012.

There were criticisms of the high-degradation tyres and the impact they had on randomising results, while the steps in the noses mean this was not a year of beauty. But for thrills, unpredictability, controversy and fine performances throughout the field it is unmatched in the 21st century.