Well in fairness in light of the times we live in you would imagine something like that should be possible by now.
I mean we have Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari all with good drivers so just maybe another team breaking into that mixing things up...can but hope.
Nah, the cars are so fast and the tolerances so fine. That's why we keep seeing a dominant car, or at the very least, we see teams line up on the grid as team 1, then team 2, then 3 etc.
Many years ago the braking distances were much larger and the cars had way less aero grip so the margins for braking or going around a corner and not flying off was a lot more dependent on the driver and less on the car. The cars are also so fast there is way less room for mistakes.
I often see that as some argument that the drivers now couldn't cut it if they went back you had manual gearboxes with proper gated shifters etc, but the reality is the best drivers can drive whatever you put them in; if Hamilton, Alonso and co got into an older F1 car, they would still be ridiculously fast, in the same way those older drivers would be fast in the new cars, it's just they happen to be around during different years of F1 technology.
You definitely wouldn't see however, someone like Ayrton Senna jump in a Ferrari and somehow be challenging a Merc. It's just not how the cars have evolved. We're talking about a sport where even a quarter of a second is considered off the pace, half a second and you might as well not even show up. 1 second and question what you're even doing on the grid.
The amount of concentration and fitness those guys have to be driving those cars to the times they do is mind boggling, and a huge number of them can do it, but when you have a car that's 0.3 seconds off, over a race, you aren't even in with a shot to win no matter how good you are.
F1 is a technical race probably even more so than a driver one. The only driver you're really competing against is your team mate, outside of that, it's your engineers you need to rely on to be moving forward.
Hell Merc told Hamilton they wanted 1:45.3's, he then put in 3 laps at that, I couldn't even tap my foot to a 0.1 sec accuracy much less drive for nearly 2minutes and stay within that margin.