F1 Season Review Part One: High-five for Hamilton and Mercedes

The 2018 F1 season offered a lot of excitement in a sport which has suffered from utter dominance in recent years by Mercedes. Mercedes were victorious again and Lewis Hamilton successfully defended his championship to now match Juan Manuel Fangio on five titles but it was far from easy.

Hamilton only won three races in the first half of the season, it was the second half though when he turned on the afterburners to take eight wins, including four consecutive victories.

Compare that to Sebastian Vettel, who took just one win in the last 11 Grand Prix.

Nine months ago the season got underway and immediately there was drama. A Virtual Safety Car in Australia handed Vettel a win that should have been Hamilton’s. Vettel would back that up with a tremendous drive in Bahrain to make it the perfect start. We must remember that, yes Vettel had made lots of mistakes this year but some of his drives have been magnificent – Bahrain, Canada, Britain and Belgium were races which I expect him to execute for most of the season.

The safety car played it’s part in China and also denied Valtteri Bottas potentially a win that would have boosted his confidence significantly after he had undercut Vettel to lead the race. Daniel Ricciardo would take advantage of the situation. Baku next, and Bottas could have won that one as well after he lucked into a safety car that came at the right time after the Red Bull’s collided. It wasn’t to be after he ran over a piece of debris which cost him 25 points.

Vettel could well have won the first four races of the season. He was in contention for all of them and had he been given the right strategy then things would have been very different at the start of the season. The German probably would have had a 40+ point advantage over the rest of the field. Momentum plays a massive part in sport as well so his confidence, as well as Ferrari’s would have been sky-high and this year would definitely have played out differently. Instead, Hamilton had a four point advantage.

I believe Vettel was on excellent form early in the year but didn’t take full advantage of it whilst Hamilton wasn’t on top of his game. To beat Hamilton, you have to punish him when he is on a slightly bad day – that’s how Nico Rosberg managed to win the 2016 championship. Vettel didn’t assert his authority over Hamilton and almost let Hamilton get away with a not so good start to the year.

So many points were dropped by the top six drivers in the opening four races.

Hamilton dominated in Spain but it took until France for him to win again, Ricciardo and Vettel winning in Monaco and Canada. It looked as if we were going to be in for a classic season.

There was drama in Austria as both Mercedes retired from the race with Max Verstappen taking his first win of the year in front of 20,000 Dutch supporters. Does anyone remember Verstappen’s nightmare start to 2018? People were going crazy, some saying that he should be dropped from Red Bull. Fast forward to now and some regard the young Dutchman as the second best driver of 2018 (Hamilton being first of course). How things change!

A brilliant British Grand Prix followed with a brilliant battle with a dozen laps to go between the Mercedes and Ferrari. Vettel bravely passing Bottas with five laps to go to win on Hamilton’s home turf after the Brit was spun around by Kimi Raikkonen on lap one. This year’s British GP will certainly go down as a classic race as well as a few others. It’s not often we see such close racing between multiple cars at the front but we got that at Silverstone. It may not have been the result that some of the British fans wanted but the racing was sensational and I for one loved it.

Arguably the biggest turning point of the season came at Hockenheim when Vettel crashed out from the lead through his own error – something that rarely happens in F1. This came just 24 hours after Hamilton went out of qualifying after suffering a hydraulic failure, possibly due to going off track at turn one on a flying lap. Hamilton started 14th and made his way through the field, taking advantage of Vettel’s off in the slippery conditions to win a race that should have been Ferrari’s.

That particular race also marked the start of a lot of engine talk as to how Ferrari had such great straight line speed. The acceleration of the Ferrari was also something quite spectacular and it did pose the questions as to whether there was some sort of double battery or something going on in the Ferrari energy recovery system. Whatever it is, the FIA deemed it legal. But, between Singapore and Japan, that magical acceleration went away and during that time period Ferrari also lost a lot of performance.

They say that the loss in performance was down to upgrades which were actually downgrades, or at best did not work; a correlation issue. To me, the upgrades were all meant to aid the aero side of things so it doesn’t explain why Ferrari suddenly lost there straight line advantage. That said, the Ferrari was awful in some of the twisty sections of track in the final few races, losing 0.5 of a second at Abu Dhabi in sector 3 or in the middle sector at Brazil. If it wasn’t for the phenomenal engine power then this year’s Ferrari would not have been a good car. Ferrari have shown that they are now the benchmark in terms of the power unit – performance and reliability but it’s the other parts of the car which have shown weakness this season, especially in the latter stages of the year.

Similarly to last year, Ferrari could not match Mercedes in the development race after the summer break.

Not all of the blame can be put on the car though, Vettel should have at least taken the fight all the way to Abu Dhabi. Mistake after mistake came after the summer break, starting with Italy, then Japan and then then USA. You could not believe how Vettel’s season went so downhill. It has hurt his reputation significantly in my opinion and all of the spin’s were unusual. So many mistakes were made and if you compare that to Hamilton, well… you are never going to win a championship with that amount of errors.

What made Vettel’s mistakes look worse than they were was the incredible performances from Hamilton. So many exceptional laps and races were done by Hamilton – Silverstone, Hungary, Singapore and possible a few others were qualifying laps that were special. The wheel to wheel battle with Raikkonen at Monza really hurt the Tifosi and Ferrari as Hamilton came out on top which I believe was as important a turning point as the following Grand Prix in Singapore. Hamilton’s speed, coupled with Vettel’s mistakes meant the championship was over early and the one thing that was missing from this season was a dramatic finale.

One more thing that may have influenced Ferrari’s demise was the unfortunate death of Ferrari CEO, Sergio Marchionne, in July. Marchionne has been pivotal in his role which has led to the revival of Ferrari in this turbo-hybrid era. I remember that there were lots of critics when Marchionne became the CEO in 2014 but since he has come in, Ferrari have steadily improved and arguably have had the best car this year. Rumours of disagreements between Maurizio Arrivabene and Mattia Binotto have grown as the year has gone on and it just needs a figure like Marchionne to step in and bang their heads together.

What about Vettel’s and Hamilton’s teammates?

The Finns’ of Raikkonen and Bottas simply haven’t had the speed compared to their respective teammates which has meant they haven’t had track position in races and haven’t been given the optimal strategy. Qualifying is so important these days (as I will talk about in detail in an article over the winter break) and the Finns don’t have that extra gear to pull out a sensational lap in Q3 to put their car on pole position – or at least not consistently.

Bottas, in a similar manner to Vettel, didn’t take advantage of an off-form Hamilton in the early races. He could have won in Shanghai and Baku but bad luck in both of those races meant that it wasn’t to be. Bottas did take pole position in Austria and Russia but a mechanical failure and team orders meant he failed to convert any of those performances to victories. He has been unlucky in that sense but Mercedes will not win the constructors’ championship in 2019 if Bottas does not step up his game. He knows that he is under pressure and to not win a race this year is not good at all. It is the 20th time in F1 history that the champion’s teammate as failed to win a race.

Raikkonen on the other hand has been able to win a race, quite brilliantly in USA. He has never been the same since his second spell in F1 but 2018 has probably been his best year since 2013 at Lotus. The 39-year-old has suffered four DNFs this year, three more than Vettel, hence why he finished 69 points behind Vettel. I am glad he is still in F1 but I am more glad that he is not at Ferrari next year because he doesn’t really deserve to be there with the speed he now has (or lack of).

That has been the story of Mercedes and Ferrari in 2018, a rivalry that is set to continue over the next 12 months. I must admit that it hasn’t produce major fireworks and it has been quite ‘friendly’ when there are two world championships on the line in such a high pressure environment.

Hamilton and Mercedes came out on top this year but they know it will be nearly impossible to match or better what they have done this season and 2019 will be an even tougher challenge.

Stay tuned for part two as I talk about the rest of the teams and how they have reacted to 2018