F1 2018 - Abu Dhabi - A legend says goodbye

Justin:

It's been a while...

My last blog was in June, after the Canadian GP. A lot has happened in F1!

It was indeed the last F1 race I'd see Fernando Alonso at, as he soon after announced his retirement from F1.

Fitting tribute

There were a fair few nice, classy touches from F1 and McLaren over the Abu Dhabi race weekend for the fighting Spaniard.

F1 repainted the driver briefing room with moments from his career - see here.

There was a paddock barbecue after the race.

There was this reflective video piece from McLaren and the man himself here.

McLaren changed their car livery in honour of the helmet colours of Alonso.

And almost finally, the F1 paddock gave their tributes here.

Here's Fernando himself with a final video goodbye and thanks.

But the thing I loved the most? It was like a guard of honour. After the chequered flag, Fernando cruised up to Seb and Lewis doing donuts. And from there the 3 champions drove around the track together. It was as if Fernando's two greatest rivals were giving him a guard of honour and respect to see him on his way. It was a beautiful moment of respect. I remember how tough the Fernando vs Seb fight got in 2012. And from 2010 to 2013 all three of them were contenders and huge rivals. Of course, 2007 is also woven into the tapestry of Lewis vs Fernando. That's where it all began.

Then after driving around to the start/ finish straight, the three legends with 11 titles between them let rip with a series of donuts. 

I've been a massive Alonso fan since the start. He fights. All the time. He drives cars to the absolute limit. He is relentless. He is an F1 legend and an F1 all time great.

I've been lucky enough to attend his home race in 2009 and have seen him race additionally in Belgium in 2012 (where he got punted on the first corner so I have no race photo), Hungary 2015, Singapore 2016 and Montreal this year. I also visited the Fernando Alonso museum in 2017. Here's a picture from each of those below:

Elsewhere

It was a fairly interesting race. We had a scary role for The Hulk. Happily he was fine. Lewis won from Seb whilst Max pipped Daniel to the last podium slot. There was a fair bit of fun racing throughout, featuring some balls out overtakes for sure.

The end is the beginning

Kimi had his last race for Ferrari and is off to Sauber for 2019. Charles Leclerc had is last race for Sauber and is off to Ferrari for 2019.

Daniel Ricciardo is off to Renault next year where Ocon is off to be a Mercedes reserve driver.

Sainz is off to McLaren, and Vandorne is off to Formula E.

Plenty to look forward to next year for sure. How will Seb cope with the young charger next to him? How will Daniel cope being midfield for a year or two? Will Red Bull Honda be the package to see Max challenge Lewis and Seb at the very front?

Thank you Channel 4

I only dabbled once with Sky Sports live coverage for one of the GP's where the highlights were going to be shown at around 11pm or so. And I found their show to be pretty dull actually.

The Channel 4 team are ace! Enthusiasm, action, fun, banter, serious, explaining stuff for the casual viewer they want to entice. Channel 4 have a tricky role in that they have to appeal to die hard F1 fans as well as more casual viewers. It's a fine balance. A balance they achieved and yeah.

Just, thank you to Steve Jones, Karun Chandhok, DC, Mark Webber, Susie Wolf, EJ, Lee McKenzie, Ben Edwards.

You've made the last 3 years so much fun for us peeps who don't want Sky! I noticed the coverage today came up with the graphic "Australian GP highlights will be on C4 on XXX March 2019".

Hope I see some of the gang in 2019 :-).

Round 21: Abu Dhabi

Justin:

Well, there is so much to cover. Perhaps the thing to kick off with is to say, that whilst I was attempting to blog after every race this year, I noticed the last race I did so for was Singapore.

This is kind of appropriate. Nico Rosberg obliterated Hamilton in Singapore, probably giving his best performance of 2016. Nico himself said after that it was his best ever qualifying.

And so, from Singapore to Abu Dhabi - Nico Rosberg is our 2016 Formula 1 World Champion.

It was an exciting race, thanks in most part to Hamilton going only as quickly (or slowly) as he needed to, to back Rosberg into the chasing pack.

I don't understand the amount of backlash in the media regarding the tactics employed by Hamilton really. Rosberg himself has said he understood why he raced like that.

It truly was the drive of a champion by Nico Rosberg. The dive on Verstappen was a balls out overtake of the finest margins. Absorbing all the pressure as Hamilton drove slowly ahead whilst Vettel and Verstappen filled his mirrors. Brilliant under pressure. He held firm.

A worthy World Champion, for sure ;-).

Time to go
And then, a shock for us all. Nico announced his retirement a couple of days after the race.

After it had sunk in with me, I thought, you know what...fair play mate. He is happy with his choice. He has achieved all he wanted to and 2016 was the most emotional and stressful for him. He was under a lot of pressure, especially from Japan onwards. The relief was etched all over his face after he won.

I watched the FIA Prize Giving online and it was awesome, for sure.

Speculation
And now, silly season commences again. Most seats for 2017 had been filled, but Rosberg leaving could potentially start another merry-go-round.

There are a lot of rumours swirling around about this, and a lot of funny internet memes about the race to the Mercedes seat.

Will Vettel want to tear up his Ferrari contract? I don't think they will be winning next year. I expect Red Bull to be the ones who go up against Mercedes. Will Alonso even be allowed to leave McLaren? Will Mercedes go for a number 2? If they do, it will be a boring 2017 watching Hamilton race up front with no fast teammate to push him.

All will be revealed. Into a winter of over 3 months with no F1 we go.

Enjoy your next role as father and husband Champion.

F1 2014 - Final blog of the year

Justin:

Well, the "title showdown" turned out to be a damp squib in terms of Rosberg and Hamilton going at it to the death.

The race itself was pretty dull, as most in Abu Dhabi are. The title was decided at the start when Lewis made an amazing start and Rosberg bogged down.

Rosberg was very gracious in defeat and wounds seemed to have healed for now between the two men.

Nico himself said that he didn't want people to talk about his ERS failure, as it wouldn't have made a difference anyway as Lewis was leading and going well at the time.

Spa - The turning point

The drivers championship was won and lost in Spa, rather after Spa. However much Lewis said he came out ready for war after this, one could easily say that Nico lost his mental edge in the fallout.

His team completely blamed him for what in my mind was a mere racing incident. They fined him and told him off rather publicly. Add to that the fans opening and happily booing him. It clearly affected him. His races were littered with errors after Spa.

By the time he'd pulled himself together again with an absolutely sterling race weekend in Brazil, it was all probably to little too late to stop the Hamilton Juggernaut.

Both guys will come back stronger next year, but I expect Nico to run Lewis even closer than 2014. You heard it hear first. Nico Rosberg - 2015 World Champion!

Driver of the year

I've already mentioned Bottas and Ricciardo as clear contenders. Obviously Hamilton is clear choice for the award, but maybe that's too easy given he won the title?

Lewis has shown a certain level of maturity in his driving and attitude outside the car this year.

Motorsport magazine actually had Alonso as their driver of the year, and that is hard to argue with. Ok, there were no headline grabbing wins and just one podium. The Ferrari he is driving this year is the worst car he has had in his 5 years there and yet he still drags performances out of it that his team-mate gets nowhere near to. It was the 4th, possibly even 5th fastest car at times this year. Ok, Kimi struggled with balancing the car all year, but Alonso absolutely destroyed Kimi 16-3 in terms of races done better in (the best out of all the teams). You'd say Massa kept Alonso on his toes more than Kimi.

1. Daniel Ricciardo
2. Bottas/ Hamilton
3. Alonso
4. Rosberg
5. Button

Damp Squib of the year

One word. Vettel.
Possibly one of the naffest title defences in history. Ok, you don't have the best car to win the title, but at least get a race win or two. No? Get trashed by your team-mate and run away? Ok then.

The true greats always adapt. Vettel has to go to Ferrari and blow Kimi away, that should be the first thing on his to do list.

Squabble of the year

Erm, any overtakes involving Ricciardo. That dude can race!!

Also, the Alonso vs Vettel duel at Silverstone. Epic! Even more epic were the verbals over the radio.



To 2015 we go. We hope to see JB still at McLaren alongside Alonso next season - that could be fun. Alonso...doing a deal with the devil that is Dennis again.....hmmmmmm.

I need to purchase some Alonso/ McLaren merchandise, whenever they get around to announcing it.

Enjoy the next 3 months with no F1 :-(. Time for an F1 book and the review of the year dvd.

A picture, as Fernando Alonso leaves Ferrari after 5 years, of one of the many memorable moments he had there.... a win in the wet in Malaysia in 2012 (pic from bbc I think).

If he reads this, I invite my esteemed co-blogger to reply.

Lewis love-in

Phil: Just when we thought the season was all over, a Vettel DNF and a Lewis love-in. Who'd have thought it?

For most of this season, Hamilton has seemed unable to do anything right. I've lost count of the number of times he's tangled with Felipe Massa, sometimes at successive race weekends. We speculated that it might be personal issues, or the fact that for the first time in his career he's been consistently outraced by his teammate. Whatever it was, he put his demons to bed yesterday and his second (or third?) race win of the year.

Not only that, but a reconciliation, nay even a love-in, with his old arch-rival Fernando Alonso. Embracing on the podium? 'The greatest driver of his generation' (or something like that)?

Maybe Vettel's puncture robbed us of a titanic scrap for the win, or maybe Vettel would have walked it given four tyres with air in rather than three. But the second half of this season to my mind has been a bit flat. Vettel has been driving within himself and the others, as I've commented before, seem to have the same tussles for the same places - Alonso against Webber, Hamiton against Massa, Schumacher against Rosberg - every race. Don't get me wrong, the first half of the season gave us some classic races - Canada will stay in my mind for a long time - even though the championship was never really in doubt, but now the fizz has well and truly gone out of it, as if each driver knows his part in the play and acts it accordingly.

So we go on to 2012. The top four teams are retaining their current line-ups (which may well mean more of the same next year) but further down the grid things are more fluid. As we've said, three drivers are in the running for the no 1 seat at Williams, of all places: Barrichello, Sutil and potentially a returning Kimi Raikkonen. Let's hope that if and when Frank Williams calls Raikkonen to offer him a drive, he's not too busy having a shit to take the call. Actually, let's hope he is.

There are no less than four drivers in the offing at Renault, who we must remember to call Lotus next year. Rumour has it they'll go for Grosjean, who's famous for not being as crap as Nelson Piquet Jr., and Petrov, who isn't famous for anything. Personally I'd much rather see Bruno Senna, and a fully recovered Robert Kubica.

But then at least one of those options, sadly, is starting to look very unlikely.

Plenty to say...?

Phil: It's been a classic year. I think we can all agree on that. I think I'm right in saying also that never before have four drivers started the last race of the season with a mathematical chance of winning the title. Each driver from each of the top three teams led the championship at some point or other during the season, but the man who led after the last race (and at no other point during the season) was Sebastian Vettel.

We've talked a lot about Alonso lately, but I think we need to give Vettel some blogspace. Some have suggested that he somehow not a deserving champion. I'd agree with Stirling Moss when he said Vettel is undoubtedly the fastest driver at the moment, but pointedly didn't say he was the best. When you consider the raw pace of the Red Bull, they in some respects ought to have walked it (in a previous blog, I mentioned that the only teams to score more poles in a season were McLaren in 1988-9 and Williams in 1992-3, and we know the utter dominance of those teams at those times). Vettel sat on pole ten times out of 19 in 2010, but only converted that into a win five times. Alonso by contrast took the same number of wins from only two poles. It's become a bit of a cliche, but Adrian Newey's cars are fast but fragile, and reliability let Vettel down, probably more so than Mark. But there's also a lack of maturity about Vettel, which his predecessor as youngest driver ever to do anything, Lewis Hamilton, never showed, from day one. It was this that led him to commit the racing driver's cardinal sin - knocking off your team mate when he's in the lead - at Istanbul.

But (and it's a big but) maturity seems to be all he lacks. At 23, he's the youngest champion, race winner, driver to score a point or sit on the podium. To say he has a bright future would be a huge understatement. After the race if he's done well, one of the first to congratulate him is often Michael Schumacher. I can't lipread in German but the body language is warm and there's clearly no rivalry there - in fact, at 41, Schumi is old enough to be Vettel's father. My point is, Vettel is now where Schumacher was in 1993 or 1994, and I think he has the talent to dominate Formula 1 in the same way Schumacher did. If Red Bull continue to have the pace, and if becoming world champion gives Vettel a little more maturity, then we could have witnessed the beginning of a new era in F1.

A couple of other points, specifically about Abu Dhabi. I have very little time for the naysayers (and I note that my co-blogger isn't one of them) who think there is a Renault conspiracy which meant that Petrov deliberately kept Alonso behind him to allow a Renault-powered driver to win the title. Petrov kept Alonso behind him because he was protecting his position (both in the race, and at Renault next year), and Alonso was out of position because Ferrari cocked up his pit strategy. It's as simple as that. And I think it's an exaggeration to say that that cost Alonso the title - this season was so close that any of the mistakes that any of the leading drivers made potentially cost them the title. If, as some predicted, the Korean Grand Prix hadn't happened, Webber may well have won the title.

I think we have plenty to talk about between now and 13 March 2011. Watch this space!

The magic number is 256

Phil: As usual I agree with my co-blogger what a nail-biting finale we have to this epic season. I'd also like before we go any further to doff my cap to the appropriate angle to show some rispeck (innit?) to Nico Hulkenberg for his maiden pole at Interlagos. He's someone we'll be seeing more of in future, I think.

Now, the interesting bit. I've taken a break from my day job crunching numbers to crunch some numbers. Only these numbers aren't ordinary numbers. They're Formula 1 world championship points.

Let's start with the easy bit. If Alonso wins or is second in Abu Dhabi, he is world champion.

If he is third or fourth, Webber needs to win the race to be world champion, and Vettel cannot be world champion. As my co-blogger hinted, Red Bull may have suggest Vettel moves aside to let Webber win the race. All the indications are that they will do the sensible thing, but Dieter Mateschitz, the head of Red Bull and Christian Horner's boss, is on record as saying Red Bull, unlike Ferrari, don't do team orders. If they do, then I for one would be interested to hear Alonso's view on team orders immediately after the race.

What I really want to see, however, is Vettel first, Webber second, Alonso fifth. This would give each driver 256 points. In the event of a tie (which has never happened, the closest winning margin being half a point, Lauda ahead of Prost, in 1984) the rules say that the champion is the driver with the highest number of wins. The problem is that Vettel and Alonso will both have won five races each. So you look at second places, and third places. Unfortunately, they will still be tied even then. In fact, Vettel will win the world title by three fourth places to Alonso's two (his third fourth place being scored, ironically enough, at Monza). While I have no particular affection for Vettel and have publicly stated I want Webber to be world champion, I think this would be a suitable climax to this season.

Finally, Lewis Hamilton can only win the title if he wins the race, with Vettel no higher than 3rd, Webber no higher than 6th and Alonso no higher than 11th.

Unfortunately for McLaren, that's about as likely as a wet race at Abu Dhabi.