F1 Season Review Part Two: Madness in the midfield

Away from Mercedes and Ferrari which we discussed in Part 1, 2018 saw a continuation of a wild midfield battle that went on as well as Red Bull stealing the odd win which livened up some of the races.

Lets start with Haas who I believe had the best car outside of the top three teams but some bad luck and two drivers who have been inconsistent meant that they could only finish 5th in the constructors’ championship. Nevertheless, it is still the American outfit’s best ever championship finish and they should be proud of the car that they have built.

I was one of those people who thought Haas would really suffer this year but they have proven a lot of people wrong. At the very first race of the year, in Albert Park, Haas had their best every qualifying result and were running 4th and 5th in the race until disaster struck. During each of Romain Grosjean’s and Kevin Magnussen’s pitstops, one of the wheels was not fitted properly. It meant that both of them would DNF which was a massive shame. They were on for something special and lost at least 20 points. The team would manage to take a 4th and 5th at the Austrian Grand Prix, a partial recovery of what was lost in Melbourne.

As for their drivers, Grosjean did not score any points until the 9th round of the season which is poor in a car which was capable of scoring points in most of the opening rounds. The Frenchman had a much better second half of the year but I still believe he should have been dropped from the team. He has been given lots of chances yet still makes some big errors which damage his reputation.

Magnussen had the exact opposite year as he faded as the races went on. He is incredibly aggressive and some of his manoeuvres are unacceptable – they will have massive consequences one day if he carries on moving to the right or left so suddenly to defend on straights were the cars are doing nearly 200MPH. I love to see aggression but there is a line between aggression and stupidity.

Renault were the team who beat Haas to the ‘best of the rest’ position. Another solid year for Nico Hulkenberg saw him finish 7th but that illusive podium still awaits and its now 156 races without a podium. Quite staggering!

He is still underrated by many. The German has beaten a highly rated Carlos Sainz (who coped very well against Max Verstappen at Toro Rosso) and dominated Jolyon Palmer in 2017. I would love to see Hulkenberg in a car that can challenge for regular podiums and wins because he has the talent to do so and deserves this kind of opportunity.

I would put Sergio Perez on a similar level to Hulkenberg as he has quietly seen off Esteban Ocon, whilst Ocon has been headline news on the driver market with many people suggesting that he should replace Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes. Yet, Ocon doesn’t quite have the race pace of Perez. The Frenchman definitely has supreme qualifying speed, a similar trait to Charles Leclerc but he’s not quite there yet in the races. Whilst Ocon has been given a lot of the limelight in 2018, Perez hasn’t done a bad job either and should be commended on that.

Force India themselves went through a period of trouble in the summer after being placed in administration. A consortium, led by Lawrence Stroll, saved the team as money came in and upgrades were able to be put on the car. All 405 workers jobs were saved and all of them stuck through the tough time. There are millions of pounds at stake in the F1 world and sometimes we forget that some teams are struggling to simply compete at every race. But, even with a limited amount of money, Force India had another good year with the highlights being Sergio Perez’s podium in Baku and locking out the second row of the grid in Belgium, immediately after the administration period.

There was so much hope for McLaren going into 2018 but it all fizzled out very quickly. “Now we can fight” were the words of Fernando Alonso after a promising race in Melbourne but a lack of upgrades, a disunited team and an aero package that evidently went in the wrong direction meant McLaren fans were to be extremely disappointed. This week, McLaren have said that there poor season was down to “a lack of communication and clarity of roles within the team” but I genuinely feel that much the problem is financial and I believe that McLaren will not be a force to be reckoned with for at least the next two seasons.

I talked about this in an article six months ago and what I said, I still believe in. This was even before the “resignation” of Eric Boullier.

McLaren have now lost the best thing that they had, which is a certain Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard is still one of the best drivers out there, proven by beating Stoffel Vandoorne 21-0 in qualifying in 2018, and has picked up 50 of the 62 points that McLaren scored. Along with a Le Mans win and a win at the six hours of Spa in April, Alonso will now move away from F1 to explore other motorsport series. F1’s loss, motorsport’s gain.

Vandoorne has been dropped from the team and it is obvious as to the reasons why. F1 is a brutal sport and if you don’t deliver straight away then your reputation will start to diminish rapidly and you will soon find yourself fighting to say in the sport. The same can be said about Brendon Hartley who has been disappointing despite being so good in sportscars and the World Endurance Championship prior to F1.

Hartley’s poor showing just shows how hard it is to do well in F1 and it shows the quality of the current grid which is often discarded by motorsport fans. Hartley’s pain, Pierre Gasly’s gain. One good season at the right time, with Daniel Ricciardo moving on, means that the young Frenchman will move into Red Bull for 2019. A stonkingly good result in Bahrain (4th place) did a lot of good for Gasly and it’s that kind of result that gives you a lot of confidence and a barrage of respect. One of my favourite moments of the year was seeing the joy of the Toro Rosso mechanics when Gasly crossed the finish line – it was like they won the world championship.

Joining Gasly towards the pointy end of the grid will be Charles Leclerc who has impressed many. The Sauber car has been awful prior to 2018 but a car capable of scoring points and a young driver who showed tremendous speed gave Sauber there best season since 2015. I have talked about how Leclerc’s qualifying speed is up there with the very best and it seems that these younger drivers are all very quick over one lap, you might be thinking “well obviously!” but they all seem to cope better in qualifying rather than a race distance. It takes longer for them to learn how to manage a Grand Prix with such sensitive tyres and so many other things to manage in modern F1.

And finally Williams. What can you say, the only way is up I guess. Sergey Sirotkin loses his seat which is rather unlucky because I don’t think he did too bad, certainly not miles worse than Lance Stroll. The Williams car was similar to McLaren in terms of just a general lack of grip.

I often hear the question: “why is X so slow” – in this case why has the Williams been so slow. Is it too much understeer, oversteer, overheating the tyres? It’s hard to say but it literally is just a lack of downforce compared to the rest of the field. If you have to go 5MPH slower through every single corner on a track then you will lose a lot of time everywhere.

If you lose 0.1 of a second at every single corner then on a track with 20 turns you will lose two seconds a lap which is roughly what the slowest teams are losing. That’s why, it isn’t visible on the TV. You don’t see the driver making loads of corrections or driving the car like a rally car, it’s just that they are taking slightly less speed into every single corner and it all adds up over a lap. That’s why, if you look at the data between a Mercedes and Williams, you will see that the Mercedes is better in all departments but only by a little bit in each area. It’s not just one area of the car which causes it to be slow, it’s lots of little things which gives it less downforce overall.

That was a quick overview of some of the drivers and teams in the midfield. Overall, when there wasn’t much action at the front, the midfield made up for it with groups of cars around the track all fighting with each other.

The pecking order changed from Grand Prix to Grand Prix with nearly everyone being the “best of the rest” at some point in the year. Sometimes it was Renault, sometimes Haas, other times it was Force India, occasionally it was Sauber and even Toro Rosso! It’s what makes it really difficult to judge the drivers in the midfield because the pecking order changed so much so if you had a bad race or a bit of bad luck when your car was good then it would make you look worse then you actually were. Expect more of the same in 2019 and hopefully all of the midfield teams can get a little bit close to the big three.

To finish off, here are five of my favourite facts from the 2018 F1 season:

• No wet races (we had a bit for about 10 minutes in Germany) but not enough to cause the whole field to put on intermediates or wets
• Every driver has scored points this season, a first in the sport
• There have been no mid-season driver changes, the only other time this has happened was in 2008 but Super Aguri did leave the sport after four races
• Daniel Ricciardo has had two victories (China and Monaco) this year but no other podiums. He is the first driver since Jochen Rindt in 1970 to take multiple victories with no other top-three finishes
• Lewis Hamilton becoming champion meant that he broke a record which has remarkably been going on for 13 years – The “Hungary Curse.” Ever since 2005, the winner of the Hungarian GP has not gone on to win the drivers’ championship. I find this incredible and it was my favourite stat… until Hamilton broke it by winning this year’s Hungary race and the championship. Oh well, another track will have to take up the mantle.