F1 2017 Season Review Part 4

After Part 3 last week, lets look at the back end of the Formula One grid in 2017.

Toro Rosso had a season of two halves. The first half was great but the second half saw lots of drivers but very few points. The STR12 was the best looking car on the grid and it impressed with Carlos Sainz taking points 5 times from the first six races. But development was where it all went wrong for Toro Rosso and you can’t just blame the Renault engine. Their “big brother” team Red Bull, were the best team at developing their car whereas Toro Rosso were arguably the worst.

Carlos Sainz impressed me a lot. He had eight retirements in the season (joint most with fellow Spaniard Fernando Alonso) and still finished 9th in the standings. Sainz maximised the STR12’s strengths on the low downforce circuits with good points which boosted the team throughout the season.

His standout drive was a 4th place finish in Singapore when the team got the strategy right and Sainz drove magnificently. He described it as “the most important day” in his F1 career so far and I have to agree. The 23-year-old showed that he deserved a championship challenging car because he has world championship potential. A move to Renault with four races remaining of the season may seem pointless but Sainz will now feel part of the team and he will know everyone at Enstone much more compared to if he joined after the season.

A stunning début was the only points that Sainz got with Renault as reliability and a team error in Abu Dhabi prevented him from impressing even more. Meanwhile, it was a contrast for Daniil Kvyat who could only get a 9th place finish two times from his first 14 races. It’s very similar to Jolyon Palmer’s season and Kvyat was correctly dropped from Toro Rosso before the Malaysia Grand Prix. The Russian does have the raw speed but he’s very inconsistent and got caught up in to many incidents. A comeback in USA was the last time we saw Kvyat in 2017 but he actually did very well and I wouldn’t be too surprised if he was back in F1 next year or even earlier.

As Sainz joined Renault, Pierre Gasly joined Toro Rosso for the remained of the season. He didn’t do anything special but he didn’t do anything stupid either. The Frenchman missed the US Grand Prix to try to win the Super Formula title in Japan but the last races in Suzuka were cancelled due to a typhoon; in other words, Gasly missed the Grand Prix in America for no reason. He finished 2nd in the Super Formula championship which was still very good. Gasly was joined by Brendon Hartley who has had a brilliant year, Not necessarily in F1 but in the World Endurance Championship and the IMSA series. Just like Gasly, he did a solid job but did lack a bit of pace in qualifying. Both drivers will need to impress and beat each other this year because a seat might be available in Red Bull and it’s set to be a busy driver market over the next 12 months.

Haas didn’t have as good a year as their first season. Just as I thought, Haas struggled with development and were at times, the slowest car on the grid in the back-end of the year. Eight retirements and just thirteen points scoring finishes is worse than I thought that the Haas team would be in 2017. Brakes troubled the VF-17 again and setup seemed to be a big problem at times for their drivers. The Haas car was a bit of a diva just like the Mercedes, if not worse and you can’t help but feel that the chassis lacked performance because the Ferrari engine was pretty good.

Romain Grosjean finished ahead of Kevin Magnussen in the drivers’ championship but it was the latter that was more impressive to me. They both struggled with the car but they also maximised or outperformed the car’s potential.

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Magnussen was on the podium at one point in that manic Baku race and an 8th place in Japan and Mexico were incredible races for a car which wasn’t worthy of getting in the points for the majority of the season. He’s seen by many as the bad boy on the grid and a feud in Hungary with Nico Hulkenberg showed that the Dane shouldn’t be messed with.

Even though I think Magnussen was better than his teammate this year, it was Grosjean who finished just ahead in the drivers’ standings. His anger and emotions on the team radio is what a lot of fans associate with the Frenchman now which is not a good thing. You don’t want a reputation of being a “moaner” or someone who gets angry at everything. Grosjean was talked about being a brilliant driver and there were rumours a few years ago that he would go to a top team. Now, his flair isn’t there and the 2017 cars haven’t seemed to suit him. Nevertheless, he picked up a few points at a lot of the European Grand Prix including a fantastic 6th place in Austria which showed that there is still potential.

McLaren-Honda had the season which wasn’t meant to be, to say the least. They say their chassis is good and the engine is the reason for the lack of speed and reliability. The worst kept secret was announced during the Singapore weekend that the split would happen between Honda and McLaren. It’s embarrassing that a legendary team like McLaren is the second to last team in the championship. It had to stop and the split was inevitable.

But, you do have to feel sorry for Honda because it shows how complex and mind boggling these V6-turbo engines are. For them to not get it right shows that the engines need to change. Yes, they came in one year after the start of the new engine change but they’ve always been a year behind and it may stay that way. Progress was definitely made but it wasn’t enough when so much hype and hope over the winter all went away when testing started. 12 retirements, 400 grid penalties and two DNSs is simply not acceptable and it doesn’t help that the engine is still nowhere near the Mercedes or Ferrari engines. It just wasn’t meant to be for McLaren and Honda.

Stoffel Vandoorne is improving and they have the great Fernando Alonso who is still one of the best drivers so their line-up is good. Ron Dennis went and Zak Brown came in. Brown has done an excellent job. He says that he doesn’t just want McLaren to be an F1 team, he wants them to be a racing team. The McLaren name should be extended throughout motorsport according to Brown. Fernando Alonso did the Indy 500 which was ignited by Brown and the publicity that the team and the event got was huge. Then, Brown kept Alonso at Mclaren and made the split with Honda which was key to keeping the Spaniard who’s hungry for success.

Outstanding qualifying performances from Alonso was stunning but it was the races where the McLaren was a sitting duck where even he, went backwards. I was there at Silverstone when Alonso went fastest in Q1 and the crowd cheered just as loud as when Hamilton took pole position later in the session. Everyone wants to see him back towards the front because we don’t know how long he will be around and a renewed rivalry with Lewis Hamilton is what we all want to see. A Renault engine in the back of a McLaren may well just bring us that very thing.

Stoffel Vandoorne only scored points three times in 2017 but he slowly but surely improved and I think he will get better if he’s given a race winning car. There were a few times when I though that Vandoorne was too far off the pace of Alonso but Vandoorne showed that he has some super speed in and he proved this in Malaysia with a good qualifying and a 7th place finish. He will have to keep improving and I’m sure he will this year. Watch the Belgian carefully, because he could push Alonso very hard with a solid season.

Sauber finished last in the constructors’ championship for the first time in its history. It was expected because they had a Ferrari engine which was from the 2016 season so they needed big results early in the season because as the rest of the teams’ engines improved throughout the year, the C36’s engine would stay at the same performance. It’s hard to pinpoint the weaknesses on the car because we rarely see them across race weekends but in the speed traps at least, they were always in the bottom 5 of the standings. Their chassis was okay but it was never good enough to overcome the lack of power from the engine. In June, Monisha Kaltenborn stepped down as team principal and Frederic Vasseur replaced her.

Honda were going to partner Sauber by supplying them with engines for the upcoming season but this was never “confirmed” apparently even though we all thought it was going to happen. Instead, Sauber will stay with Ferrari for 2018 but with the latest engines and with further good news, a multi-year technical and commercial partnership contract with Alfa Romeo was announced in November.

Remember Antonio Giovinazzi? He did the first two races after Pascal Wehrlein stepped down as a precaution after a scary crash at the Race of Champions. He did a superb job at the opening Grand Prix in Australia because he was very close to his teammate, Marcus Ericsson, having only done one practice session. It all backfired after he crashed in China twice. They both happened to be on the home straight and it cost the team dearly and it did no good for the Giovinazzi’s reputation.

Wehrlein was back for Bahrain and nearly got Sauber’s first points of the year. It came a few races later in Spain as strategy; speed and skill came to the fore. Even with a 5-second time penalty, Wehrlein was classified 8th. Another point came in the crazy Baku race but that was all Wehrlein could salvage from the season. He says that his best drivers were not noticed but I think that he didn’t have enough standout performances.

Marcus Ericsson was the only full-time driver to not score points in 2017. His last came at Monza in 2015 and he needs to improve very soon or else he will get a reputation of being the “worst F1 driver” on the grid. He was close to Wehrlein at some races so it wasn’t all bad but very rarely was the Swede ahead.

That was the 2017 F1 season. Lots of stories happened on and off the track. Prepare for more in 2018 as the anticipation cranks up and predictions will be made.