The Sport Space has another new recruit! Kyle Archer gives an in-depth statistical analysis of the 2014 F1 season.
The chequered flag in Abu Dhabi waved three weeks ago to mark Lewis Hamilton as a two time Formula One World Champion. The Brit secured this years Drivers Championship by a 67-point margin to his teammate Nico Rosberg, after the German’s season limped to an end with reliability killing his Mercedes.
Across the season the Silver Arrows looked like they would be the ones on the top step of the podium come the seasons end. But their dominance highlights the excellent work the team back at the factory put in to preparing this year’s car with the new regulations, and the PU106A hybrid engine is what pushed Lewis and Nico to the top.
Over the 19-race season, Mercedes secured 16 wins with 11 of those wins being a one-two finish. In total, they amounted 701 points, almost three hundred points more than second place Red Bull who have dominated the sport for the last four years.
For Red Bull, the 2014 season was appalling and they were unable to mount any challenge to Mercedes in either of the title races. But for the Milton Keynes team there were a few moments of glory with Daniel Ricciardo picking up three wins in his debut season with Red Bull, the only driver in anything other than a Mercedes to win a race.
That also means it was pretty much a season of failure for McLaren and Ferrari with both teams failing to win a race and to make matters worse, between them both they only managed four podium positions. For McLaren, theirs came in Australia where Magnussen and Button finished in third and fourth respectively before being moved up one place after Ricciardo’s disqualification. As for Ferrari, their only podiums came via Fernando Alonso in China and Hungary.
As a result of their failings across the season, McLaren were drawn into a scrap with Force India for fifth in the Constructors Championship. Meanwhile, Ferrari had to settle for fourth place with distance between themselves, McLaren and third-place Williams who utilised the Mercedes power unit to secure their best constructors finish since their second place back in 2003.
Moving away from the constructors championship and looking towards the drivers championship you can really see just how dominant Lewis Hamilton was across the season. The Brit secured 11 wins, six more than his teammate, Nico Rosberg, and eight more than Daniel Ricciardo. Lewis also piped Rosberg to the most podiums with his 16 compared to the German’s 15 and the most fastest laps of the Grand Prix’s with seven compared to Nico’s six. Adding this on to the 67-point difference between the two in the championship, Lewis dominated Nico. But the driver who is highly regarded as the fastest across one lap failed to out shine Rosberg in qualifying with Nico securing 11 pole positions, four more than Lewis. Unfortunately for Nico, when it came to the race day he was unable to keep Lewis behind and often the Brit made his way ahead.
When the German found himself behind Lewis, he often struggled to get ahead and when he found his way in front, he then struggled to stay in front. Some of the best examples of this can be see from the first night race in Bahrain back in April. The team split the tyre strategy between the two to make Nico faster in the final stint in a bid to catch Lewis, before a safety car bunched the field up. Come the restart the two bolted away and scrapped it out corner after corner, straight after straight for the lead but even when Nico got his nose ahead, Lewis would only sit in second for a matter of seconds before he would regain the lead. Then jump forward to July and we’re in Hungary for the Hungarian Grand Prix where Daniel Ricciardo took his second win in Formula One. Rosberg had been leading the race but was forced into another pit stop and fell behind the Aussie, Alonso and Hamilton but was rapidly closing in on the top three. As a result Mercedes told Lewis to move over and let Rosberg through so he could challenge for the win but Lewis refused to slow down as he battled for his position. Lewis argued Nico was never close enough to challenge him so if he slowed down he would have stood no chance of battling the others so he simply kept Rosberg behind, much to the German’s displeasure. Then as the race approached its end, Rosberg began to fight Lewis for third but Hamilton refused to budge and forced the German off the track. This moment will go down as one of the defining parts of the season as the summer break followed were Nico refused to forgive and forget the moment unlike Lewis. Then come F1’s return in Belgium, Rosberg refused to let Hamilton push him out wide once more and punctured the Britons tyre and ruined his race.
Check out our insightful interactive infographic on the season, here.
But the season was not all just about the Silver Arrows shooting away and fighting it out amongst themselves. There were 10 other teams battling it out and pushing for their own forms of success.
As mentioned earlier, Williams had their best season in 11 years and for their drivers it looks great. Valtteri Bottas finished fourth in the Drivers Championship 19-points ahead of Sebastian Vettel. Whilst Felipe Massa secured pole position in Austria, the only driver other than Hamilton and Rosberg to secure a pole position in 2014.
But to flip their success and look at other drivers failings there is no better place to start than with Sebastian Vettel. In the last four years he has dominated the sport in some style but this year he has struggled beyond anyone’s wildest beliefs given that dominance. Across the 19-races in 2014 he only managed to accumulate 167-points, 217-points less than Hamilton and 71-points less than his teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Vettel also only managed to secure four podium finishes, 2 fastest laps, and only led a single lap of a race, secured no pole positions and failed to take victory in a single race.
Other drivers also struggled in 2014 with Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari return marked with just 55-points and like Vettel, a single fastest lap and no victories. Come 2015 Ferrari must be hoping for a better season with Raikkonen and now Sebastian Vettel at the Italian outfit.
Fernando Alonso’s new teammate at McLaren, Jenson Button had a mixed season. The Brit was unable to finish any race on the actual podium and led just one lap but he outshone his inexperienced teammate Kevin Magnussen when it came to the points and finished the season 71-points better off before retaining his McLaren drive late on at the expense of Magnussen who moves into the reserve role at the Woking based team.
But despite everything that happened across the season, one thing provides an extremely bright shining light and that was Jules Bianchi securing his and Marussia’s very first points in Formula One. The team joined the sport back in 2012 and made their debut at the Australian Grand Prix. Since then they have been one of the sports back markers along with Caterham and HRT. But as time went bye HRT dropped out leaving just Caterham and Marussia to fight it out to get their first points in Formula one, and back in May at the Monaco Grand Prix Jules Bianchi secured ninth place to get his team their very first points.
Unfortunately for Marussia, their season declined from there before hitting rock bottom in Japan when Jules suffered life threatening head injuries after crashing into a recovery vehicle. Jules remains in an intensive care unit but he is now out of his artificial coma and is breathing unaided.
The Sport Space has another new recruit! Kyle Archer gives an in-depth statistical analysis of the 2014 F1 season.
The chequered flag in Abu Dhabi waved three weeks ago to mark Lewis Hamilton as a two time Formula One World Champion. The Brit secured this years Drivers Championship by a 67-point margin to his teammate Nico Rosberg, after the German’s season limped to an end with reliability killing his Mercedes.
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Kyle Archer 