What to expect in the 2015 Formula One season

The Sport Space’s F1 man, Kyle Archer, gives a preview on what to expect in the upcoming Formula One season.

With 2015 car launches, pre-season testing and the Australian Grand Prix on the horizon, the new season is edging closer everyday. But will this year be more of the same or is it the time for change? Well, today we look ahead at what to expect in the 66th season of the Formula One Championship.

The season begins in just two weeks in Jerez, Spain for the first of three pre-season tests. Here teams will get their first chance of the year to run their cars on track in 2015 and begin the to find out the key areas they need to improve. Pre-season testing is a vital part of the season, especially looking back at this time last year when it appeared Red Bull would be facing an extremely difficult year after their pre-season looked far from perfect. Nevertheless, they managed to get to work and provide a challenging car come the Australian Grand Prix.

At the Jerez test, the general public will also be able to spot the driver changes for the first time with Sebastian Vettel lining up for Ferrari. This year will be one of the most important in the German’s Formula One career as it has always been one of the challenges people have wanted to see, Sebastian Vettel not in a Red Bull. If he can go to the struggling Italian outfit and turn the Ferrari team back into World beaters he will secure his place firmly in the fight for the best driver of all time. Especially as Ferrari have failed to win a World title since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007, who is also the man partnering Vettel in 2015.

Fernando Alonso’s McLaren return is another driver change to keep an eye on, with the two-time World Champion returning to the Woking based outfit he briefly drove for in 2007. When he joined the team back in 2007 McLaren had failed to win a race since 2005, a situation they find themselves in again with their last victory coming at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2012. But back in 2007, Fernando secured his first McLaren victory in just his second race, something the team will be hoping for again if not better.

Unfortunately things for McLaren may be more of a challenge this year than expected, as the new Honda engine they will be powered by will have to be homologated by February 28th unlike the other engine providers, who have found a loophole in the sporting regulations. The loophole will allow Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault to continue the development of their 2015 engines throughout the season unlike Honda who will have to set their engines during the second pre-season test just like the other three engine providers were regulated to do last year.

Elsewhere, Lotus will also see a change in their power unit as they move from Renault to Mercedes in a bid to return to the front of the grid. Throughout the 2014 season Lotus struggled with the new generation of Formula One despite challenging the front end since their return to the sport. Now they have agreed a deal to be powered by the World Champions who provided the best engine last year. But will the engine alone push them back up the grid?

In short, no. Despite having the Mercedes engine in 2014, McLaren failed to provide a challenge across the season as the rest of the car let them down. If Lotus are to bounce back to the front after just one year they will need to have significantly improved the car all over in order to provide their drivers, Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean, with a competitive car. If they have improved the car you should be seeing the Enstone based team fighting it out in the midfield more regularly.

Williams are another team who will be looking to improve in 2015 despite having a great 2014 by their recent standards. Unlike the previous years, Williams go into the new season with a lot of momentum after picking up nine podiums and looking like Mercedes’ closest challengers come the second half of the season. If Williams were able to continue the development of their car to a high enough standard for the upcoming season, they could easily capitalize on any mistake by Mercedes to claim a win.

I say capitalize on any mistake by Mercedes as it would be a huge shock if anyone has been able to develop a car capable of beating the Mercedes across the season in 2015 given their dominance in 2014. In terms of Mercedes in 2015 you can simply expect more of the same with Hamilton and Rosberg battling it out for the top step of the podium.

The only thing to consider is how much loosing the title to Hamilton will have affected Rosberg’s mental state. After the Hungarian Grand Prix last year it was clear Lewis had got to Nico after refusing to move aside to let him through, so how much did loosing the championship really affect Nico? If he let it get to him too much, this year could be a lot easier for Lewis to dominate and become a three-time World Champion or we could see a new Rosberg who is ready to battle hard but legally and actually get the better of Hamilton on the Sunday’s.

Down at Toro Rosso, 2015 will be a completely different story than at Mercedes as Red Bull’s sister team will be handing Formula One racing debuts to Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr. The two will form the youngest partnership on the grid with Verstappen aged 17 and Sainz Jr. aged 20 come the first race meaning the team have an average age of under 19.

The signing of Verstappen at the age of just 17 has also paved the way for the FIA to introduce stricter regulations for 2016 governing the application of super licences. Now drivers must have accumulated 40 points over a three-year period, spent at least two years in junior single-seater category, hold a valid road driver’s licence and be aged over 18 along with a few other stipulations. So across 2015 expect to see more young drivers given Friday drives if the team have any realistic plans for them to move into a race role.

For 2015 the FIA have also brought in new sporting regulations governing the races with virtual safety cars being one of the biggest changes. Here the whole track will fall under a safety car situation but without the need for an actual safety car. The idea should prove an excellent addition as it will slow the entire field down without the need to bunch the drivers up.

Other additions to the sporting regulations sees double points at the final race scrapped after just one season and the penalty system altered. Now engine-related penalties will be based on the individual components and there will be no stand-alone penalty for a full power unit change. A new ten-second penalty is also brought in alongside the five-second penalty established last year. And finally, any grid penalties that were unfulfilled will no longer be rolled over into the following race, instead the penalty will be applied as a time added onto the relevant race.

The implication of these new regulations and the driver changes will surely start to be seen from the off in Melbourne come March but who will leave Spain feeling the strongest in a few weeks time? Will Honda be able to overcome the challenges facing their engine? And will anyone leave Spain for Australia thinking their heading for a poor year?

The Sport Space

The Sport Space’s F1 man, Kyle Archer, gives a preview on what to expect in the upcoming Formula One season.

With 2015 car launches, pre-season testing and the Australian Grand Prix on the horizon, the new season is edging closer everyday. But will this year be more of the same or is it the time for change? Well, today we look ahead at what to expect in the 66th season of the Formula One Championship.

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F1 2014: Driver of the season

The Sport Space’s F1 contributor, Kyle Archer, gives an analysis on the greatest Formula One drivers of 2014.

The year is over, the season is done and dusted but who was the best Formula One driver on track in 2014? Up and down the grid, week in and week out drivers scrapped and battled to move ahead but who impressed the most? Today I look at my top drivers from this year’s championship and explain why they cut above the rest. 

7) Kevin Magnussen (McLaren) 

Looking at the stats you would see Kevin did not have a very successful season. But in his first ever F1 Grand Prix he secured a podium for McLaren after ending the Australian Grand Prix in third before being promoted to second place. What’s more, McLaren were unable to get a foot on the podium in 2013 after a poor first season without Lewis Hamilton.

Kevin also took the fight to the World’s best this year and throughout the season he was showing why McLaren where right to give him the drive over Sergio Perez. Looking back at the Belgium Grand Prix in August, Kevin was involved in a great scrap with Fernando Alonso. For lap after lap he placed his McLaren perfectly to avoid loosing a position to the two-time World Champion. However, one overly aggressive defensive move late on in the race left the Dane with a 20-second post race penalty demoting him from fifth to 12th.

Despite Kevin loosing his 2015 race seat at McLaren to Fernando Alonso after he departed from Ferrari, he has been kept at the team as reserve & test driver and one day I believe he may regain a race seat.

6) Jules Bianchi (Marussia) 

Next up comes Jules Bianchi. The Frenchman in the Marussia spent most of the season fighting it out with his teammate and the Caterham’s but on occasion would be seen pushing on and challenging for the higher spots.

Jules also shone in qualifying throughout the season compared to the drivers around him and was able to drag the Marussia into Q2 on three occasions. Given Marussia were unable to produce a single upgrade for the car all year due to their financial issues, Jules’ achievements this year look far more impressive.

Overall his average finishing position may have been just 16th, but on a grid of 22 that’s impressive for a so-called ‘back marker’. Not forgetting in Monaco Jules also made history to be Marussia’s first ever point scoring driver after finishing the race in ninth place.

5) Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) 

The first driver in the top five is the championship runner-up, Nico Rosberg. The German opened the season with a comfortable win in Australia following Lewis’ early retirement. From that point forward, Nico was consistent in bringing the car home and staying ahead in the championship despite Lewis racking up the wins.

Then in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix he took provisional pole ahead of Hamilton. It’s a race often decided in qualifying but this year Nico secured pole via a potentially deliberate lock up which brought the yellow flags out, preventing Lewis from challenging. If he did actually make the lock up on purpose he deserves a lot of credit as he even managed to avoid punishment after an investigation into the incident.

His pole in Monaco was not his only pole as well, across the season he managed to rack up 11 and take home the pole position trophy. But despite Rosberg taking the fight to Hamilton across the season and getting the better of him on the Saturday, it was very rare that he could challenge Lewis on track come the Sunday leaving him with far less wins than his teammate. Nico also appeared to struggle under the pressure in races as seen in Italy when he locked up gifting Lewis the lead.

4) Valtteri Bottas (Williams) 

In fourth comes Williams’ Finn, Valtteri Bottas. When he broke onto the F1 seen his talents were clear from the off but this year the team were able hand their drivers a car capable of challenging at the front, allowing Valtteri to rake home six podium finishes, two front row starts and 186 points.

Valtteri was probably the driver to take the challenge to the Mercedes the most come the second half of the season as the tracks needed a high speed car compared to the more aerodynamically stronger Red Bulls. But unlike Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, Bottas was unable to get in front of both Mercedes to take a race win.

3) Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) 

Coming home in the last podium slot is Fernando Alonso. He may have struggled this year to challenge for the wins and even podium finishes in his final season at Ferrari but the Spaniard was ever consistent in dragging a poor prancing horse into the top 10. In fact, there were only two races in which the top 10 did not feature Fernando and those were because of electronic failures forcing him to retire.

Fernando’s average finishing position may have been just seventh but almost every race weekend you could see him pushing the car beyond its capabilities and achieving far more than Kimi could in the other Ferrari. In total, Raikkonen ended the season 106 points worse off than Alonso and outside the top 10 in the Drivers championship whilst Fernando came home in sixth, behind the two Mercedes, two Red Bulls and Bottas, with just six points separating him from Vettel in fifth.

In every race Alonso also guaranteed action as he battled anyone he came up against and one of my highlights of the season was his fight against Vettel at the British Grand Prix back in July. This fight makes it into my highlights of the season due intensity of the fight and the sheer bravery by Alonso when he took Copse flat out and went around the outside of Vettel.

2) Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) 

The runner up for driver of the season 2014 is Red Bull’s Aussie, Daniel Ricciardo. He was the only man outside Mercedes to win a race this year and was the closest challenger to the Silver Arrows in the Drivers Championship. By the end of the season he had amassed three Grand Prix victories, whilst his teammate and four-time world champion only managed a single second place for his best result.

One of the main reasons Ricciardo comes in at second place is the way he turned Red Bull on its head. For so many years Vettel has dominated the sport in a Red Bull but this year Ricciardo flipped all that and got the better of his teammate in ways no one would have imagined, even leaving people questioning Vettel’s abilities.

But that was not the only reason for Ricciardo securing the runner up spot, he also took the challenge to the Silver Arrows and picked up the wins when they slipped up. In Canada, he secured his first ever Grand Prix victory when the Mercedes suffered break issues and in Spa he picked up his third victory when Rosberg punctured Hamilton’s tyre, but it was his victory in Hungary that was his best of the season. Here he did not take the lead after the Silver Arrows slipped up, instead he had to work hard for it and pull off magnificent moves on the likes of Alonso and Hamilton. Soon enough he may even be able to put together a stronger challenge for a world title of his own.

1) Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) 

But for 2014 the Formula One World Champion, BBC Sports Personality of the Year and my driver of the season is Lewis Hamilton. The boy from Stevenage proved all the doubters wrong and showed that his move to Mercedes was the right decision after leaving McLaren at the end of 2012.

Over the course of the year he put his retirements in Australia, Canada and Spa behind him to come back even stronger and rack up win after win. When he retired from the first race in Australia he came back and won four races in a row for the first time in his career and then after his retirement in Belgium he came back and won five races in a row before taking the title with a win in Abu Dhabi.

But between those strings of victories, he had to come from the back of the grid in Germany due to a break failure in qualifying and Hungary when his engine went up in flames during Q1. And both times he battled his way through the field to end the race on the podium.

Now we must look ahead to next season, which kicks off in Melbourne on March the 15th. Will Lewis Hamilton be able to retain his Formula One crown or will his Silver Arrow be shot down from the top step of the podium? If it is, there are plenty of worthy drivers lining up for their chance at the title but only time will tell.

The Sport Space

The Sport Space’s F1 contributor, Kyle Archer, gives an analysis on the greatest Formula One drivers of 2014.

The year is over, the season is done and dusted but who was the best Formula One driver on track in 2014? Up and down the grid, week in and week out drivers scrapped and battled to move ahead but who impressed the most? Today I look at my top drivers from this year’s championship and explain why they cut above the rest. 

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A statistical look at the 2014 Formula One season

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.

Formula One stats 2014 | Create infographics

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

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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