TED KRAVITZ
As it turned out, the 2017 season wasn’t quite the battleground that it had promised to be
‘There were Ferrari people in tears when it was finally all over in Mexico, emotion I hadn’t seen in years’
IT’S ALL OVER FOR ANOTHER YEAR. IN the end, Ferrari’s challenge fell apart and Mercedes’ Anglo-teutonic, relentless approach ground out more wins and the team strengthened its vice-like grip on the Formula 1 drivers’ and constructors’ championships. For his part, Lewis Hamilton joined the great drivers of all time, garnering equal amounts of publicity for both winning a fourth world title and for keeping up the longstanding F1 drivers’ tradition of not paying any more tax than you absolutely have to.
What had seemed like the closest of competitions between Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel in the summer finished in a slightly damp squib at the Mexican Grand Prix, with early contact between the two resulting in a recovery drive by Lewis to ninth place. This was enough to clinch the championship as Vettel needed first or second place and he was busy with his own recovery following a pit stop to replace his front wing, broken on Hamilton’s rear tyre.
Of course, despite Ferrari’s pre-race insistence that ‘it’s not over’, it had realistically been over since the Asian leg of the championship. In Singapore, Vettel was on pole, only to drift left off the start line and crash into Max Verstappen and Kimi Räikkönen. A week later in Malaysia an inlet manifold failed in Qualifying and then a spark plug blew in Japan. This last breakdown was especially frustrating, as there was an abundance of local expertise to consult on the humble spark plug: Ferrari’s supplier, NGK, is based just half an hour down the road in Nagoya.
So with at least 50 points dropped over three races, defeat was inevitable. But that didn’t make it any easier. There were Ferrari people in tears when it was finally over in Mexico, emotion I hadn’t seen since they were last really in with a chance in 2010 and 2012. Italian passion: it’s Ferrari’s strength and its unfortunate weakness.
Vettel was depressed, too. He knew the unreliability wasn’t his fault but the unforced errors (the road-rage side-swipe on Hamilton in Baku that earned him a penalty and the start-line crash in Singapore) were down to him. In a recent interview I asked Sebastian if he felt frustrated about those two lost opportunities. He made the distinction between frustration and disappointment. In Seb’s mind, frustration would have been like some anxiety dream where he was in a position to win but something was holding him back. Whereas because he crashed at the start or the car failed, he wasn’t able to race in the first place. Which was why he was disappointed but not frustrated.
‘I think I see what you mean,’ I said, when the cameras had stopped rolling and Dave the sound man was pulling out the microphones stuck to the inside of our shirts.
‘ Yeah, and it’s fine,’ replied Vettel. ‘ I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason.’ Without thinking, I replied: ‘Sure, Seb, but you know the old saying about everything happening for a reason? Sometimes that reason is that you’re stupid and make bad decisions.’ Vettel raised an eyebrow and wandered off to his next engagement. I like to think that piece of wisdom gave him something to think about. He probably thinks I’m a complete bellend.
Someone else who’ll be giving the likes of Vettel and Hamilton something to think about throughout the next few years is Max Verstappen. He won his second GP of the season in Mexico, something that seemed unthinkable earlier in the year when he threatened to break his contract and leave Red Bull unless they fixed their engine problems. With a few exceptions, Renault has improved reliability and Verstappen has committed to Red Bull-renault until the end of 2020, by which time F1 might have new engines anyway.
The new engine formula is the talk of the paddock, and as usual, it’s a mess. Owners Liberty Media and the FIA are trying to please everyone – manufacturers who don’t want change and fans who miss the normally aspirated screamers. They’ve ended up with a halfway house proposal, which has the inferior fuel efficiency of the current units and none of the enthralling shriek of the old V8s.
What they should do is accept that by 2020 F1 will have nearzero road car crossover and so not even try to be relevant. Go with a non-turbo 3-litre V10 or V12 that is basic by regulation and spec-frozen for a multi-year term, eliminating any scope for expensive development (beside the odd bit of track-specific mapping), which would save the teams a lot of money. But they won’t. They’ll have a big argument about it, Ferrari will threaten to quit again and everything will stay largely the same.