Can anyone topple Hamilton in 2020?
WANTED: CHALLENGERS FOR TITLE
Hamilton puts cherry on cake in dominant showing in Abu Dhabi.
Reigning champion Lewis Hamilton made it look far too easy last weekend, with an effortless win at the final race of the year in Abu Dhabi. It was a near perfect performance from qualifying to the race finish, with his last minute push to grab the extra point for the quickest lap, the real cherry on the top. Taking victory from Max Verstappen by a comfortable 16.7 seconds, the Englishman again proved he is one of Formula One’s greats.
The top six finished a lap ahead of the rest of the field, with the gap from Hamilton to sixth placed Red Bull driver Alex Albon a staggering 69 seconds. Even thirdplace Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari was almost three quarters of a minute adrift of the victor. There were some great drives within the pack. Valtteri Bottas’ fight from the back of the grid to take fourth just under a second behind Leclerc was excellent, as was Sergio Perez grabbing seventh from Lando Norris.
But the one I really enjoyed was McLaren’s Carlos Sainz’ battle to hold onto his sixth spot in the Drivers’ championship that went down to the wire when the Spaniard took the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg on turn 11 of the last lap to secure 10th place and the single point needed to beat Pierre Gasly in the title chase.
The FIA issued a bulletin just before the race start, regarding the results of a routine fuel test on the Ferrari of Leclerc. The results revealed a “significant difference” between the pre-start fuel load declared by the team and the actual figure measured by the FIA technical staff.
An amount of 4.88kg of fuel was the difference and the Maranello team was found to have infringed the technical directive and Article 12.1.1.i of the International Sporting Code.
This led to rumours that Leclerc would be disqualified from the results, but the stewards did not agree and confirmed the Monegasque would not be penalised. However, Ferrari were fined a hefty €50 000.
Overall Abu Dhabi was an indifferent race with one or two highlights and an interesting one when an FIA utilised server crashed, resulting in DRS not being operational for the first 17 laps. But most significantly the incredible performance of Hamilton and Mercedes must be of great concern to the rest of the field for the 2020 season.
Red Bull and Toro Rosso must be heaving a sigh of relief as they end the season on a high note thanks to the much improved Honda power unit, now beginning to show its true potential, particularly in the hands of Verstappen.
The results from Alex Albon in his first season are also grounds for great optimism as is the improved performance of the resurgent Pierre Gasly. I think his team-mate, Daniil Kvyat will have to get his head down in 2020 as Dr Helmut Marko is not one to run a team just to satisfy a driver.
McLaren are another team with a far better result this season, finishing fourth on the Constructors’ log – not bad considering they finished ahead of their power unit supplier, Renault. Next year it will be a change to Mercedes power so let us hope it will keep the Woking outfit on the road to recovery. Renault will field the new driver combination of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon and hopefully they will have a car worthy of them.
Racing Point and Alfa Romeo will also be looking for a change of fortunes for next season as will Haas and Williams. I am still baffled as to why Haas decided to continue with Romain Grosjean who has not lived up to expectations.
Then of course it is Williams who need the biggest boost of all, scoring just a single point this year. There is a huge amount of work to be done to pull the former multiple world champions back into the mid-field battle.
It is going to be a tough off season for Ferrari. They have still not been able to sustain the annual challenge against Mercedes and now face heavy competition from Red Bull. One can only hope that team boss Mattia Binotto will not be going the way of many of his predecessors.
With tyre testing in Abu Dhabi just about over, we will have to wait until the new season’s testing sessions begins. The two sessions have been reduced from four to three day tests and as usual will run at the Barcelona circuit, getting under way on February 19, next year.
Hopefully 2020 will be the season when we see much closer competition at the front of the field, but I have my doubts. Please, somebody prove me wrong!