Greetings Internet,
Yes, I know it is now Tuesday, which is also not Sunday by a considerable number of hours. It is a shame to see four years of contributions to this corners of the internet peter out into a mess of inconsistency and poor punctuality, but these things do happen. It had been a chaotic couple of days which intervened and interrupted a once consistent schedule of publication and updates. When spouting irrelevant drivel into the empty darkness of this far flung corner of cyberspace - keeping on time is oh so important. I suppose there are hundreds and thousands of identical pages scatted the length and breadth of the internet doing the same thing I have attempted to do for these few seasons now and frankly do a far better job of it. The whole fabric of the myriad of posts and comments that have flowered and since wilted spawned from an initial spark of misplaced inspiration, from another series of parodied articles covering the 2008 season. I wanted to build something on that ground - something which blurred the fields of technical detail with comedic undertones and subtle humour. In 2011, it might have worked but now, here in 2014 it doesn't have the same edge to it that it once did and the individual posts become so much harder to compile and take hours on end to piece together. Mid 2013 saw the termination of the Thursday videos simply because four days of recording and editing reaped no measurable reward or indication of success - so in many respects it had become a waste of time, and the quality was a bit naff too. I have no idea whether there will be a 2015 edition of this corner of the internet, whether it is worth bothering any more, it becomes harder to validate it's existence when so many other people do a better job. Making a valid contribution in a domain inundated with content is an impossible task
But before I consider dropping the final nail in this virtual coffin, I can't close the metaphorical doors without finishing the season since the final flag of 2014 has fallen. The reason why this post is multiple days behind schedule is partially a reflection on my dwindling capability to remember to do things, but also because I was out of the house most of the weekend. On Saturday I was hammering the keyboard to type out the final sentences on the post-qualifying document before scurrying out of the house to see a rival theatre group perform their end of year panto... An event that wasn't particularly motivating, you see I need now to spend the next ten nine days figuring out how to beat them (occasionally my competitive nature can take over). Then on Sunday I was having my ear drums obliterated at a rock concert and didn't get to go through the race coverage until midnight - so starting the multi-hour process of writing up wasn't on the cards. Yesterday I was at rehearsal for our performance, and after pushing hard to find ways of means of defeating the posh upstarts with their money and gimmicks it is too tiring to turn to the internet. Which brings me to today... Tuesday, I think.
By now the world knows what happened on Sunday - the racing bit that is - especially if you happen to live on this little rock off the coast of France. The news will have been full of the final moments of the race when the champion drove effortlessly across the line - hailing it as a monumental achievement. But in the end the battle was really won off the track, back in the Mercedes motorhome as it was parked in Belgium a long time ago now. Since then there have been snapshots when the tide has turned but those fractional moments in the face of an unstoppable onslaught only delayed the inevitable. I, the media and everyone else hoped that despite the seeming futility of it all there would be one final hurrah, something powerful and decisive to bring the season to an end. That grand finale moment when the entire cast are on finest form and the curtains close to rapturous applause... well as in life, these things rarely come to pass. Once again there was no titanic struggle, no race long tussle for that final victory - whilst the 2014 season has been a vast improvement on it's predecessor there has always been something missing. So much anticipation and suspense all fizzling out in the end. As the main protagonists danced a flat but finely choreographed routine all year, only drawing gasps of awe when one dropped out of step, the rest of the cast were left carrying the show. Abu Dhabi was no different.
The Race
As a sign of how far the series has fallen in the final rounds of a fading season a total of 18 cars sitting on the grid was the largest population we've seen since Russia. Even though Caterham had made a return, both Red Bulls were forced to start from the pit-lane because of an illegality with front wing deflection... I would make a joke about Red Bull and wings, but the internet has well and truly beaten me to it. Who knows how many will make it to Australia at the end of the winter.
The race was over before it really began...again - the prospect of 53 laps of intense wheel to wheel duelling erased in about 20 metres. Lewis merely drove away from everyone and vanished off into the lead, Nico was second and everyone else was third. Except for the Red Bull cars who had to negotiate the underground pit exit before joining the rest of the field. Bottas didn't get such a great start and lost several positions - perhaps Toto had a word with Suzie to keep the Williams team away from the factory cars. One thing that has become apparent as the season drew itself to a close is that the drivers have become increasingly good at not hitting each other on the opening lap. Hulkenberg and Magnussen somehow managed to avoid contact in the first chicane at turn 5 - Kevin did have to run a little wide on the exit just to make sure. For some reason this did earn the Hulk a penalty for forcing another car off track... but sometimes the internal logic of the stewards office is a complete enigma. Sutil found himself on the receiving end of some contact on the exit of the hairpin, again Magnussen was involved as the pair brushed wheels. Neither car was severely damaged, but Kevin did ask the team whether the front suspension had been injured - McLaren couldn't see any signs of damage on the telemetry and the Dane carried on. At the back Grosjean took his drive through penalty, the one he earned at the very beginning of the weekend for power unit component changes
Red Bull, now fitted with legal front wings had a lot of ground to make up because of the long pit exit - but they easily picked off their first victim, Will Stevens in the Caterham. As we have seen since the start of the year, Ricciardo was the more active of the pair and lead the Red Bull formation as it attacked the runners at the back of the grid. Despite running with the weaker Renault engine some of the overtaking manoeuvres looked very easy once DRS was in effect. Daniel was able to pass Sutil and Kobayashi in one breaking zone, at the end of the first long straight - potentially this gulf in performance is why neither Caterham or Sauber have collected any points this season. Speaking of performance gulfs, of a sort, Raikkonen and Alonso were in a little battle of their own with the Finn in front and Daniil charging up his death stare for his final race in the Toro Rosso car. As Brazil demonstrated, Kimi has no real motivation to make things easier for his departing team-mate and the same was true this time. Raikkonen would adopt a defensive line and force Alonso to try the outside - but unlike a certain Anglo-German pairing the Ferrari drivers were more respectful. Once Fernando managed to get far enough alongside on the approach to turn 10, Kimi didn't argue the point and allowed the other red car through. The commentary teams hailed it as a great pass, when it wasn't really - Raikkonen knew that he was beaten and backed out. The Finn also failed to take not of a scary faced Russian who was waiting in the background. As Raikkonen's line was compromised by the Alonso move, Kvyat was able to capitalise and launch the Toro Rosso down the inside of turn 14 and steal the place. This was arguably a better overtake than Fernando's.
The super-soft tyres proved to have a very short lifespan - especially when the cars are running with a heavy fuel load, and thus the opening bout of pit stops begun. When we have early stops and a bunch of cars running an alternate strategy, starting on the conventional soft compound, we end up with strategies merging and cars in all kinds of positions through the field. This shuffling of the pack can lead to some interesting battle pairings - none more so than Alonso and Will Stevens. Fernando emerged from his stop behind the rookie in the Caterham, Will instinctively defended in the hairpin, easing Fernando wide. Stevens then drew alongside as the Spaniard effected a pass on the first long straight - for a brief moment the Caterham was able to out-drag the Ferrari miraculously. But in the end a Ferrari is a much better car and Alonso had far more braking potential in his car thus completing an easy pass. Fernando did get on the team radio questioning who this upstart was - but fair play to Stevens, it was a pass for position and he is well within his rights to resist being overtaken. Even if he is driving a Caterham, Kamui did the same thing when unlapping himself earlier in the year and scored bonus points for doing so.
I hadn't mentioned the two Mercedes drivers in a while, simply because they weren't doing anything noteworthy, just driving away at the front - only Massa was remotely on the same pace in third. They made their stops and remained a few seconds apart - in terms of the championship this would suit Lewis fine, a win made Nico's position irrelevant. But a mechanical drama for Hamilton would being the German right back into play... but Mercedes are the most successful team, they wouldn't let reliability influence a race or championship deciding result... would they... The pit stop sequence did allow Felipe Massa to cycle through to the lead for a little while, by virtue of staying on track longer. Perish the thought of Felipe Massa being involved in a Hamilton title decider... there would be so much poetic justice if the Brazilian took a victory and denied Lewis the championship... revenge six years in the making. But Williams did have to call Felipe in for some new tyres and Hamilton and Rosberg went to the front.
Staying on the tenuous link of delayed vengeance, we have Jean-Eric Vergne - ignored by Red Bull and under threat of being ignored by Toro Rosso for 2015 found himself under pressure from Ricciardo of all people. The Australian who stole his place at the top team was now attempting to take away his place on track as well. But as we have seen in the latter half of the championship, Vergne can be very feisty when needed, and probably resented the thought of Daniel overtaking him. Ricciardo attempted an outside pass, in the same way that Alonso did to Raikkonen, but Vergne was having none of it and held his ground. The Austrailian exited the chicane ahead, only for a little while, as Vergne spotted an opening and threw his Toro Rosso at it. He gave Ricciardo no room on the exit and forcefully denied his former team-mate. No sanctions were brought against Vergne, which made me wonder what on earth was so heinous about Hulkenberg and Magnussen on the opening lap. Like I said earlier, there are many occasions when the terms 'logic' and 'stewards decision' are mutually exclusive. On the following lap Ricciardo had a second go at Vergne and was more successful
With most drivers now cycling back to the positions they were in before the round of stops - barring those on the longer first stint - things began to settle down. Perhaps as it was closing in on 1am when I actually watched this it seemed to be far more inactive than it actually was. Heck even Daniil Kvyat's car got board and broke down - alas we were not treated to a reprise of the Russian's radio message 'I have no engine' as he pulled the Toro Rosso off onto one of the many escape roads. In this effective downtime much attention was placed on the time difference between Hamilton and Rosberg sector after sector, lap after lap - perhaps hoping to see the gap close, a potential precursor to a fight for the win. But those numbers were not closing consistently, Nico would gain a few tenths here, but lose some elsewhere. Occasionally there would be a gain of half a second, to which Lewis would respond and extend the lead once more. Both cars were pushing and moving away from everyone else - some of that down to the fact that Magnussen on a long strategy had a collection of cars trapped behind him including Button, Alonso and Vettel. A total of seven world championships all lapping several seconds too slow due to traffic. Attention was drawn back to the lead pair when the gap suddenly increased by 1.2s, replays showing Nico running wide on the approach to the hotel section and losing a lot of time. It was a tense phase of the race, waiting for something to break
That seemingly minor mistake for the German turned out to be a symptom of a far more significant development. Nico announced on the radio that he felt that the car was losing power, a diagnosis that the team confirmed moments later. It seemed like once again a Mercedes car was going to let it's driver down in a critical phase of the race. A development that has spawned a monumental amount of commentary throughout the internet in the days following the race (the only advantage of being this far behind schedule). So many arguments around the question of does this most recent failure make the Mercedes team-mates equal, and it is an argument I imagine will rumble on well into the new season. At that point in time it was Rosberg who was affected and his lap times started to plummet, losing on average three seconds to those in the chasing pack. The Mercedes confirmed that is was in fact an ERS failure - so Nico was suddenly 160hp down on everyone else. Rosberg frantically quizzed the team - looking for a solution to reboot the hybrid system but nothing was forthcoming. Of course because the ERS is involved with regenerative braking, the failure also compromised his braking ability and had a knock on effect of dampening the torque of the rear wheels. In short it was game over for Rosberg - the only hope of taking the title was for Lewis car to suffer the same problem and retire completely a la Montreal. In that race Nico dragged a car without ERS and dying brakes onto the podium while Hamilton retired... As Felipe Massa breezed past to take second, that hope looked increasingly unlikely.
The only distraction from Rosberg's increasingly slowing car was Pastor Maldonado - who, somehow, was maintaining his personal streak of not crashing into anyone was in a spot of bother. His Lotus must have collected some form of power-up on track because his exhaust was transformed into a flame-thrower - spouting a blazing trail of fire from the rear of the car. As much as it did rather complete an atrocious season for Lotus - the bright orange and yellow flames did look awesome under the floodlights. More worryingly however was the delay in getting fire marshals to the scene, admittedly the incident looked fairly contained and the fire was limited to exiting the exhaust but even so... Eventually a team of very ballsy marshals had to sprint across the track to get to the stranded Lotus to put it out - Pastor should have taken a leaf out of Kovalainen's book and found an extinguisher and dealt with it himself. It may have been well before my time, but it did bear a scary resemblance to the Tom Pryce incident at Kylami where a marshal with a fire extinguisher was struck when crossing the track, neither party survived.
Back with the race and there was a degree of speculation as to whether Hamilton was encountering technical difficulties too, because Massa was carving into the Briton's lead. Taking up to two seconds out per lap - the prospect of a Massa/Hamilton fight was exciting, shades of their many comings together in 2011 mixed with the final 20s of the 2008 season all rolled into one... But investigations in the pit lane revealed that this was not the case and Lewis was merely managing his tyres, and car, towards the end of the stint. He pitted and rejoined behind Rosberg's limping Mercedes - by virtue of not having a car that was under the weather Lewis just pulled out and drove past. It wasn't long before Bottas performed the same feat and Nico was slipping further and further down the field - 5th place was the minimum position required to be mathematically in with a chance. A position that he was drifting back to at many seconds per lap. On the other side of the Mercedes garage, the team informed Lewis that he might want to pick the pace up a bit in this final stint, as they considered Massa to be a threat in the Williams.
Further back Alonso and Button were having another strong battle, irritatingly the majority of which was not captured on television. Sometimes a hopeless title fight manages to trump a pointless actual on track battle. We saw Fernando pass Button on the second attempt after Jenson defended the first effort but outbraked himself defending the second. But we never saw Jenson retake the place a few laps later, because we were all to focussed on the ongoing conversations between Rosberg and the pitwall. Conversations that became more and more frantic, Nico demanding to know what position he needed to finish in and the likelihood of achieving it mixed with the technical developments of his failing car. Despite the hints of desperation there was a sharp clarity about Nico's interrogation of the team.
In the midst of all this Felipe Massa was now leading the race, as a result of Hamilton pitting earlier - more questions started to surface: could Felipe go to the end on this tyre set? Would a late stop for the super-softs set up a final battle? The dull middle phase of the race was starting to build into something with promise and a faint hope of a very popular finale victory for Felipe Massa. But as we all know far too well, desired outcomes very rarely come to pass. It turned out that Massa, like several other drivers was opting for a final stint on the faster tyre, rather than attempting to make to the end on the current set. It is a strategy that has been applied effectively elsewhere this season - Vettel in Austin for example made it work rather well. Both Williams and Force India drivers were implementing this procedure and appeared to be working out. Bottas was closing in on Ricciardo and Force India were working both drivers into the points. All of this was at the expense of Rosberg who was travelling in the opposite direction. Rosberg's team informed their driver that a top five might be possible if he could keep Hulkenberg behind... probably as a benchmark of relative pace - if he could find enough with the stricken car to match a Force India things might still be alright... It was a matter of seconds between Hulkenberg catching Rosberg and vanishing off ahead into the distance... Today was not going to be a good day for Nico, at least there were only 15 or so laps left of it to endure.
With laps remaining becoming an endangered species there wasn't too much happening at the front of the field, Massa was closing down on Lewis with the faster tyres but it looked increasingly unlikely that he'd completely close the gap. Ricciardo's grasp on third place faded away as Bottas closed in an took that place away from the Australian - that said, Daniel was still having an almighty race on the cusp of the podium from starting in the pit-lane. Jenson Button found himself in another respectable 5th place, more reasons to leave him in the car for 2015. After blasting past Rosberg, Hulkenberg sat in 6th. Behind him however cars were on the move... well one car... Sergio Perez in the second Force India was mirroring his team-mate's strategy and reaping the benefits. While Vettel and Alonso were battling over the lesser points the Mexican was able to build a substantial gap to the two multiple world champions and improve Force India's points haul.
As for Rosberg, well it was just getting worse - the car got slower and slower as the brakes grew weaker and the ERS failure remained. Mercedes asked Nico to pit the car and call it a day as he fell outside the points, but in a show of resolute defiance and sportsmanship he told the team he would like to continue. In the face of extreme adversity, he wanted to continue - even after he suffered the embarrassment of being lapped by the champion elect, Rosberg stayed on track. As we summised Massa could not maintain the charge he started when he exited the pits - the tyres wouldn't hold on long enough and the gap stabilised. So Lewis Hamilton crossed the line not only as race winner, not only as a strong contributor to a record breaking season for the team, but as a double world champion. The two Williams cars filled the remainder of the podium and Ricciardo delivered a mega drive to be so close to the podium after a pit lane start. Jenson Button finished 5th for McLaren ahead of Hulkenberg and Perez for Force India. The final double points of the season were shared out between three former world champions - Vettel in 8th, Alonso in 9th and Raikkonen in 10th.
The Final Bonus Points Championship Points Winners of 2014
While the FIA decided that Abu Dhabi was worth twice as many points as any other race - the same does not work here and the standard points system will be applied.
- 25pts - Daniel Ricciardo - Almost a pits to podium performance, in a car which doesn't have the advantage of the one Vettel used to perform the same feat previously in Abu Dhabi
- 18pts - Felipe Massa - Gave Mercedes and Hamilton a lot of pressure in the race and did threaten to steal a win on actual car pace
- 15pts - Lewis Hamilton - I suppose that winning a world championship deserves some degree of points based recognition
- 12pts - Nico Rosberg - For having the will and motivation to continue, and despite being branded as cold and calculating was magnanimous in losing out in the end to Hamilton
- 10pts - Jenson Button - Top five again with more racing with Alonso, wouldn't that be a nice pairing eh Ron?
- 8pts - Jean-Eric Vergne - That fight with Ricciardo may have only lasted a few corners but it was brilliant
- 6pts - Will Stevens - Has to be awarded a selection of points for having the audacity to defend against a Ferrari with a Caterham, and for bringing the car home at the end in one piece.
- 4pts - Daniel Kvyat - Mixing it with the world champions including a great pass on Raikkonen before the car broke down
- 2pts - Pastor Maldonado - Those flames looked brilliant in the night
- 1pt - Fernando Alonso - Wins most amusing radio comment of the day when encountering Will Stevens, and is rewarded with a bonus point.
The Final Penalty Points Championship Winners of 2014
The final race of the season doesn't always work out for everyone, and for everyone else there are penalty points...
- The Stewards - If Vergne's pass was a legitimate move, when forcing Ricciardo wide - how was Hulkenberg on Magnussen worse... especially considering it was in the melee that is the opening lap...
- Mercedes - With all that money, and all that performance how hard is it to make two cars that work... seriously
- The Opposition - I have to issue a penalty point to the theatre company perched menacingly at the top of this hill, mostly for existing, but for not being terrible... that is most irritating.
Looking ahead to... 2015
That's all folks, as they say. 2014 is all wrapped up and packed away in the dusty annuls of history, and those annuls will say Mercedes dominated and only when they messed up did anyone else get a look in. They would be right, unequivocally so but that by no means tells the entire story of the season we have all witnessed unfold since that early morning start in March (although for me it was the TV recorder that did the early wake up). There have been some outstanding battles along the way - Vettel vs Alonso in Silverstone, Force India vs Williams and Hamilton vs Rosberg in Bahrain and Vergne vs the world in Singapore. We've had cars punching holes in walls, sailing through the air and racing within millimetres of each other. A season with the tremendous highs of Bahrain, Germany and Canada - the calm inactivity of Sochi and the worrying lows of Suzuka. Of the back of such an undulating year of competition the teams now plough head first into the winter development race - striving not only to build better, faster machines but for some to ensure they make the grid in the first place.
In 2015 we will have at least one new rookie driver, a new engine manufacturer and a new racetrack. With so much more yet to be decided, who will drive for McLaren, where is Fernando Alonso going, will Manor GP rise from the financial ruin of Marussia and make it to Australia and finally and most importantly when will we see Jules Bianchi recover and return to the formula one grid.
