There can only ever be one ultimate winner at the end of a Formula 1 season – in this case 2014 world champion Lewis Hamilton – but there’s always plenty of driver performances to admire throughout the grid.
So, with 24 men in total having started at least one race this year, here, in final Drivers’ Championship classification, is how they’ve rated.
Lewis Hamilton
True, armed with the fastest car and one of the most dominant in the history of F1, Hamilton may have made hard work of it, but then again, that was the reason why his triumph was ultimately so impressive: it was hard work.
Hit hard by unreliability, hit harder still by his team-mate in Spa to fall 29 points adrift of the title summit, Hamilton’s response, headlined by six victories in the final seven races, was metaphorically and literally just champion. Even Nico had to admit, in the final reckoning, that he had been beaten by the better driver.
Only in qualifying did Hamilton lag behind, suffering defeat to a team-mate on a Saturday for the first time in his F1 career. Yet there was a pertinent mitigation to this loss with Hamilton invariably devoting his efforts in Friday’s practice sessions to honing his race-day set-up.
The result, more often than not, was a comprehensive defeat of Rosberg when it counted. The final margin of title victory, 67 points, was perhaps a little harsh on Rosberg, but, nevertheless, it did not flatter the victor. If his triumph was over adversity and the negativity of unreliability and dubious driving, it was also a positive success story of spellbinding speed and belated maturity. He may have made hard work of it 2014, but he probably wouldn’t have made it all five years ago.
Nico Rosberg
If the unreliability boot had been on the other foot at Mercedes in Abu Dhabi, it would have been hard to argue that Nico Rosberg was a more deserving World Champion than Lewis Hamilton.
The cold, hard facts from the season would have suggested as much: on the 14 occasions both W05s made the finish on race day in 2014, only four times did Rosberg finish as the lead Silver Arrow – and two of those times was when his team-mate had started out of position on the grid.
However, on the flip side of that argument, it would also churlish to downplay Nico’s impressive achievements across a season in which he was finally able to definitively prove to doubters that he warrants a place at F1’s top table.
While gently mocked as ‘Britney’ in his early days by Mark Webber, Rosberg also showed he had the inner steel to go with his flowing blonde locks, notably in his response to Hamilton’s early four-race victory streak, that perfect weekend in Brazil and, yes, even by keeping his nose in to ‘prove a point’ at Spa. The ‘did he or didn’t he’ events of Q3 in Monaco also cast Rosberg in an unexpectedly Machiavellian light in some people’s eyes.
In the end though, it was that superior pace and race craft of Hamilton’s on Sundays which told in the final championship reckoning. The big question heading towards 2015 is whether Rosberg will come again or, rather like Webber’s fall into shadows following Sebastian Vettel’s first title in 2010, his best chance of title glory has already been and gone.
Daniel Ricciardo
Without doubt Daniel Ricciardo was the standout performer of 2014 after a remarkable debut season at Red Bull. Don’t be fooled by the smiley exterior, the 25-year-old proved to be a tough competitor on track.
He comprehensively outperformed his team-mate and reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel, winning the qualifying battle 12-7 and the race head-to-head 14-5. Indeed perhaps those performances played a part in Vettel leaving for Ferrari a year before his Red Bull contract expired.
Ricciardo finished the season as the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race and was always seemingly the man on hand to capitalise when Lewis Hamilton or Nico Rosberg hit strife. That ability would help him pick up three victories, including one in Hungary, which the Australian feels was a straight fight.
Valtteri Bottas
While there’s no doubting Daniel Ricciardo’s status as F1’s breakthrough star in 2014, neither can it be denied that Valtteri Bottas has done anything other than impress greatly. The Finn might not have won races or shown a four-time defending World Champion how to do it, but he still did everything that was asked of him and arguably more besides.
The final standings show Bottas fourth in the standings behind Ricciardo; more important, however, is the fact that he also wound up comfortably ahead of team-mate Felipe Massa. Only those biased beyond reason would compare the Brazilian to Sebastian Vettel but if a team-mate represents the benchmark then Bottas passed with flying colours.
Both were helped, of course, by Williams’ return to form and were it not for his contact with the wall early on in Melbourne, Bottas would have finished on the podium in the very first race.
Sebastian Vettel
What was it that Fernando Alonso said of the recently-crowned quadruple World Champion last November? Ahh, yes: “When he will have a car like the others, if he wins, he will have a great recognition and be one of the legends in F1. When one day he has a car like the others and he is fourth, fifth, seventh, these four titles will be bad news for him because people will take these four titles even in a worse manner than they are doing now. So there are interesting times for Sebastian coming.”
How resonant those words sound a year later in the wake of Sebastian’s defeat to Daniel Ricciardo, his average finishing position of fifth, and the German’s struggles – bordering on inability – to master the rear-end instability of the RB10.
In total, there were just four podium visits, and none at all to the top step where Ricciardo stood on three different occasions. But for the German’s bad luck on a few occasions, it could be termed a thrashing. Still, if you think 2014 has been a bad year for Vettel’s reputation because of Ricciardo’s exploits, spare a thought for what it did for Mark Webber’s and try not to wince.
Fernando Alonso
So, the partnership that was meant to dominate F1 has crumbled, two years early and without a single World Championship title to its name. That Alonso leaves Ferrari with the same status as when he arrived – a ‘mere’ two-time world champion – certainly reflects a case of Ferrari having failed Fernando, rather than Fernando failing Ferrari.
Such a reality was never more the case than in 2014, with the team’s hope that a move away from an aerodynamic-dominant formula would present the springboard from which to return to winning ways proving to be as flawed as the F14 T they created to suit the new engine regulations. As a result Fernando graced the podium just twice all season – and not once the top step.
The fact the Spaniard also turned what had been an eagerly-anticipated intra-team battle with Raikkonen into an effective no-contest in his favour only added further fuel to the feeling that he was still operating at his peak, even if Ferrari quite definitely weren’t. That he’s heading back to McLaren of all places shows how exasperating his time at Maranello became.
@AnthonyNlebem
AnthonyNlebem
