Red Bull, not wanting to lose their man - particularly given rival teams making admiring noises about Verstappen and Ricciardo - held onto Sainz by only loaning him to the French marque. Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz, agitating for a top drive but with no seat materialising at parent team Red Bull Racing, landed one instead at Renault. 2017 yielded one of those rare situations where every party was happy.
#WHO WILL WIN THE 2017 F1 CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVERS#
So when rumours surfaced of a complicated political dynamic that would see engine partners change and drivers swap allegiances, even if only temporarily, it was easy to think history would prove a blocker. The needs of rivals are at best disregarded - at worst actively undermined.
Teams hunt individual advantage - and interest - both relentlessly and single-mindedly. It's not without good cause that the F1 paddock was once termed the 'Piranha Club'. Hamilton is only getting better with age. The answer? Winning six of the last 11 races, and finishing second twice and fourth twice to boot.Ĭhampionship clinched, in resounding style. Approaching the halfway mark of the year, he trailed Vettel by 20 points. He took seven more poles than Vettel (or anyone else), and led nearly double the numbers of laps Vettel did (and nearly triple Bottas). In such a closely-matched rivalry, Hamilton made the difference. Ferrari all but matched Mercedes for podiums (26 to 20) and for fastest laps (9 to 7). The calibre of Sebastian Vettel can hardly be doubted either - as indicated by the fact the German finished ahead of Valtteri Bottas. That owed much to the apparent strength of Ferrari, whose car was fast enough to earn a combined 19 front-row starts - one more than Mercedes.
#WHO WILL WIN THE 2017 F1 CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVER#
This was a historic year on a multitude of levels for the Mercedes star - he overhauled Senna and Schumacher to claim F1's all-time pole record became only the third driver in history - after Fangio and Schumacher - to score points in every race of a championship-winning season and became only the fifth driver, and first Briton, to win four or more titles.īut more than that, there is a widely-held belief that 2017 was Hamilton's finest campaign yet. Where else to start but the newly-crowned four-time world champion?
Team mate clashes, title-rival collisions, record breaking shocks, radio stars and driver swaps - with so many storylines emerging in 2017, we run through the winners and losers of a breathless and action-packed F1 campaign.
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