The F1 Season and things to look forward to in 2018 - Kevin Garside - Chief Sports Correspondent - i newspaper
The Formula One season formally closed in the exquisite surroundings of Palace of Versaille with the end of season prize giving and coronation of Lewis Hamilton IV, but we all know the work never really stops.
Behind the scenes the R&D boiler rooms are humming to the sound of heavy innovation at Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, etc. as the teams seek a way to improve the 2017 cars for next year, while in the back-office administrative staff plan schedules around testing and the revised race calendar.
The wider infrastructure around Formula One is similarly occupied at this time of year so if you want to push back against the wintery weather and plan that trip of a lifetime, to Monaco, for example, now would be the time.
I can tell you, having covered every major sport from the Olympic Games to World Cups, from Wimbledon tennis to the Masters golf in Augusta, there is no place like the Monaco Grand Prix in the last week of May, especially if you are eyeing the race through the bottom of a champagne flute from a yacht in the harbour.
Next season promises to be a classic with two four-time world champions, Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, going head-to-head for the first time in the history of the sport, and in historic marques, Mercedes and Ferrari respectively.
Hamilton was grace itself in accepting his fourth drivers’ crown from the FIA president, Jean Todt, in the Paris burbs, though he played down the possibility of eclipsing Michael Schumacher’s record of seven world titles.
“I can't see it at the moment. Four more. It has taken me ten years to achieve this four. I don't have that desire to match it. Matching Fangio (5 titles) could be quite cool. Being that I am going to be here for at least another couple of years, that is my goal to try and at least get that.
“When I am older and look back, I don't think the amount of titles I have is going to define what I am as a driver or who I am. How I work with the team, how I drive the car, every time I drive the car and extract it from the car - that's what I feel inside defines me.”
Under the aerodynamic revisions that gave us wider cars in 2017, and a return to juicy, fat tyres, Ferrari made huge strides, wiping out the advantage held by Mercedes throughout the hybrid era. Vettel led the championship from day one in Australia up to the summer break in Hungary. It was only on the resumption that cracks began to appear.
Hamilton won as expected at the power tracks of Spa and Monza, and also cleaned up in the Far East, where Vettel took himself out of the equation in a first corner crash from pole in Singapore that also claimed his Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.
That momentum shift was made permanent by Hamilton, who demonstrated how much he had raised his game by wringing every inch of performance form his car to take the title in Mexico with two races to spare.
With Max Verstappen, outscored only by Hamilton over the closing six races, and by just two points, behind the wheel of a much improved Red Bull, the prospects for 2018 are of the vintage variety. Testing resumes at the end of February over successive weeks in Barcelona before the cars are shipped to Melbourne for the season opener in the last week in March.
By the time the cars return to Europe for the fifth race of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona we will have a good idea of the power distribution. And then it’s off to Monaco for a week like no other.
