Season 2017

The biggest surprise of the season was the unexpected retirement of Nico Rosberg as World Champion just after the 2016 season came to an end at Abu Dhabi. Deprived of their World Champion the Mercedes F1 Team had to find a suitable replacement for the departing German. The found him at Williams where a deal was made that Williams would part with the Finnish driver, Williams retained Brazilian Philippe Massa alongside Lance Stroll.

In winter testing it seemed Mercedes was still in the lead when it came to pure speed, but Ferrari was able to follow them closely. The team of Red Bull Racing was expected to be a title contender and should be in front of the grid based on their awesome performance at the end of last season, but they found themselves on the back of the grid because of issues with aerodynamics and lack of reliability. The McLaren Honda team also found themselves on the shorter end of a stick with their reliability issues continuing into the 2017 season.

The season was pretty much as would be expected as Lewis Hamilton was in the lead at half season, closely followed by Sebastian Vettel. The championship would be decided by these two as neither Valtteri Bottas nor Kimi Räikkönen could cling on. Red Bull had the speed, but would not see the finish on multiple occasions.

After the summer stop it looked like Lewis Hamilton was in a world of his own, neither Ferrari or teammate Bottas where able to challenge the Brit in any way. Sebastian Vettel saw his title aspirations slowly but steadily move away from him. Bottas was criticized because he also could not match the speed of Hamilton. In the meantime the figured out what was wrong with the aerodynamics at Red Bull and fixed the car, Verstappen saw a strong race at Mexico where he was as hegemonies  as Lewis Hamilton normally was, winning the race with an enormous lead.

Of the track a lot of interesting stuff was going on, Jolyon Palmer was sacked mid-season at Renault which gave way to Carlos Sainz Junior the fill this seat. At Toro Rosso people where not happy with Daniil Kvyat (The Russian Torpedo) and he was also sacked. That meant that Toro Rosso found themselves without drivers, quickly putting WEC champion Brendon Harley and Red Bull Junior Pierre Gasley in the car. Toro Rosso also announced the arrival of Honda as there power source for the 2018 season as McLaren switched to Renault after struggling long with the reliability of the Honda engine.