Lucky and unlucky seasons
- This topic has 7 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 8 months ago by
.
- Posts
I thought this would make quite an interesting topic, as it involves the discussion of F1 drivers who you felt had particularly unfortunate seasons, and drivers who by contrast were lucky to achieve what they did that year. I’ll start with two of each from the last ten seasons, although feel free to include drivers’ seasons from any point in F1 history.
Unlucky seasons
– Mark Webber (Williams-Cosworth, 2006). Mark wringed some great performances from the Williams-Cosworth but unfortunately most of them were ruined by mechanical failures. He was leading his home race when his car let him down, was running third and pushing Alonso and Raikkonen hard in Monaco (having started on the front row after Schumacher’s exclusion) and was again let down by his engine, while he would probably have finished in the top five at Hockenheim but for another failure ten laps from home. His season that year was a lot better than his points tally suggests.
– Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari, 2008). Okay, maybe not Kimi’s greatest season, and he was to blame for his crash into Sutil in Monaco and losing control in Belgium on the penultimate lap. However, there was not an awful lot he could do about Hamilton piling into the back of his car in the Montreal pits, or the exhaust problem in Magny Cours costing him a victory which would have got his title challenge back on track, or the engine failure in Valencia. He seemed too disinterested to win the title that year but he’d have been a lot closer without that poor fortune, and both of his early season wins (Malaysia and Spain) were undeniably on merit, as his lost wins in France and Belgium would have been.Lucky seasons
– Alex Wurz (Williams-Toyota, 2007). Much slower than Rosberg in qualifying that year and while he did better in the races. His drive in mixed conditions at the Nurburgring was good and nearly delivered a podium finish, but his actual third place result in Canada was fortunate and largely dependent on the advantageous running of a one-stop strategy in a race with four safety car periods. His team-mate was faster all weekend and could have been up there instead had it not been for the rule making it illegal for cars short of fuel to pit under the safety car (I can understand why the FIA wanted to discourage this, but it was extremely unfair and scuppered promising races for no real offence). He was ahead of Rosberg in the standings for much of the season even though the younger man was in contention for point finishes on merit far more often.
– Nelson Piquet Jr (Renault, 2008). Made a dismal start to the campaign with just two points in the first nine races. The German GP was a typical performance as he was knocked out in Q1 and made little progress, until the safety car turned the race on its head and he somehow found himself in the lead. I’m still thankful that Hamilton overtook him as he would have been IMO by far the worst (and luckiest) driver to win a Grand Prix in my lifetime. Even so, his second place was very flukey and he was helped by Massa’ lacklustre final stint. His results improved after that but this was more down to the improvement in the car’s performance (shown by Alonso advancing from the midfield to the sharp end). He then ‘earned’ a new contract by helping Alonso with the Singapore GP by his deliberate crash at the opportune moment and his tally of 19 points flattered him (contrast this to the less fortunate Sebastien Bourdais’ total of 4). His luck ran out the following year and he was dropped, pointless, after the summer break.I look forward to reading your comments and suggestions and if you disagree my choices please feel free to say so.
Giancarlo Fisichella winning the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix for Jordan was lucky in an unlucky season for him. The race was suspended early due to a heavy accident involving Fernando Alonso’s Renault, a driver error from Kimi Räikkönen had let Fisichella take the lead on the exact lap the race results were taken from, and in the pit lane after the race was red flagged Fisichella’s car caught fire! He only scored points just once more all season after suffering from many mechanical problems.
Lewis Hamilton was very unlucky in 2012. He ended up only two points ahead of Button in the standings, but that does not represent the quality of his driving that season.
Vettel was unlucky in 2010 despite winning the title. As fans I guess we were lucky he suffered some bad luck. If his car had been more reliable he would have won the title a lot more comfortably.Unlucky Seasons
-Hamilton (McLaren, 2012)
As a Lewis fan, his sheer amount of bad luck that season was almost unbearable to watch. First there was the double pitstop blunder in Bahrain, then had his pole stripped in Spain (and a likely win), got Maldonadoed in Valencia, puncture in Germany, gearbox failure in Singapore, anti-roll bar failure in Korea, mechanical failure in Abu Dhabi, and finally had Hulkenburg crashed into him in Brazil. Without all of that, he would have at least be a serious title challenger win 8 wins, if not have won it. I even remember someone wrote an entire article addressing how that season might have been had the title challengers not have any issues in the race. Lewis would have been crowned in 2012 instead of Vettel.
-Raikkonen (McLaren, 2005)
Most people agree that McLaren was a heck of a package in 2005. But the MP4-20 was too fast and too fragile. He had a whopping 7 technical failures that year, which took 3 race wins away from him. On pure pace, he was much faster than JPM that season, leading the way in both Qualifying and the Race. He was arguably even faster than Alonso that year too, how things have changed 10 years later…Jacques Villeneuve have had mechanical failures in virtually every race in 1999 hadn’t he? Also Massa was very unlucky in 2009. He had a lot of problems in the first races and then was hit by a spring in Hungary.
Heikki Kovalainen in 2008 was pretty unlucky. Yes, he did luck into a win at the Hungaroring, and ultimately Hamilton was the better driver, but Heikki had some very bad luck – mechanical failures, safetey car (Melbourne), I think he had to start Monaco from the back after a problem on the grid, he had a big crash in Barcelona through no fault of his own and so on.
I followed his season closely as I was a big fan, so it was quite frustrating to see things go wrong so often.
It must be hard to top Niki Lauda in 1985 for one of the unluckiest title defences of all time. There’s a summary of the many, many things which went wrong for him in his final season here:
Hamilton vs Rosberg: How reliability has decided team mates’ title battles
Re: Heikki, I agree he was rather unlucky in the early part of 2008. However, he failed to impress in the latter half of that campaign – he did get a fair bit of luck with his extremely fortuitous Hungarian GP victory and it was rare to see him ahead of a Ferrari, costing McLaren the WCC.
Couldn’t agree more about Lewis Hamilton in 2012 though, the amount of misfortune he endured that season was ridiculous. The Singapore engine failure was perhaps the most unfortunate moment, as at that stage he was second in the championship. At the very least he should have finished third – he was certainly better than Webber that season and faster than Raikkonen (whose championship position was mostly due to consistency). Perhaps it was no wonder he left McLaren to join Mercedes (at a time when McLaren was clearly the more competitive of those two teams and a Mercedes withdrawal may have been just a couple of poor years away).
Another unlucky one I’ve thought of is Mark Webber (again!) in 2007, his first year at Red Bull, when he lost a possible podium finish in Fuji when Vettel hit him behind the safety car, was running strongly in Brazil when he suffered an engine failure and was generally quick but had a very unreliable car that season which often let him down in good positions. Coulthard finished four points above him in the standings but Webber clearly had the more impressive year (the only potential points DC lost through a failure were I think in Bahrain).
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.