2014 F1 season review

December 3, 2014 at 3:38 pm by Keith Collantine
88 comments

Drivers have little room to hide when being compared with their team mate – their only rival who has the same car.
While some drivers easily had the beating of their team mates in 2014, at other teams the two were much more evenly matched.
As a result some teams faced difficult decision over which of their drivers to drop for the squad, keep for next year or – in the case of Red Bull and Toro Rosso – promote to the top team. In the latter case Jean-Eric Vergne not only missed out on his chance to move up but lost his seat as well – meanwhile his former team mate will be driving an RB11 next year.
McLaren, however, are yet to confirm whether Jenson Button or Kevin Magnussen will be retained for 2015.
Four key pieces of data have been used below to compare how each pair of team mates performed during 2014: who qualified ahead (ignoring penalties and sessions where one driver did not set a time), who finished the race ahead (ignoring non-classifications), how many racing laps each spent ahead of the other, and who scored the most championship points.
Mercedes: Lewis Hamilton vs Nico Rosberg

Lewis HamiltonNico Rosberg0%25%50%75%100%Qualified aheadFinished aheadLaps spent aheadTeam points
Lewis Hamilton Nico Rosberg
Qualified ahead 38.89 61.11
Finished ahead 71.43 28.57
Laps spent ahead 49.18 50.82
Team points 54.78 45.22



45.22



Mercedes were so far ahead of their rivals, and their racers were so evenly matched, the battle for the drivers’ championship seldom involved any other competitors. And while the team were concerned unreliability might play a deciding role, that turned out not to be the case.
Nico Rosberg became the first of Lewis Hamilton’s team mates to out-qualify him over the course of a season since Fernando Alonso in 2007 – and that was back when drivers qualified with their starting fuel loads. However Hamilton was usually he quicker of the two on race day, and often made that advantage count: hence his eleven wins to Rosberg’s five.




Williams: Felipe Massa vs Valtteri Bottas


Felipe MassaValtteri Bottas0%25%50%75%100%Qualified aheadFinished aheadLaps spent aheadTeam points
Felipe Massa Valtteri Bottas
Qualified ahead 31.58 68.42
Finished ahead 53.33 46.67
Laps spent ahead 52.42 47.58
Team points 41.88 58.12



41.88



In his second season of F1 Valtteri Bottas showed up very well once again. However towards the end of the season Felipe Massa looked to be back to his best and finished ahead of his team mate in the last three races.


One driver ahead

Red Bull: Sebastian Vettel vs Daniel Ricciardo


Sebastian VettelDaniel Ricciardo0%25%50%75%100%Qualified aheadFinished aheadLaps spent aheadTeam points
Sebastian Vettel Daniel Ricciardo
Qualified ahead 36.84 63.16
Finished ahead 21.43 78.57
Laps spent ahead 48.12 51.88
Team points 41.23 58.77



Daniel Ricciardo



Daniel Ricciardo’s successful first season at Red Bull and the defeats he inflicted on four-times champion Sebastian Vettel made him one of the most talked-about drivers in 2014, and deservedly so.
The contest between the two wasn’t quite as one-sided as it might have seemed – Vettel defeated Mark Webber at the same team much more emphatically last year. But nonetheless Ricciardo more than justified his promotion to the four-times champions – a move which some questioned when it was announced last year




Ferrari: Fernando Alonso vs Kimi Raikkonen


Fernando AlonsoKimi Raikkonen0%25%50%75%100%Qualified aheadFinished aheadLaps spent aheadTeam points
Fernando Alonso Kimi Raikkonen
Qualified ahead 84.21 15.79
Finished ahead 93.75 6.25
Laps spent ahead 84.64 15.36
Team points 74.54 25.46



6.25



The most one-sided team mate battle in 2014 occurred at the only team with two world champions in its line-up. Fernando Alonso was rarely headed by Kimi Raikkonen, who despite a couple of false dawns never got the Ferrari F14 T handling to his liking.
It would have been fascinating to see whether Raikkonen might have fared better against Alonso with the benefit of a second season at Ferrari, or whether he would have been humbled by Alonso in the same way Massa was during their four years as team mates.
But with Alonso moving on, Raikkonen will now go up against another champion – Vettel – in what promises to be one of the most absorbing driver duels of 2015.---Spanky, spanky!
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/12/0...-battles-2014/

What I find very interesting about these statistics is that at Williams, when Felipe's rig was running he slightly spanked Bottas in laps lead and finishing position.