16th December 2020
Damien Smith
He hadn’t led the title chase all year. In fact, Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber was better placed to become world champion in 2010 – until everything was turned on its head at the Abu Dhabi finale. Sebastian Vettel took pole position and won the race ahead of Lewis Hamilton, as Webber struggled home eighth and Ferrari dropped a strategy clanger as its new star frontman Fernando Alonso found himself caught up behind Renault’s Vitaly Petrov for 40 laps. Powerless to pass, the Spaniard – who led the points ahead of the climax –finished seventh, and Vettel shot from third to the top of the table for the first time that year. At the only time when it really counted.
But if there was some fortune at play in his first world championship, this had been no fluke. Vettel and the Austrian energy drinks brand he drove for came to dominate the first years of F1’s most recent decade, to complete a perfect run of four consecutive drivers’ and teams’ titles. Move over Ferrari, McLaren and Williams (by now struggling as a lowly independent): here was a fresh, young bull in the field – and it held the higher ground.
Red Bull meant little to anyone when the logo emerged in the mid-1990s on the side of the Saubers. But by 2005, founder Dietrich Mateschitz and his friend, ex-F1 driver and Formula 3000 team owner Helmut Marko, had taken over the shambles that was Jaguar Racing, then installed bright and ambitious Christian Horner to run it – who, crucially, lured Adrian Newey from McLaren to design their cars around Renault’s new 2.4-litre V8s as F1 kissed goodbye to screaming 3.0-litre V10s. Then when a happy-go-lucky kid from Germany joined them, after a memorable shock win at Monza in 2008 for the sister Toro Rosso squad, the potent new axis of F1 power was complete.
Jenson Button and Brawn GP might have pulled the rug on everyone in 2009, but by mid-season it was clear that Vettel and Red Bull were fastest. The following year proved to be a classic as Webber showed his mettle, the team-mates colliding in calamity in Turkey. Hamilton too found himself under pressure when champion Button surprised everyone by joining McLaren – and surprised everyone again by outshining Lewis on more occasions than expected. Meanwhile, Alonso, newly arrived at Ferrari from Renault, began empire-building in a search for redemption after his damaging and controversial one-off season at McLaren back in 2007.
Then there was the new Silver Arrows, as Brawn morphed into the first Mercedes factory F1 team since 1955, spearheaded by an all too familiar old face. Michael Schumacher had looked lost in retirement since stepping down from Ferrari at the end of 2006, and now he was back with the manufacturer with whom it had all started for him in Group C sports cars so many years before. But F1 had moved on in the three years he’d been out and Schumacher was no longer the relentless force of old. Three seasons later, and with no further victories to add to his record tally of 91, he retired for good, only to suffer catastrophic head injuries in a skiing accident from which he’ll likely never fully recover.
In comparison to the Schumacher-Byrne-Brawn Ferrari era of 10 years previous, there was so much potential for a wide open and deeply competitive F1 in this new decade. But Vettel and Red Bull ripped up the script. In perfect harmony with Newey’s aerodynamic masterpiece, the RB7, Seb trounced everyone in 2011 to claim 11 victories and a comfortable second title. Webber no longer had an answer to him, Button outscored a troubled Hamilton, and Alonso realised just how steep a challenge he faced to drag Ferrari back to the pinnacle. He worked wonders when he could, but against such a consistently strong Vettel-Red Bull combo there would be no miracle.
But he almost pulled it off in 2012. Three wins to Vettel’s five and a string of 10 other podium finishes left Alonso just three points shy of the now three-time champion. Somehow Vettel’s luck held at the Interlagos finale when he was spun around on the first lap by Bruno Senna’s Williams. Hobbled by visible damage to his Red Bull, Vettel toiled in changeable weather as the title destiny swung back and forth between him and Alonso. But as the Ferrari finished second to Button’s McLaren, Seb just did enough to claim the sixth place he needed to top the points again.
Alonso had missed his chance of becoming champion in red. In 2013, Vettel and Red Bull once again reigned supreme in a manner similar to the 2011 season. Thirteen wins matched Schumacher’s one-season record from 2004, and nine in succession equalled Alberto Ascari’s consecutive mark from 1952-53. There was controversy early on when Vettel stamped on Webber in the ‘Multi-21’ team orders row in Malaysia, but while it showed a flaw in the champion’s character it mattered little in defining the title outcome.
But then everything changed. F1’s love affair with V8s was over, as a new breed of 1.6-litre turbos ushered in the hybrid era that would supposedly bring grand prix racing closer into line with the wider automotive business. And as 2014 dawned, it became eminently clear that both Renault and Ferrari had underestimated the challenge. Up to this point, Mercedes had made progress in its bid for F1 superiority but not at a rate that would seriously threaten Red Bull. The Silver Arrows had beaten Ferrari to second in the constructors’ table in 2013, but languished 236 points behind the champion team. But now as Red Bull raged at Renault’s fall from grace, a perfectly realised marriage between a well-honed chassis and a game-changing powertrain kickstarted a new era that still shows no sign of flagging.
Hamilton made the best move of his life when he responded to Niki Lauda’s overtures on behalf of Mercedes at the end of 2012, and was finally convinced to leave McLaren when team principal Brawn explained the plan in detail over a cup of tea in his mum’s kitchen. Still the mercurial talent from that remarkable rookie campaign in 2007, Hamilton had nevertheless shown a worrying inconsistency, not to mention an emotional and intellectual vulnerability, in the years that followed. But the weaknesses would be ironed out as he thrived at the heart of the Mercedes super-team. Brawn would make way for Toto Wolff, entrepreneur, ex-amateur racer and all-round sharp cookie – but that would only propel Hamilton’s progress further into the stratosphere that has led to six more world titles and a roster of pole positions and race victories to surpass even Schumacher. Back in 2010, as the decade dawned, no one could have predicted that.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing, of course. Old karting buddy Nico Rosberg was the cause of a glitch in 2016 when he surprised everyone, Lewis included, by grinding out a hard-fought campaign. Poor luck and uncharacteristic reliability problems for Hamilton helped, but Keke’s son deserved his title, the immense effort it took pushing him to quit F1 almost immediately after he was crowned. But Hamilton learnt so much from that misfire; he refocused and came back stronger. Pity poor Valtteri Bottas, the man who lucked into Rosberg’s seat and has regularly shown the pace to match Hamilton – just not when it counts most on Sundays.
As for Alonso, the Ferrari marriage ended in bitter recrimination and led to the most unlikely reunion with McLaren. But this was not the team he’d almost won a title for in 2007. The failure of a partnership with Honda that never got close to echoing the Senna-Prost glory days drove him out of F1 – but now he is ready to return, for a third stint with Renault (soon to be renamed Alpine). What awaits the great Spanish warrior now?
And what’s next for Vettel? In the first hybrid season, he found himself falling behind promising young team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and soon made the big switch to Ferrari, in an effort to emulate his hero and friend Schumacher. But like Alonso, Vettel has fallen short and even worse, has spiralled into personal decline. He now hopes to regenerate into his old self at Aston Martin, the new name for the team we currently recognise as Racing Point.
Red Bull’s relationship with Renault finally fell apart two years ago as it picked up the Honda partnership and embarrassed McLaren by making the Japanese V6 work, in harness with the sensational Max Verstappen. But with Honda soon to withdraw, a sign of F1’s failure to stay in tune with the needs of the world’s major car makers, the team’s future prospects remain cloudy. Just how far can Verstappen’s patience be stretched?
F1 has come a long way in 10 years – never mind since 1950 when the world championship was first wheeled into the light. Nothing usually remains the same for long. Hell, even Bernie Ecclestone couldn’t go on forever: he found himself surplus to the requirements of new commercial rights holder Liberty Media in 2017. For now, Mercedes looks set to stretch the longest, most devastatingly effective winning streak far into the new decade. But the bigger picture of the real world in which the F1 bubble exists threatens to impose new restrictions and significant hurdles for the ancient sport of grand prix racing.
After 70 colourful, mesmerising, at times frustrating, at times simply wonderful years, old certainties are now undermined. So what will happen next? We can have no idea. Which only makes F1 all the more captivating, just as it’s always been.
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.
Formula 1
F1 2010
F1 2011
F1 2012
F1 2013
F1 2014
F1 2015
F1 2016
F1 2017
F1 2018
F1 2019
Lewis Hamilton
Nico Rosberg
Sebastian Vettel
Mercedes
Red Bull
