Copyright © 1997, 2018 Glenn B. Manishin.
Our history of F1 has typically separated eras by major developments in Formula One technology, car design or national dominance. But after 2012, the biggest change in the sport, justifying its own chapter, was the move by Lewis Hamilton from McLaren — where he had spent his entire career since a teenager — to the Mercedes AMG team. With the impeccable timing that has marked great F1 champions, Lewis arrived at Mercedes at the pivotal moment to capitalize on the team’s revival as a constructor, something the now-retired (again) Michael Schumacher never was able to experience. He was helped immeasurably, as shall be seen, by an upcoming 2014 switch to small, turbo-powered, hybrid “power units,” a change so jarring and revolutionary its ramifications are still being felt throughout the F1 circus to this day.
2013
But first Hamilton and the rest of the paddock had to deal with Sebastian Vettel’s continued mastery of his Red Bull RB9 in 2013. The German would be shooting for his 4th drivers’ title in a row, something even the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio could not achieve. It was an F1 season of two halves. The first was defined by rapidly degrading and unreliable Pirelli tires, throwing race strategies into chaos as a result. The second was owned by Seb Vettel, who emerged victorious in all nine GPs, consecutively, after the traditional August summer recess — an all-time Formula One record — in total taking 13 of the season’s 19 races and standing on the podium 16 times.
Lotus made a flying start, its E21 chassis sufficiently gentle on fragmenting Pirellis to allow Kimi Räikkönen the luxury of a two-stop strategy (one fewer than rivals) in Melbourne, despite qualifying only 7th, to take an impressive opening-race win at the Australian GP. It would prove to be the only victory for this reincarnated F1 franchise before reverting to Renault branding and once again burying the iconic Team Lotus marque. That was followed by the first of several squabbles between Vettel and Red Bull teammate Mark Webber at Sepang in Malaysia, where Vettel disobeyed team orders to ease the pace (“turn down the engines”) near the end of the race — in order to save tires and bring the cars home — launched a near-suicide attack on Webber from P2, and won. “Mark is too slow, get him out of the way, he’s too slow,” Vettel urged on the team radio, to no avail. Complaining that Vettel “made his own decisions today and will have protection as usual,” Webber challenged Seb about the team’s “multi 21” code before they took to the rostrum, and the faces on the podium were rather glum.
The excitement factor in F1 may be dissipated by many things, and one driver winning all but six of the 19 Grands Prix comes high on the list. Hardly the fault of Sebastian or Adrian Newey or anyone from Red Bull, who simply did the job better than their rivals, but unpredictability – in terms of who would win – rather went out of the window.
— Nigel Roebuck | Motor Sport—
At the Monaco GP in May, Nico Rosberg fended off Red Bull pressure to score an impressive victory, becoming became the first Formula One son to emulate his father by winning in the Principality, spraying the champagne exactly 30 years later. This was the race in which Sergio Perez proved that overtaking is still possible in F1 by pulling off a couple of daring passes on Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso before pushing his luck one time too many with Räikkönen. And there were crashes aplenty. Felipe Massa was involved in two huge shunts at St. Devote — the Brazilian lost the car under braking in FP3 
before going off in exactly the same place during the race — and Perez plowed into Räikkönen coming out of the tunnel. But perhaps the most spectacular-looking of all accidents occurred when Chilton moved across on Maldonado, scarily launching his Williams into the air before he struck the barriers at Tabac.
There were loads of controversial issues with tires throughout the season. Pirelli had quietly been directed (by whom remains a bit unclear) to make its compounds softer, in order to improve the “show,” but they proved inconsistent and frankly amateurish. At Shanghai, for instance, because the soft Pirellis lasted only a few laps, in qualifying everyone waited. When time was running out, the drivers completed only one lap, while Vettel and Button opted for the medium compound, sacrificing grid position. That allowed Alonso in his Ferrari F138 to twice overtake Vettel and claim the win. For the first half of the year, tires were so delicate as to reduce a Grand Prix to an economy run, causing Lewis Hamilton, in response to radio suggestions that he “watch his tires,” to yell back “I can’t drive any slower!” (Some people relished this phenomenon, suggesting it made for the unpredictability everyone supposedly craves; it seemed not to matter that it was contrived.) Later, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in June, won by Rosberg from Hamilton, was blighted by a controversial spate of punctures. It was a nightmarish situation, approached in emotion and abstruse engineering only by a highly technical debate over the legality of “off-throttle blown diffusers.”
Despite having a far-from-competitive ride with Ferrari, Alonso impressively managed to salvage 2nd in the final standings — albeit 155 points south of Vettel. Webber had a dignified but disappointing swan song in his final F1 season, managing not to win a single race before departing F1 for sports cars. Räikkönen fell out of love with Lotus-Renault during the season’s course, with relations frayed because the team failed to match his efforts, or pay his salary. At venerable McLaren, things went south in a hurry. Celebrating 50 years in F1, the team endured its least successful season, with not a single podium to show. In contrast, the 2013 season recorded a number of high points for Mercedes recruit Hamilton, including a maiden win for the new team in Hungary, suggesting his departure from McLaren was well-timed. But Lewis must have been wondering what he let himself in for earlier on in the season when he started on the front row in Barcelona at the Spanish GP but soon slipped back as far as 14th. As Hamilton started sliding down the field, he noted to his team in horror, “I’ve just been overtaken by a Williams!” Yes, a Williams. The second most successful team in the history of Formula One. How times have changed! Hamilton finished 4th in the World Championship — ahead of Kimi, who retired with engine failure from the finale in Abu Dhabi — while in a sign of times to come, recording an impressive five pole positions.
Vettel’s complete lockout of 2013’s second half surprised many. David Coulthard opined midway that “Sebastian, Räikkönen, Alonso and Lewis — four world champions separated by less than the points on offer for two race wins — lugging it out down the stretch; that is enough to get even the most jaded Formula One fan out of his seat.” How wrong he was, as those remarkable nine straight wins and 11 consecutive podiums turned what seemed like a close championship fight into a cake walk. Pirelli turned up with 2012 tires in Germany, where cars were suddenly restored to something like full potential. Vettel scored his maiden home victory and the balance of power wasn’t so much altered as confirmed. At Monza, another ultra-quick circuit where the Red Bull’s straight-line speed could prosper, Sebastian was again basically unopposed. 
By now it was clear, as Nigel Roebuck observed, that Red Bull had “moved into a zone of superiority unknown since the days of the ‘active’ Williams FW14B.” Vettel’s remarkable talent was on full display in race 19 at Interlagos. Rosberg made a stunning start. Vettel was looking to shut out Alonso and left the door open for the Mercedes driver to grab the early lead. But it did not take Vettel long to reassert his authority; he got Rosberg back a mere lap later and by the 5th lap, his lead was a remarkable 5s. 
Yet for all his superiority (clinching the title in the 4th-to-last race at Buddh Intl. Circuit in New Delhi), Vettel still struggled to attract the kind of accolades afforded to drivers with lesser track records, largely because he was perceived to have done most of his winning in the best car.
Seb proved, despite his relative youth, to be an engaging and intelligent driver, confident enough not to listen too much to what the PR people told him, willing to say things controversial or even amusing without fear of upsetting the team or the sponsors. Characteristically, FIA president Jean Todt told Seb off for doing doughnuts after winning races. (The first time Vettel did doughnuts, the team was punished for not insisting that the driver return the car to parc ferme.) Vettel replied with a satiric, funny impersonation of the diminutive Frenchman at the post-season Autosport F1 Awards in December. And although the one-sided nature of the 2013 season may have had F1 newbies and fickle fans turning off, Hollywood succeeded in bringing Formula One to the masses as never before. Ron Howard’s cinematic adaptation of the epic 1976 title battle between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, Rush, hit the silver screen in September, to critical and commercial acclaim. With its tale of two flatly opposite personalities battling for F1 supremacy, the movie too was a prescient sign of things to come.
— Richard Williams | The Guardian—
The 2013 season had been scheduled to see the addition of the Grand Prix of America to the calendar — to take place on a new street circuit above the cliffs of the Hudson River facing the New York City skyline — back-to-back with the Canadian GP. Shortly after the race was given a provisional date, however, Bernie Ecclestone admitted that F1’s contract with organizers been nullified. The collapse of the race was publicly attributed to failure to get all necessary permits from multiple branches of state and federal government, but many suspected it was the sky-high licensing fees charged by the magnate, which have threatened even classic venues like Silverstone. To top it off, Ecclestone surprised almost everyone by announcing late in 2013 that during the next season, “double points” would be awarded to the winner of the final race in Abu Dhabi, in an effort to ensure a season-ending cliffhanger. Vettel and Formula One purists were not pleased at all.
2014
The year 2014 ushered in the most significant rule changes in F1 history, with normally aspirated, 2.4-liter V8 engines replaced by new, 1.6-liter turbocharged V6 “power units” (no longer officially called engines) integrated with complex, hybrid energy recovery systems (ERS) that FIA claimed “gave the sport a much cleaner and greener image more relevant to developing road car technologies.” Teams now had to complete races on 100kg of fuel — around 30% less than in 2013 — with a limit on “fuel flow” per minute and drivers allowed only five rather than eight engines for the entire season. Blown diffusers, which had been a controversial performance differentiator for Red Bull in previous seasons, were banned. (Car design also featured revoltingly ugly “platypus” noses, due to a technical rule change requiring reduced height for the front suspension in order to avoid spearing drivers in collisions.)
The result was slow, unreliable and uncharacteristically quiet cars. Ecclestone himself, a long-time critic of the pending switch to the new-generation engines, was “horrified” by the softness at the season-opening GP in Australia, vowing to find a way of “making them sound like racing cars.” But while the re-introduction of titanium skid plates — and sparks — would help a bit in 2015, the racing consequence of the new specifications in their freshman year was that Red Bull and Ferrari came out of the box with a huge horsepower disadvantage to Mercedes, from which neither team could recover. No one — not Renault, not Ferrari, not even Honda — ever figured out how to match the Germans for speed and efficiency under the new constraints.
— Paul Weaver | The Guardian —
The upshot was an F1 season reminiscent of McLaren’s iconic 1988, totally dominated by the Mercedes tandem of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Though Mercedes deserved full credit for letting their men race without team orders the entire season, it still was a two-man battle all the way. Their fight was mostly clean, despite underlying friction that only occasionally broke into the open, as at the Belgian GP, when Rosberg made an error of judgment and caused a collision between the two at the start of the race, costing both drivers the victory.
Between them, the Silver Arrows duo captured 16 GPs, 12 front row lockouts, 18 pole positions and the most constructors’ points ever — while bringing home 1-2 finishes 11 times — completely rewriting the F1 record book. Nonetheless, the World Championship would still not be decided until the last race, eight months and 18 GPs after Nico Rosberg won in Melbourne, where Hamilton’s car sputtered with an electrical malfunction.
The calendar saw serious changes too. A new Russian Grand Prix (the first in a century) was held at the Sochi Autodrom, and the Austrian GP was revived at a re-named Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. F1 put the Indian GP on hiatus, while the Korean GP was deleted entirely. As did the line-up; Ferrari said ciao to Massa, replaced by Kimi, and fellow Aussie Daniel Ricciardo took over Webber’s seat in the No. 2 Red Bull. None of that made any difference. Hamilton won four races in succession after Australia — at Sepang, Sakhir, Shanghai and Catalunya — to take the points lead. But after Rosberg’s controversial off down the escape road at Mirabeau during qualifying in Monaco, which effectively clinched pole position by denying Hamilton a final shot, the German won to get his nose back in front. Rosberg then extended his lead with a well-deserved 2nd place in the Canadian GP when Hamilton retired with the same ERS/rear brake problem the German was forced to limp home with. Yet over at Red Bull, even Adrian Newey’s design genius could not offset the terrible non-performance by the Renault power units bolted to the back of his RB10 chassis. Vettel had a horrible year, frequently out-paced by Ricciardo, who emerged victorious at Montreal after finishing 2nd to Rosberg in Melbourne (only to be excluded for an unapproved fuel flow rate sensor), placing 3rd in Spain and Monaco and 4th in Bahrain and China. Ricciardo won the three races Mercedes did not, while Vettel never mastered the under-powered engine and went oddly winless.
In the end, even the gimmicky double points on the table for winning the Abu Dhabi finale at Yas Marina — properly jettisoned the next season — did not matter either. Although Hamilton had twice as many victories as Rosberg (11 to 5) and led the German by 17 points, the new scoring meant that Rosberg’s chances of winning the title were double what they should be under the regular points system. Not that Nico was a backmarker. 
Despite a reputation of being less quick than Hamilton, whose natural speed has never been questioned, Rosberg bested Lewis in qualifying, winning 10 poles to Hamilton’s seven, and was more consistent to boot. But during the race itself, Rosberg ran into one technical problem after another with his Mercedes W04 (ERS, brakes, etc.) and finished in P14 after starting on pole. Still, there was much relief that the driver with the most victories claimed the World Championship in the end: a dramatic duel “F1 did not deserve.” The man himself was so overcome with emotion after the race, calling it “the greatest day in my life,” that he kept his helmet on for several minutes, hiding tears from the television cameras, until just before mounting the podium — where Rosberg broke protocol to join him in celebration. Britain too celebrated joyously, helped by Prince Harry referring to Lewis as a “living legend” over team radio on the last lap.
— Nigel Roebuck | Motor Sport —
Two tragedies shocked the F1 fraternity in 2014…and still hang over the sport today. Michael Schumacher suffered a freak off piste skiing accident in the Alps late in 2013 that left him in a vegetative coma, ironically after surviving 22 years as a Grand Prix racing driver with barely the scratch of but one broken leg. Then there was the calamity of Jules Bianchi’s accident. On a wet track at twilight in practice for the Japanese GP at Suzuka in October, the young Marussia driver spun out of control and into a crane that was clearing away a car from a previous shunt. 
(The Marussia team declared bankruptcy shortly after, closing down without competing in the final three races.) Bianchi succumbed months later to massive head injuries and in 2018 his death, together with Massa’s 2009 helmet first run-in with Ruebens’ flying spring, would propel FIA’s Jean Todt to impose the much-maligned “Halo” protection system on open-cockpit F1 cars.
Until Bianchi’s accident dwarfed all else, the major story of that Japanese weekend had been the unexpected news that Vettel and Red Bull — for nearly five years the dominant partnership in Grand Prix racing — were to part. It was late on Thursday evening when Seb told the team of his decision; the following morning they lost no time informing the paddock, mischievously adding that Vettel would be a Ferrari driver in 2015. Alonso reacted to the announcement by jumping ship to McLaren at season end, his business acumen a poor second to consummate driving skill as Woking would continue its downward trajectory. The failure of Ferrari in ’15, in which the team posted not a single victory, generated a carnage of personnel changes like none seen in decades. Maranello fired both the team’s sporting director, Stefano Domenicali, and corporate chairman Luca di Montezemolo, who had architected the Scuderia’s greatest era. An F1 season which began without noise thus ended with a loud clatter that still echos.
2015
The preeminent theme of F1 in 2015 was a Hamilton v. Rosberg reprise, but with hints of the true saga yet to come. Mercedes AMG simply trounced the field again. Altogether, the Mercedes pair won 16 of the 19 GPs — 10 for Hamilton, six for Rosberg — and finished 1-2 in 12 races, most of them unremarkable. The 2nd-straight season of devastating success by the Silver Arrows ultimately yielded more points (703) than Ferrari (428) and Williams (257), 2nd and 3rd in the championship, combined. It was so lopsided from so early in the season that Red Bull’s Christian Horner, of all F1 characters, astonishingly called for implementation of an “equalisation” mechanism to erase Mercedes’ performance advantage.
Nico Rosberg was the underdog, the challenger most didn’t take seriously until late in the schedule. Lewis Hamilton had beaten Nico already as teammates and was defending and two-time World Champion. Right from the start, Hamilton looked comfortable and incredibly quick; to Rosberg’s surprise, unlike 2014, Lewis was also more often the driver on pole. And he was stronger in race-trim as well. Hamilton won easily in Australia, before being beaten in the surprise of the season at Sepang, where Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari demonstrated how much progress they had made by capturing the Malaysian GP. 
Thereafter things settled down again for Mercedes, with Hamilton victorious in Bahrain and China, to equal the late Ayrton Senna’s tally of 41 Formula One victories, before Rosberg beat him from pole at Barcelona. Hamilton should have won the Monaco GP comfortably after securing pole position on a circuit where overtaking is all but impossible, but his commanding lead — opening up a 24s gap over Rosberg as the race wound go down to its final 10 laps — misled Mercedes’ strategists into an ill-conceived, late-race pit stop that cost their man his most deserved success of the year. Rosberg took the win from Vettel, with Hamilton trailing them in P3, barely able to contain Red Bull’s Ricciardo. Lewis was back on form immediately in Canada, where he led Rosberg home, before the German beat him again in Austria. Hamilton then judged the weather brilliantly to take the British GP at Silverstone as the battle which raged so tantalizingly in 2014 between two old friends — who raced each other as youngsters — swung back and forth.
— Richard Williams | The Guardian —
Vettel picked up his 1st victory for Ferrari in his 2nd race at the team (“Fantastico. Numero Uno is back, Ferrari is back!,” he shouted), and was Mercedes’ main threat throughout the season. Seb said wearing Ferrari colors was “surreal.” Kimi Räikkönen, disappointingly, was rarely a match for his teammate, and Bahrain aside it was almost always the German who provided Mercedes with its strongest challenge — keeping them honest in the races and, at times, even threatening to turn the championship into a three-horse race. An aggressive 2nd corner move on Rosberg won the race for Hamilton in Japan, and he took Russia too when the German ran into throttle problems. Then, another aggressive overtake at the difficult 1st corner in Austin set the scene for arguably the best race of the season. Both drivers struggled to generate tire temp in the greasy early conditions, when Ricciardo and Daniel Kvyat (like Ricciardo promoted to Red Bull from Toro Rosso) were at their most dangerous. 
But, as the tarmac dried out Rosberg had the advantage — until he made a mistake and slid off course far enough to enable Hamilton to pounce. That dramatic success won the Englishman a 3rd World Championship, achieving the childhood dream of emulating his idol, Ayrton Senna.
Sadly, it was almost impossible to track how many rule changes had come and gone in Formula One over recent seasons. Refueling and traction control in and out. Wing and nose sizes big and small, high and low. Brake bias only manually adjusted, but then electronic-assisted rear braking systems allowed. Suddenly tires degrade faster, other seasons graining is not an issue. Double diffusers, blown diffusers, off-throttle diffusers, flexible front wings, F-ducts, fuel flow sensors, “keel noses,” bargeboards, engine mapping, “Coanda exhausts,” radio coaching, “one move” blocking, “track limits” violations? By 2015, the F1 series suffered from a persistent form of OCD about change. Everything must always be different. As one long-time F1 designer lamented, “Having lived through F1’s engineering heights, I can’t help but wonder if a kid building a Soap Box Derby car has more latitude for expression than his Grand Prix counterparts. It’s technical asphyxiation.” Typically, Niki Lauda was more acerbic. “The highest limits and the risk factor have been lost,” he groused. Formula One “must again be about real men driving, not young men who play only with the buttons on the steering wheel.”
Another unsatisfying aspect of 2015 was the increased and frequently gratuitous use by stewards of drive-through, time and grid-position penalties for ministerial infractions. We won’t bore you further with rants on how F1 has been reduced to a homogenized, standard-component, customer series. Good things, however, did happen in ’15. Those ugly “platypus” noses from the prior year were gone, thanks to a much-needed rules change. A new procedure, dubbed the Virtual Safety Car (VSC), was introduced to allow temporary, safety-required speed limits without bunching up the entire race field. A revived Mexican Grand Prix was held for the first time since 1992 at an updated Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, featuring a gorgeous and intimate new stadium section. And despite loss of the venerable German GP after a venue could not be agreed upon — leaving the country without an F1 race after 59 years — a fresh driving star burst into the Formula One circus.
— Mark Hughes | Motor Sport —
Max Verstappen’s talent was never in question, yet at the start of the season commentators wondered whether a 17-year-old was too young to race in F1. The Dutchman answered the critics and went on to provide fans with some of the most exciting racing moves of the season. Chief among them was Verstappen’s balls-out overtake of Sauber’s Nasr at Spa, which saw him go around the outside through the awesome Blanchimont corner, teetering over the curbs to complete a breathtaking 190mph pass. Meanwhile, Red Bull made no bones about its frustration with Renault’s sluggish development of a power unit that had proved thoroughly worthless in ‘14, and by mid-season it looked like the marriage was over. Christian Horner and colleagues would hang on, though, while bemoaning the lack of top-line engine competition — “[We will] race with a competitive engine or we won’t have an engine.”
The Milton Keynes squad reluctantly patched things up with Renault’s re-branded TAG powerplant.
McLaren endured another of toughest years in its long-lasting history, as Honda’s new power unit — the team had ended its 20-year partnership with engine supplier Mercedes — hardly resembled the premier turbos the Japanese company manufactured in the ’80s and ’90s. The brutal nadir came as McLaren was blown away so badly on Honda’s home ground at Suzuka that Alonso insultingly called the Honda power unit, over team radio broadcast to the world, a lowly GP2 engine. “They pass me on the straights like in GP2. It is embarrassing, very embarrassing…. GP2 engine, GP2. Aaargh!” But that was not nearly as sad as Lotus, where reserve driver Charles Pic 
initiated legal action alleging breach of contract for lack of seat time in ’14. Belgian authorities impounded the team’s assets after Spa. Lotus was finally allowed to leave with its cars, and started the following race in Italy, but would not appear in Formula One again.
Mission accomplished for Hamilton, securing the ’15 title at the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin. At the end of his 8th season in Formula One, the win finally set Hamilton on path to becoming one of the great Formula One champions, a status earned only by taking the title once and then going back to repeat it again. But thereafter in 2015, the victories belonged to Rosberg. Nico converted the final three poles of the season into three impressive triumphs — seven straight when coupled with his splendid start to 2016. “Austin was a horrible experience for me, and I spent two days just on my own just thinking,” said Rosberg. He “didn’t ever want to experience that again.” And he would not.
2016
Thank goodness for rivalries between teammates, because Mercedes continued its superlative streak in 2016. Despite a 21 Grand Prix season — the longest in history — entry of Haas, the first American F1 team in three decades, addition of a new Azerbaijan GP, and the promotion of young sensation Max Verstappen from Toro Rosso to Red Bull, the third cycle of Formula One under hybrid power was memorable for little else than a seesaw dogfight between Hamilton and Rosberg at Mercedes. The FIA tossed a bone to struggling 
Renault and Honda by increasing the number of “tokens” available for in-season engine development (from 15 to 32), Pirelli introduced an “ultrasoft” dry tire compound for street circuits, and Ferrari was consistently fastest during pre-season testing at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but Toto Wolff’s crew still won 19 races and faced no genuine competition for the championship.
A prophetic sign that 2016 could be Nico Rosberg’s breakthrough F1 season was when he got off to a breakneck start, winning the opening four races handsomely. The gilded son of a World Champion — born in Germany, reared in Monaco, private-schooled throughout Europe and nicknamed “Britney” (after singer Britney Spears) by former teammate Mark Webber — Rosberg had one dream in life and intended to achieve it. Putting the disappointment of the desert showdown from ‘16 behind, Nico stepped up his game, doubling down on fitness (1kg, or 2.2lbs, of driver bodyweight equates to 1/10th second per lap), simulator work and race discipline, and used those twin seasons losing to Hamilton to fuel his motivation. Rosberg dedicated his being to reaching the pinnacle of motorsport.
Staring at a huge 43-point deficit, Lewis Hamilton fought back. Spain saw one of the dramatic highlights of the season, when the duo took their aggression to the next level and collided on track, retiring both Mercedes W07s. A similar string of GPs taken by Hamilton in Austria, Canada, Monaco and Germany shifted the balance back; by the August break, Lewis had narrowed the deficit to 19 points. At this point, most observers were writing off Rosberg. Instead, he strung together spectacular victories at Spa, Monza, Marina Bay and Suzuka. That winning run was followed by Hamilton’s engine failure and retirement from P1 in Malaysia, one of several races in which Lewis faced mechanical issues. Another sign that ‘16 would be Nico’s year.
— Tom Clarkson | BBC Radio 5 —
Ferrari had a forgettable season, struggling for pace. The Scuderia could not even get Vettel’s SF16-H to the grid in Sakhir, didn’t win a single race, were beset with unforced strategy errors and had seven retirements. Williams and McLaren were essentially no shows, topped by Force India in the constructors’ championship, with neither Renault nor Sauber even cracking the top 10 for a single race. 
The sport’s penchant for meddlesome rule changes continued unabated — “exceeding track limit” and “unsafe pit release” penalties, restricting “driver coaching” in pit-to-car communications, prohibiting changes in gear ratios from race to race to suit the individual demands of a circuit, and a wacky “elimination-style” qualifying format ginned up by the brilliant F1 “Strategy Working Group,” jettisoned almost immediately, that made end-of-session flying laps irrelevant and perversely left most cars in their garages. Stewardship was inconsistent and intrusive, for instance slapping Valtteri Bottas with two points on his license (a 3rd would have resulted in a 10-place grid penalty) for a first-lap racing accident, i.e., “causing a collision,” with Hamilton in Bahrain. It was enough to turn off even passionate Grand Prix 
aficionados, though impressive first-time victories by Verstappen in Spain, the youngest ever winner, and Ricciardo in Malaysia were refreshing.
The last four GPs of the season all ended up 1-2 for Mercedes, with Hamilton on top from Rosberg each time. Nico arrived at Abu Dhabi in late November nursing a 12-point lead. He needed at least to make the podium if Hamilton won from pole position. Lewis never led by much and, in the closing laps, intentionally slowed (after denying he would do so before the race) to allow other drivers to catch and pass Rosberg, despite repeated instructions from the team not to risk losing the race to Vettel, who used pit strategy to bring himself into P3 and was gaining quickly. The tactic failed, as Rosberg held off the other German to finish 2nd by 0.439s and win his World Championship. Rosberg called the race “the most intense 55 laps of my life.”
— Richard Williams | The Guardian —
A decade after debuting in F1 for Williams at the 2006 Bahrain GP, where he turned heads by setting fastest lap, and five years after besting Schumacher when Brawn GP became Mercedes AMG, Nico Rosberg had proven he could race with the best. That was enough. Just five days later he retired, announcing the startling decision on social media — only the 5th drivers’ champion not to defend his title and the first to retire as World Champion since Alain Prost in 1993. The emotional cost of a 10-month season requiring complete concentration against a teammate whom he called “the benchmark” of racing drivers was a price Rosberg did not want to continue paying. “For 25 years in racing, it has been my dream, my ‘one thing,’ to become Formula 1 world champion,” he explained. “This season was so damn tough, I pushed like crazy in every area after the disappointments of the last two years.” When asked if there was any chance of a return, Rosberg smiled and replied: “No, definitely not. End of story. Done.”
One common narrative has criticized Rosberg as an undeserving titleist due to Hamilton’s 2016 reliability problems. (In a BBC Sport poll, 52% said Rosberg did not deserve to be champion.) But that story is largely belied by the numbers. Lewis suffered two DNFs, Nico one. Hamilton won 10 races to Rosberg’s nine, while Rosberg had five 2nd place finishes to Hamilton’s three. Each placed both 5th and 7th in races the other man won; and Rosberg actually had more non-podium classifications. Both made serious first-lap errors — including that wheel-to-wheel shunt in Spain which put both men out — that cost podiums, but Hamilton more often wasted excellent qualifying performances with poor race starts. It is terribly hard to drive through the mid-field pack from behind in a modern-specification F1 car, the cost of aerodynamics on steroids, as Lewis painfully experienced in ’16.
— Nico Rosberg (2016) —
The harping on Rosberg also ignores that F1 has always been a mechanical sport. Witness Clark in 1962 and ‘67, Mansell in 1986 and ‘91, Senna in 1989 (the only time the driver scoring the most wins was not World Champion) and Schumacher in 2006 — along with many others whose championship hopes were, literally, blown up by failed engines, gearboxes and tires over the decades. Lucky or not, the driver who wins the most, and is the most consistent finisher, gets the F1 title. As Mercedes team principal Wolff remarked, “It is a mechanical sport and those things can happen. The one who has the most points is a worthy World Champion for me.” At least in that respect, the 2016 season in a new look but increasingly tedious Formula One was no different at all. It was simply Nico Rosberg’s time.
2017
Yet another new rules package introduced for 2017 generated wider, heavier and grippy F1 cars and tires — considerably faster as well even with their small hybrid power units. The machines looked meaner, were lower and more powerful, and cornered very quickly, producing reams additional downforce. Drivers professed to love them and circuit lap records fell through the season. That played a key role in helping Ferrari stage a revival, bringing a measure of much-needed competition to the F1 series. And with its purchase of Formula One, new owner Liberty Media unceremoniously dumped Bernie Ecclestone. Liberty hired fabled Ross Brawn as 
Managing Director, Motor Sports, promptly elevated the sport’s social media presence, and pledged more fan-friendly changes to come, such as Internet streaming of all practice and race sessions.
All good and promising, because the overarching theme of the ‘17 season was once again Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton, now joined by ex-Williams driver Valtteri Bottas. Whether incremental technical innovations — engine cowling-mounted “T-wings” and unsightly sharkfins, specifically — made a significant difference is indeterminate, as both were essentially outlawed by season’s end. What we do know is that Hamilton captured a 4th World Championship and Mercedes took the constructors’ title for the 4th year running. But for the first time since 2013, the German team’s drivers did not finish 1-2 in the final standings, as Sebastian Vettel split the W08s, winning two of the first three GPs and five races overall to conclude the year in 2nd place, a “mere” 46 points back.
Unfortunately, the racing itself was overwhelmingly processional; ever-complex aerodynamics made closely following another car, let alone overtaking, quite difficult. That led to a lot of wicked maneuvers and angry radio (and media) rants. Most amusing was Alonso’s infuriated complaint at Bahrain after being passed in his hapless McLaren-Honda while battling 
for midfield position: “How they can overtake me? 300 meters behind me, and they overtake me on the straight. I’ve never raced with less power in my life.” Most memorable, and illustrative, was Seb Vettel’s intentional sideswipe of Hamilton’s Mercedes during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, after Lewis slowed and bunched the pack up ahead of a safety car restart out of turn 15, causing Vettel to bump into the Briton’s gearbox. The incident was investigated by the race stewards, following a chaotic red flag stoppage, with Vettel handed a 10-second stop and go penalty. Coupled with Hamilton needing to pit to replace a broken headrest, Vettel eventually finished 4th, ahead of Hamilton in 5th. Lewis was indignant, calling the incident “a disgrace” and saying “I didn’t brake check him…. If he wants to prove that he is a man I think we should do it out of the car and face to face.” Seb later grudgingly admitted he may have “overreacted in the heat of the moment.”
— Lewis Hamilton (2017) —
Rules and penalties problems that had plagued the sport in recent seasons stayed messy. The unloved engine token development system was shelved, leaving teams free to design enhancements during the year so long as they did not exceed a reduced four engines per driver limit for the 20 races. Inevitably, many did, and the unprecedented number of associated grid penalties became an 
embarrassment. Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren), for instance, was hit with a 35 grid-spot penalty in the Mexican GP alone, while Ricciardo, Alonso and newcomers Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso) and Pierre Gasly (also Toro Rosso) all took 20-spot penalties before the same race start for replacing engine parts. With just 20 cars forming the entire grid, the absurdity was evident. As was the five-second time penalty assessed on Verstappen a week earlier after the U.S. Grand Prix for “exceeding track limits” in passing Ferrari’s Räikkönen on the final lap, which would have completed a remarkable comeback — he started the race from 16th after incurring engine-change grid penalties — but stripped the Red Bull driver of a podium finish. Max accused Formula One’s rulemakers of “killing the sport” with “stupid penalties,” while his father and former F1 driver Jos tweeted: “This sucks. Shame on you, FIA. Obviously F1 does not know what racing is.”
The two biggest F1 teams slogged it out, weekend after weekend, with Vettel taking the season’s first checkered flag by an impressive 9.9s out of the box at Melbourne. And that, pretty much, is how the season developed until October, when the wheels started to come off the Ferrari challenge. Hamilton won in China, Spain, Canada and Britain (where he crowd-surfed the Silverstone petrolheads like a mosh pit); Vettel coupled Bahrain, Italy and Hungary to Australia, adding four 2nd place finishes; and Bottas topped the classifications at Sochi and the Red Bull Ring. 
Only Red Bull’s Ricciardo — who seemed to own the podium’s bottom step in 2017 with seven 3rd place race results — otherwise managed to win a Grand Prix before the F1 circus dispersed on its late-summer holiday.
There must be something about the mercurial weather in Spa; yet again the Belgian GP denoted an inflection point in the pursuit of the World Championship. Hamilton began the weekend 14 points back of Vettel, but started the race from pole position (by 0.24s ahead of the Ferrari) for the 68th time in his career — equaling Schumacher’s record for most poles — and went on to win by a 2.4s margin that was not nearly as close as the stopwatches suggested. Lewis added wins at Monza, Marina Bay, Suzuka and Austin, plus a 2nd at Sepang, making that five out of six consecutive GPs and six out of eight since Silverstone, to put a decisive stamp on the title chase. During that same stretch, Vettel suffered two DNFs — one when he crashed spectacularly into Räikkönen on the opening lap in Singapore — and missed the podium in Malaysia. Vettel arrived in Mexico in late October with a 66-point deficit to Hamilton, who required only a 5th-place result to claim his fourth F1 crown.
— Oliver Brown | The Telegraph —
He did almost exactly that, in melodramatic fashion. Vettel captured pole, yet at the 3rd corner on lap one the German clipped Verstappen’s right rear tire and then made a larger impact to Hamilton’s right rear. The contact damaged the Ferrari’s front wing and caused a puncture on the Mercedes, with both dinged cars returning slowly to the pits for repairs. This left the two championship contenders at the back of the entire field: 
Vettel 19th and Hamilton in 20th, 24s further behind. In the end, Seb had climbed back to a determined 4th place, only 16s from the podium, while Lewis — trapped with diffuser damage behind the Renault of backmarker Carlos Sainz — ended up 9th and ignominiously lapped. It was the first time the 32-year-old had been lapped since the 2013 Spanish GP, and the only time since James Hunt in 1976 that a driver took the F1 crown from a lap behind. But those two points were enough to secure Hamilton the World Championship. (Officially, Verstappen won from Bottas and Räikkönen, while Vettel posted fastest lap.) “It was a horrible way to do it,” Lewis said after that run of five wins from the last six races meant he clinched the title with his lowest finish of the season. Hardly “Hammer Time,” but No. 44 celebrated a 4th title, 44 years after Sir Jackie Stewart had become the most successful British driver, by wrapping his hands around his helmet and slowing the car to a crawl as Hamilton sought to take in the scale of his achievement. It was beyond his wildest dreams.
Of all Lewis Hamilton’s many skills as a Formula One driver, qualifying is one talent he has really made his own. A fitting highlight to the ’17 season was when, as part of his post-qualifying interview during the Canadian GP weekend, the Mercedes star was presented with one of Senna’s race-worn yellow helmets after tying the late Brazilian’s record of 65 pole positions, leaving him in a state of shock. “Ayrton is the one who inspired me to be where I am. To match him and receive this is the greatest honor,” Hamlton said. 
Other highlights included Verstappen’s two wins (Malaysia and Mexico), Räikkönen’s two fastest laps (Australia and Russia) — proving the Finn is still quick — and Alonso’s strong showing at the Indianapolis 500, were he led for much of the iconic race, the first appearance by an F1 driver at the Brickyard for many years. (Autosport’s Nigel Roebuck proclaimed Alonso the “greatest Formula 1 driver of the 21st century.”) Alonso then signed up to compete in the Le Mans sports car series, as well as holding his McLaren F1 seat, for 2018.
And so, as they have for seven decades, the young men and old masters of Formula One move forward into a new season in which every driver and car are still competitive for the championship before the first GP — reaching for laurels, Mumm and money, but mostly for the almost-mythical reverence attached to the title of world’s best driver. The glamour, history, passion and breathtaking performance of F1, that 70-year, globe-circling odyssey to determine the true World Champion of motorsports, will be renewed once again. New legends will be made, egos bruised and engineers challenged. But that has always been the saga of Formula One.