F1 in 2017 - The Highs and The Lows Quiz

Answer: Felipe Massa

Towards the end of the 2016 season, Felipe Massa announced that he planned to leave the Williams team and retire from F1 at the end of the season. He was duly given an emotional send off from the sport at the penultimate race of the season in his home country of Brazil, which included a guard of honour in the pit lane and a standing ovation from rival teams as he was forced to walk back to his garage after a mid-race accident.

However, the surprise retirement of the 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg just days after the end of the season led to an unexpected vacancy at Williams and Massa coming out of what must be one of the shortest retirements in F1 history to fill the gap. Massa's 2017 season was solid, if not spectacular, with a best result of sixth place and numerous points-scoring finishes, and he again announced his intention to retire at the end of it. His 2017 race in Brazil proved to be a happier send off than the 2016 version as he finished the race in seventh place - the "best of the rest" behind the drivers of the top three teams.

Answer: A crash with Pascal Wehrlein's Sauber

Fans of Jenson Button got a one-off extra chance to see their hero race in F1 when he appeared for McLaren at the Monaco Grand Prix. He was standing in for Fernando Alonso, who had chosen to compete in the Indianapolis 500 instead. However, Button's chances of a good result were practically doomed from the start as McLaren Honda's excruciatingly poor engine reliability record meant the team had already started to rack up grid penalties for using excessive parts despite Monaco being only the sixth race of the year.

Button's race ended at the Portier corner (the one before the tunnel) on lap 57 when he misjudged an overtaking manoeuvre on Pascal Wehrlein, which left Wehrlein's Sauber perched on its side against the barriers and broke the suspension on Button's car. Button got two points added to his super licence for causing a collision, but Wehrlein probably had a worse day as he was left stuck in his car in a somewhat uncomfortable position until he was rescued by the marshals.

Answer: Valtteri Bottas

The retirement of world champion Nico Rosberg after the conclusion of the 2016 F1 season left his Mercedes team with a vacant seat and sent the F1 rumour mill into overdrive over the question of who would replace him. The answer turned out to be Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, who had previously spent four seasons with the Williams team where his best results had been two second-place finishes in 2014.

It took Bottas just four races with his new team to score his maiden grand prix victory in Russia. It was an impressive first win as he grabbed the lead of the race at the first corner and held it right through the race with the exception of the pit stop period. He went on to win a further two races during the course of the season, but his team-mate Lewis Hamilton took a total of nine wins, out-scored Bottas by 363 points to 308 and won the world championship.

Answer: Sebastian Vettel

Lewis Hamilton was leading the pack behind the safety car when Sebastian Vettel apparently misjudged his braking and ran into the back of the Mercedes. Vettel complained about being 'brake-tested' on the team radio, pulled out alongside Hamilton and vented his anger at the incident by ramming his Ferrari into the side of Hamilton's car. Neither car suffered significant damage, but Vettel was handed a ten second stop-and-go penalty for dangerous driving. Hamilton also had to make an unscheduled pit stop (for the slightly farcical reason of his headrest coming loose) so Vettel's bout of road rage effectively cost him victory. In the end, Daniel Ricciardo was left out in front and went on to take what turned out to be his only race win of the season.

Vettel later apologised for the incident and committed himself to working with F1's governing body, the FIA, to improve driver education.

Answer: True

Ferrari finished the 2016 season in third place in the constructors' championship having taken no race victories. However, their 2017 car - in the hands of Sebastian Vettel at least - proved to be a match for the Mercedes, which had been the car to beat since 2014. Ferrari and Vettel won three of the first six races of the season (in Australia, Bahrain and Monaco) and finished second in the other three. Vettel also led the drivers' championship until the Italian Grand Prix, after which his title challenge evaporated as a result of both unreliability and accidents.

Vettel's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen failed to show a similar turn of speed in the same car. He took seven podium finishes, but no race wins, and ended up over 100 points behind his team-mate by the end of the season.

Answer: Antonio Giovinazzi

Toro Rosso ended up with a total of four drivers competing for them during the 2017 season. For the first three-quarters of the year they had Daniil Kvyat of Russia and Carlos Sainz of Spain, who had both driven for the team in 2016. However, Kvyat was dropped for the Malaysian and Japanese Grands Prix in favour of Frenchman Pierre Gasly. Then at the next race in the USA, Carlos Sainz left the team in order to race for Renault and was replaced by Kvyat. At the same point Gasly was replaced by Brendon Hartley of New Zealand. However, Kvyat's reprieve didn't last more than a single race and he was replaced by Gasly for the Mexican Grand Prix. Gasly and Hartley then completed the season and were duly signed to continue with the team in 2018. I can't speak for other F1 fans but trying to make sense of Toro Rosso's near constant musical car-seats certainly gave me a headache.

For the record, a total of 25 drivers competed in F1 in 2017, despite there being only 20 cars. In addition to Jenson Button's appearance at Monaco and the extra Toro Rosso drivers, Antonio Giovinazzi competed in the first two races for Sauber (while Pascal Wehrlein recovered from injury) and Paul di Resta replaced Felipe Massa in Hungary when the Brazilian fell ill.

Answer: Lance Stroll

The only podium appearance by a driver not employed by either Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull was by Lance Stroll of the Williams team at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Stroll finished third behind Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas after both Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton dropped back down the field due to various incidents. In fact, his third place could very easily have been second, but Bottas overtook him on the run up to the finishing line on the very last lap of the race. Unfortunately, Stroll was unable to replicate the result during the remainder of the season and his next best result was a sixth-place finish in Mexico.

Despite the minor disappointment of losing second place, Stroll became the second-youngest person to stand on a F1 podium at just 18 years and 239 days old - just 11 days older than Max Verstappen had been when he set a new record for youngest podium finisher in 2016.

Answer: Most races without a podium finish

Despite being regularly tipped as a future world champion in the early part of his career, Germany's Nico Hulkenberg set a new record of 129 F1 race starts without a podium finish at the 2017 Singapore Grand Prix and had extended that to 135 starts by the end of the 2017 season. He took over the somewhat dubious honour of holding the record from his fellow German Adrian Sutil, who raced in F1 from 2007 to 2014.

Between his F1 debut in 2010 and his record-breaking appearance in Singapore, Hulkenberg had driven for Williams, Force India, Sauber and Renault in seasons where these teams were not really in consistent contention for wins or podium finishes. However, his results weren't solely due to his choice of teams as Sergio Perez - his team-mate at Force India - scored four third-place finishes to Hulkenberg's zero.

Answer: Michael Schumacher

At the start of the 2017 season, Lewis Hamilton was in third place on the all-time list of F1 pole positions with 61. He equalled Ayrton Senna's total of 65 at the 2017 Canadian Grand Prix and, after the qualifying session, was clearly emotional when the Senna family presented him with one of his hero's helmets in honour of the occasion. He then equalled Michael Schumacher's record of 68 pole positions at the Belgian Grand Prix.

It then took only one more race for Hamilton to break Schumacher's record (set at the French Grand Prix in 2006) when he took pole position at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza - the home of Ferrari, the team for whom Schumacher had taken the majority of poles, race wins and world championship titles. Hamilton dedicated his achievement to Schumacher, saying:

"For everything he did for the sport and raising that bar and to be able to raise that bar once more is an honour."

Answer: Sauber

In some respects, 2017 wasn't the worst season of Sauber's career in F1 since their debut in 1993. The five points they scored were an improvement on their results in both 2014 and 2016, when they managed zero and two points respectively. However, 2017 was a real low point for the team because it was the first season in the team's history that they had finished in last place in the constructors' championship.

The high points of Sauber's season - if they can be called that - were Pascal Wehrlein's two points finishes, eighth place at the Spanish Grand Prix and tenth place in Azerbaijan. However, when it came to choosing drivers for the 2018 season it was Wehrlein's team-mate, Marcus Ericsson, who was retained by the team and Wehrlein was left without an F1 drive. While this might seem a surprising choice, it is a common reality in F1 that money often speaks louder than talent - especially for teams at the back of grid. Perhaps that should be considered another low point of F1 in general...