F1 in 2018 - The Highs and The Lows Quiz

Answer: Juan Manuel Fangio

Lewis Hamilton's 2018 F1 drivers' championship victory brought him level on titles won with the legendary Argentinian racer Juan Manuel Fangio. Hamilton's five titles came while driving for two different teams over a ten year period - 2008 with McLaren and 2014-15 and 2017-18 with Mercedes. By contrast, Fangio never won the title with exactly the same team - he took his first title in 1951 with Alfa Romeo and then won four back-to-back titles from 1954 to 1957 for Maserati/Mercedes (he won two races for Maserati and then completed the season with Mercedes), Mercedes, Lancia and Maserati respectively.

Fangio's exploits earned him the nickname of 'El Maestro' and his record of five world championships remained undefeated for nearly 50 years until Michael Schumacher secured his sixth title in 2003. His racing career began in the 1930s, long before the first F1 world championship was held in 1950, and was interrupted by the Second World War - it can only be surmised how many titles he might have won if F1 had begun earlier.

Answer: Valtteri Bottas

In his first season with the Mercedes team in 2017, Valtteri Bottas secured his first F1 grand prix victory and took three race wins in total over the course of the year. However, he was not able to replicate this success in 2018 and ended up as the only driver from the top three teams not to stand on the top step of the podium. However, his season was not as bad as the statistics might suggest as he finished second on seven occasions and arguably should have won both the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the Russian Grand Prix. On the former occasion he suffered a catastrophic puncture while leading the race with just 3 laps to go and in the latter event he was forced to swap positions with his team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who went on to win the race in his stead.

Kimi Raikkonen's victory at the 2018 US Grand Prix was his first since he won the Australian Grand Prix for Lotus in 2013 - a full 113 races earlier. In the process he set a new record for the longest gap between race wins in F1 history.

Answer: Sergio Perez, Azerbaijan Grand Prix

It was Sergio Perez who took the only podium finish for a non-Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull driver in 2018 when he claimed third place at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix for the Force India team. It was his first points-finish of the season and netted him 15 points towards his final season tally of 68 - which was good enough for eighth place in the drivers' championship. However, this wasn't the first time that Perez had stood on the podium in Baku - he also finished third in the inaugural race at the circuit in 2016, when the event was held under the title of the European Grand Prix.

Interestingly, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was also the venue for the only podium appearance from a driver outside the top three in 2017 (Williams' Lance Stroll on that occasion), suggesting that the tricky street circuit throws up good opportunities for drivers in the lower teams to shine!

Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso) and Romain Grosjean (Haas) secured the only fourth places for teams outside the top three in 2018, while fifth place in the first race in Australia proved to be the best result of both Fernando Alonso and McLaren's season.

Answer: German Grand Prix

The somewhat embarrassing error that caused Sebastian Vettel's only retirement occurred at his home race, the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim. The German Grand Prix hadn't been held in 2017 (due to the Nurburgring being unable to host the event as planned) so this race was Vettel's first opportunity in two years to claim a home win - something he hadn't managed since the last of his four consecutive championship years with Red Bull in 2013. The weekend started well for him when he claimed pole position and he led the race for most of the first 50 laps, before a sudden downpour left the track wet and slippery. Vettel subsequently lost control of his Ferrari and crashed out on a low speed corner in front of all the fans gathered in the track's stadium section. To add insult to (metaphorical) injury, Lewis Hamilton won the race from 14th on the grid and took the lead in the drivers' championship - a position Vettel was ultimately unable to reclaim.

The incorrect options were Vettel's three worst race finishes in 2018. He was eighth in China and sixth in both Japan and Brazil.

Answer: Daniel Ricciardo

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo had been on course to win the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix after taking pole position and duelling with Lewis Hamilton throughout the first portion of the race. However, just as Ricciardo seemed poised to leapfrog Hamilton in the pitstops, his team forgot to get any new tyres ready for him and the botched stop doomed him to a second place finish. Ricciardo - usually noted as one of the happiest (and most smiley) drivers in the paddock - was visibly annoyed and angry during the podium celebrations and subsequent media interviews.

Ricciardo's 2018 race at Monaco could very nearly have gone the same way as the earlier one, as his Red Bull suffered an electrical energy failure early in the race. Amazingly, he managed to keep his car in the lead of the race for a further 50 laps, despite the loss of over 25% of the engine power - something that was clearly only possible due to the tight, twisty nature of the Monte Carlo street circuit. His delight at the end of the race on this occasion was unmistakable.

Answer: Force India

Force India had been suffering financial difficulties for some time prior to them being bought out during F1's summer break in 2018 by a consortium of investors led by Canadian Lawrence Stroll (father of Lance Stroll). While it was essentially the same team (same drivers, same car, same pink paintwork) that turned up for the Belgian Grand Prix, technically it was regarded as a new team named Racing Point Force India. The old team was excluded from the constructors' championship and the new one had to start again from zero points (although the drivers, Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon, were able to keep theirs).

Despite only having nine races left to score points in, the new Force India team clawed their way back to a respectable 7th place in the constructors' championship ahead of Sauber, Toro Rosso, McLaren and Williams. If they'd been able to keep the 59 points from the first part of the season, they would have ended up in 5th place behind the big three teams and Renault.

Answer: Charles Leclerc

Sauber's Charles Leclerc had a rocky start to his debut F1 season when he struggled to lowly non-points finishes in the first three races. However, once he got up to speed with driving an F1 car, he claimed 6th place at the next race in Baku and was a regular points scorer throughout the rest of the season. In the process he significantly out-performed his much more experienced team-mate Marcus Ericsson and finished with a total of 39 points, compared to just 9 for Ericsson.

While Leclerc received regular plaudits in the media and from within the F1 community throughout 2018, the quality of his performance was really underlined when he was announced as Kimi Raikkonen's replacement at Ferrari for the 2019 season. This was especially significant as Ferrari had very rarely employed such an inexperienced driver throughout their long history in the sport.

Marcus Ericsson, Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso) and Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren) were all dropped by their respective teams at the end of the 2018 season, after being outclassed by their team-mates.

Answer: True

When Fernando Alonso left the Ferrari team at the end of a winless 2014 season for the much-hyped reunion of McLaren and Honda, he probably didn't expect to spend the next four seasons scrapping around in the midfield at best. However, that is exactly what happened after a combination of a slow and unreliable Honda engine and an underperforming McLaren chassis caused a major slump in the performance of a former multiple championship-winning team.

Alonso's best results during his second stint with McLaren from 2015 to 2018 (his first having ended acrimoniously in 2007) were four fifth-place finishes at the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix, 2016 Monaco and US Grands Prix and the 2018 Australian Grand Prix - an almost criminal waste of the talent of one of the best F1 drivers of his generation. Eventually, he shifted his interest towards other forms of motorsport - missing the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix to take part in the Indianapolis 500 and claiming victory at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans - and announced that he was leaving F1 at the end of the season.

Answer: The halo

The halo is a titanium bar that encircles the open cockpit of an F1 car just above the driver's head. It is designed to deflect larger flying objects, such as loose wheels, that had proved to be a serious danger to racing drivers following incidents that caused the deaths of F2 driver Henry Surtees (the son of F1 champion John Surtees) in 2009 and IndyCar driver Justin Wilson in 2015.

The halo's introduction to F1 in 2018 was controversial thanks to its somewhat-less-than-optimal aesthetic appearance and complaints from drivers, teams and fans that it wasn't in keeping with the sport's open cockpit heritage. As with many changes to the cars though, people soon began to forget about its presence and its worth was essentially proved at the Belgian Grand Prix when the halo on Charles Leclerc's Sauber was hit by Fernando Alonso's flying McLaren. Leclerc credited the device with potentially saving his life.

A windscreen-like shield was tested prior to the introduction of the Halo, but swiftly discarded when it was proved that it distorted a driver's vision. The HANS (Head and Neck Support) device has been a compulsory part of an F1 driver's kit since 2003. Roll cages are generally used in racing versions of road cars rather than single seaters.

Answer: Sergey Sirotkin

Russian rookie Sergey Sirotkin didn't manage to score his first F1 point until the Italian Grand Prix in September 2018, the 14th race of a 21 race season. That point was not just a milestone in his own racing career, but also one for F1 history, as all the other 19 drivers racing in F1 that year had already secured points of their own. This made 2018 the first time that every driver competing in an F1 season had scored at least one point. A couple of factors were key in helping this record-breaking event to occur: the points system introduced in 2010 awarded points down to 10th place (a wider range than in the early years of F1); and, unusually, all the drivers who started the season competed in every race, so everyone had plenty of opportunities to score.

Romain Grosjean was the only other driver who took more than four races to score his first points of 2018. He broke his duck at the ninth race of the season in Austria.