Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

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Pacific Edge
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Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Pacific Edge »

Plumbing the depths of the 2018 lows, who for you really just didn't get it together this season?

For me, the following:

Vettel: By the summer break, some argued he had the faster car with the faster engine, and that the championship could be his for the taking. Yet he almost completely failed to turn up for the 2nd half of the season, and Hamilton won the championship with races to spare.

Williams & Mclaren Success in previous seasons counts for nothing when the lights go out for the first race. NEITHER team could blame their engines as Williams had the same engine as the championship winning team, and McLaren got rid of the Honda unit that they blamed for so many of their recent dismal showings.

Hartley: A good endurance racer, yes, but lacks that F1 killer instinct.
Last edited by Pacific Edge on 28 Nov 2018, 14:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Faustus »

Williams.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Alextrax52 »

Plenty of candidates

Sebastian Vettel: Expectation plays a massive role in deciding who wins ROTY. The general consensus going into Australia was that Sebastian would build on his resurgent 2017 season and stamp out the mistakes which ultimately saw his title bid fall short and it started off brilliantly with winning the first 2 races of the season including a exemplary win in Bahrain where he held off Valterri Bottas on worn tires. After that though his season was just one car crash after another, I mean look at the laundry list:

China: Hit by Verstappen
Baku: Lunge on Bottas dropped him to 4th
France: Hit Bottas and got a penalty
Austria: Grid Penalty for blocking Sainz
Germany: Crashed out of the lead
Hungary: Tangled with Bottas again escaping a puncture
Italy: Hit Hamilton and Spun
Japan: Hit Verstappen and Spun
USA: Grid penalty for red flag speeding then Hit Ricciardo and spun in the race

He's got to buck it up big time next year now with the young mega talent Leclerc next to him. If he suffers another Ricciardo 2014 again then I think it's going to signal the beginning of the end of his time at the top

Valterri Bottas: Vettel may have had his downers but when he got it right he was untouchable and enjoyed some good races. On the other hand I can't really think of one outstanding drive Bottas put in all season apart from Russia and even then he wasn't massively quicker than Hamilton. Yes he suffered some awful luck (Baku, France, Austria) but as the season progressed he just morphed into Hamilton's obedient lapdog which was sad to see. Oh and to go winless in the championship driving a Mercedes when even a geriatric Raikkonen managed one borders on unforgivable. His form post Russia means he's very lucky to be in that Mercedes for 2019 but I think he's on borrowed time anyway before Ocon takes over in 2020 in all honesty

McLaren and Williams: To see these 2 historic names where they are now would have been unthinkable even 15 years ago let alone in the dominant eras they've enjoyed. It's been increasingly painful watching the cars in Orange and White paintwork posting the slowest 4 times in Practice and Qualifying as this season has gone on. McLaren in particular have to take their share here given all the noise about how well they would do having got rid of the Honda powerplants and Alonso coming 5th in Australia hinted as much but it's just been more of the same ever since. Williams got rid of pretty much their entire design team after finding out the car was rubbish but they've stayed as mobile chicanes with the double points finish in Italy the only real plus point of a dismal season.

The 2 Tier Formula: I've been used to seeing 2 or 3 teams being 1 or 2 steps ahead of the rest (2000 2002 2007 2011) but I've never seen it to the degree of 2018. The amount of times we saw Mercedes, Ferrari and (Mainly) Red Bull cars get out of position in the race and then just ease through a midfield which made no attempt to fight was galling. 3 examples stick out more than most, the first was the story about Ocon driving for Force India being told by Toto Wolff to let the Mercedes past at Monaco, the second was Hamilton being spun around at Silverstone and yet taking just 14 laps to get back up to 6th. The final straw for me was Mexico when Hulkenberg was nearly 3 laps down on the winner, his final result? 6th!!!!. Further backing up the point is since the new cars were introduced in 2017 we've only had 2 non Mercedes, Ferrari, RBR podiums and both were in chaotic races in Baku not as a result of outright pace. If this is the way F1 is heading then it may just be a case of waiting till the new rules in 2021 because the performance gap is alarming
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Salamander »

In defense of Brendon Hartley, his pace wasn't terribly far off of Gasly's, and he improved as the season went on - this against a driver Red Bull saw fit to promote to the main team. It wasn't the greatest season ever, but I think nominating him for Reject of the Year is a bit harsh.

And since I'm here, I might as well nominate something: Formula 1.5 being a thing. Having been largely turned off from the sport by the 2017 aero regulations, nothing else did more to keep me turned off than that. The gap between the top 3 teams and everyone else was so utterly titanic, it resembled class racing more than anything else. Alonso exaggerated a bit in his comments that he could more or less predict the finishing order of any race, but that those were founded in any form of reality is a severe cause for concern.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Enforcer »

3rd - Ferrari & Vettel
Sebastien Vettel woke up on the 22nd of June 2018 with the Driver's Championship lead, the best car, and pole position for the German Grand Prix. What followed was a mix of mistakes by both driver and team that conspired to return only one win over the remainder of the season. Part of this was due to Mercedes getting back on par, probably even ahead, from Singapore onwards. But between Germany and Singapore, Ferrari & Vettel was clearly the fastest combo out there. But they could only convert it to a solitary win at Belgium. Vettel dropped it at Germany. At Hungary he failed to match either his championship rival or his team-mate in a wet Q3. Any hope of retrieving it was lost with a strategy error. In Italy, the team mismanaged qualifying and Vettel in his desperation to make up for it, made another mistake. By Singapore, Vettel was trying to manage the team from his cockpit. Never a good sign.

In a slight defence of them, from mid-season on Hamilton put together one of the best runs I've seen from a driver in the modern era. Not only did he not crack under pressure, he thrived under it, and maximised nearly every result until it was basically game over. But it still remains that 2018 was Ferrari's best chance of a WDC or WCC in at least 10 years, and at the point in the season when they should've been putting away the wins, both driver and team choked spectacularly.

2nd - Williams
Should we be surprised that one of the last true privateer teams prop up the grid? Maybe not, but this isn't Caterham, HRT or even Jordan. Williams are the third most successful constructor in F1 history and had a car that could challenge for regular podiums as recently as 2015, and was a regular points scorer last season. But this season they've had a spectacular slump into nothingness. 3 points finishes, and basically anonymous at every race. And this despite having one of the two most desirable engines on the grid.

Stroll has taken his millions with him, presumably to Racing Point Force India (or whatever banner they will compete under), and the team will be praying that Kubica's input into the development of the 2019 car will work miracles.

1st - McLaren
If you're going to publically and acrimoniously divorce your engine supplier, having boasted for a season that you have a "top 4 chassis", you better be damn certain that you perform afterwards. McLaren did not. They might point to 6th instead of 9th in the WCC as an improvement, but with Williams having collapsed and Force India losing 59 points due to their mid season change of management, I'd argue that two of those positions were gained by default.

There were already suggestions on the grid prior to this year that Honda's unreliability and poor performance had as much to do with McLaren's extreme packaging requirements as it had with Honda themselves, and whether it not that was true, what was definitely clear is that McLaren did not have a top 4 chassis, as both Renault and Red Bull firmly put them away with the same engine. And things could've been much worse but for a string of respectable finishes from Alonso at the start of the season before he finally gave up.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by good_Ralf »

Salamander wrote:And since I'm here, I might as well nominate something: Formula 1.5 being a thing. Having been largely turned off from the sport by the 2017 aero regulations, nothing else did more to keep me turned off than that. The gap between the top 3 teams and everyone else was so utterly titanic, it resembled class racing more than anything else. Alonso exaggerated a bit in his comments that he could more or less predict the finishing order of any race, but that those were founded in any form of reality is a severe cause for concern.


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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by FortiWinks »

It can only be Williams this year, gone from getting pole in Austria in 2014 to barely making it out of Q1 in 5 seasons
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by pasta_maldonado »

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're all idiots for overlooking the true Reject of the Year...


Valterri Bottas
He had the best season of his career in 2017, and yeah no-one expected him to be winning the title, but it was expected that he'd win a few races and at least give the impression he was in contention for the title...

How wrong we were. Bottas consistently failed to deliver the moment he set foot in the paddock in Australia. Yeah, you can argue bad luck...but Hamilton, Vettel, Verstappen and Ricciardo all faced bad luck - even of their own making - and still managed to win races. There's been a long debate over whether Bottas is WDC material, and that debate was finally settled during the Bahrain Grand Prix where Bottas lacked the balls to even attempt a move on Vettel. All-season long, Bottas had the air of a driver mentally defeated - ask Webber how that went.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Butterfox »

i'm divided between williams and mclaren, but i'll let mclaren win first place this because of their arrogance before the season. Williams can get a fine second place. Third place goes to 'i think i got hit by Ericsson'.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by You-Gee-Eee-Day »

For the sheer number of times his name has come up alone, I have to say:
Sebastian Vettel.

But I also feel it would be unfair to let F1.5 get away unscathed. We have seen the gap slowly, incrementally drop, but it is still so pronounced that for all intents and purposes, we might as well hold two separate races. Have six cars go around and then after that have the other fourteen go round. If one of the top six go out, it's not like anybody behind them is going to catch up and challenge the rest of the top six.

EDIT: Also Will Smith.
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Re: Reject of the Year (ROTY) 2018

Post by Rob Dylan »

Honourable mentions:

- Sebastian Vettel: His season was very up and down, but good enough not to deserve a place on this list. But it was definitely a disaster of a second half, and he was incredibly far behind by season's end. His season really fell apart.
- Sound effects: Geez, it was a step in the wrong direction for me with all the sound gimmicks. I don't mind the graphics too much, but at times it felt like they were literally ripped from Mario Kart.


3rd - The Gap [Formula 1.5]: the gap was super huge this year. Probably the biggest it's been since I've been watching, simply due to the intense reliability of the top teams and the impossibility to get into the top sixth any other way than breakdowns or disaster. But even in disasters, it was almost guaranteed for any driver from Merc, Ferrari or Red Bull to finish in the top six. They were just that much faster than anyone else.
2nd - Williams / McLaren: Equally terrible. Two of the most successful teams in Formula 1 history having just disastrous times these days. The former really just can't get it right from time to time, and they're returning to the dire days of 2011-13 after a brief return to near the front. They've been progressively getting slower, and this year was the worst in a long time. The latter had less of an excuse, having ditched the Honda engine that they'd been complaining about for three years straight. Their star driver is going off for literally anything else, and they were very lucky to finish as high in the standings as they did. Not good tidings for next year...
1st - Stoffel Vandoorne - but the driver whose destiny was to succeed Alonso had the worst season of all. It started off that he got a few points positions, behind Fernando, but he spent the whole season behind his champion teammate. Alonso was not at his best this year, but Stoffel got outqualified each and every race. In fact, he regularly qualified dead last - sometimes with reason, sometimes with no apparent reason at all. He was supposed to be the next big thing, but he's going to leave F1 as a reject with no hope of return at all. What a bloody disaster.
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