Driver of the Year
This is actually a very competitive award, and any one of the top eight in the final championship standings would probably deserve it. Well, except Felipe Massa. And Jenson Button. But still, Vettel was super-quick, Webber surprised everyone, Hamilton and Alonso showed bucketloads of fighting spirit in limited cars, and Rosberg and Kubica at least appeared to be outperforming their fairly average cars for most of the season. In the end, and to completely bottle the whole process and sidestep the issue entirely, I'll give the award to Karun Chandhok, for generally being the nicest person in the history of time.
Team of the Year
Can't really go to anyone but Red Bull Racing. They had the best car, and more importantly than that, they successfully managed to get through an entire season of driver equality without suffering a complete ideological meltdown. Although the random flashpoints of Crash-gate, Wing-gate and Icanhasteamordersplz-gate were eagerly overblown by the rampantly excitable F1 media (and the rampantly plagiarising Patty), compared to McLaren's 2007 season for example, it was a veritable year-long bout of cheery goodness that could have been summed up in the season-ending highlights package by Vettel and Webber holding hands and skipping through a cornfield while this played in the background.
Surprise of the Year
A hat tip for Renault in this award. After their dreadful 2009 and their rather stodgy pre-season performance, they looked set for another slightly cack season this year, but instead they turned in a massively competent midfield competitor, who over the course of the season arguably outperformed anyone bar the 'big three' at the front. Whether or not it is still ethical to support them since their needless and silly Lotus takeover is questionable, but they were a hit for the neutral fan in 2010.
Flop of the Year
Put simply, the regulations as a whole. Though much has been idly written about this being the 'ZOMG BEST YEAR EVAAAAH!!!1111', it has in actual fact been nothing like that. The racing throughout the year has only really risen above tedious on a few short occasions, and even then usually thanks to some weather-based interference, or chaotic tyre-based faffitude. But by and large, with the refuelling ban removing any element of strategy from anyone's mind on Sunday, we were left with excitement-free processions at the majority of the weekends. For this current F1 grid, which is arguably packed with more talent than we have enjoyed since the mid 1980s, to really provide us with the excitement we deserve, let's hope the 2011 era of Kerazee Gimmicky Rule Changes does something for the soporific on-track action.
Race of the Year
For religious reasons, I refuse to pick any race where the on-track entertainment was governed by random bursts of wet weather, or by everyone's tyres playing up. For reasons of trying to be awkward, I also refuse to pick Turkey, because I reckon most people will pick that, so instead I'll go for Japan. Which was actually a bobbins spectacle, all things considered, but did offer us the joys of Super Bumper Racing Sunday after the rained-off qualifying session, which was unique enough to be entertaining in it's own right. Also, in the race itself, we had the bonkers power of Kamui Kobayashi showing everyone else up as he proved that overtaking, even in F1's current state, was plenty possible.
Drive of the Year
For all the errors this season by the main title rivals, there were also no end of impressive drives. Webber in Monaco and Britain, Hamilton in Canada, Alonso in Monza and Singapore, and any of Vettel's performances in the final four races, where he was absolutely untouchable. But for sheer entertainment I'll give it to Kobayashi in Valencia, when he woke everyone up from their post-Webber flip stupors with a late race burst of overtaking that the dreadful Valencia circuit really didn't deserve. His final impish pass on Alonso was the cherry on the cake of surprising entertainment.
Fail of the Year
I'll give this one to Force India, for turning up at the start of the season with a half-decent car, and then performing an undignified slide down into uncompetitive irrelevance. After a twelve month period of impressive progress from the middle of 2009 to the middle of 2010, the Indian squad gave plenty of cause to question precisely how much more competitive the team can ever hope to get. By the end of the year, even Williams had comfortably out-developed them. Williams, for crying out loud.
Quote of the Year
Slightly obscure it may be, but I'll award this to the BBC's Anthony Davidson, who reacted to a particularly hand-wringing text message whine about Ferrari's team orders received by the Beeb's practice session commentary team, in which someone or other complained that they hated seeing 'manipulated results' by derisively snorting "Go and watch the ballet then" in response.
Memory of the Year
At the risk of making this a slightly personal award, my memory of the year will be Nico Rosberg beating Michael Schumacher. Granted, Schumie threw himself back into the cockpit of an F1 car after three years of dossing about in his Swiss mansion and was always likely to take time to get settled, granted this was a 41-year old F1 veteran and not the all-powerful Schumacher of old, granted the seven-time champion was ominously on his way to getting bragging rights over Nico in the final few races of the year, and granted I'll likely be sobbing quietly as a fully up-to-speed Schumie effortlessly swats Nico into a Boobens role next season, but still, I'll always have that print-out of the 2010 drivers standings framed on my wall to gaze at in dewy-eyed reminiscence when it all gets too much.
Hope for the Future
My biggest hope for the immediate future is that someone from the myriad collection of potential championship contenders in 2011 can actually put together a combination of results to challenge the Vettel bandwagon next season, because otherwise we might be in for a fairly dull era of domination from the be-fingered one.
Trackback(0)
TrackBack URI for this entryComments (1)
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Write comment
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
