We have 5 races to go until the end of the season, and it's time to look at how the season has been going and draw some conclusions.
The Mercedes team are still the class act with the fastest car. Lewis Hamilton is the master of all currently, with 11 pole positions and 8 wins. Nico Rosberg looks like a beaten man, whatever he throws at Lewis Hamilton the champ has an answer. They have dropped the ball three times. Monaco must have been awful for Lewis, to see his perfect weekend blown up by a bad call and the win gifted to his team-mate. In Hungary, Lewis had an off-day maybe triggered by the gathering before the race to celebrate the life of Jules Bianchi. Mercedes were off the pace in Singapore.
The Ferrari team have shown much improvement, with Vettel having three wins and a pole. It's good for F1 that the team are competitive and that they have a media friendly boss in Mauricio Arrivabene. I think it would have been better for Ferrari if they had let Kimi Raikkonen go, he's past his best and there needs to be some young blood.
Williams have disappointed this season. They're still good enough for third place but have not advanced since last year.
I've been impressed by Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz. Both have been good racers and on certain weekends have shown good pace. Verstappen's pass on Nasr at Blanchimont, Spa, was amazing. He knows no fear - yet!
The Red Bull is a good chassis but the Renault engine has disappointed badly. How can the engine have got so worse since last year? It has been disappointing to see them bad-mouthing Renault after winning 4 championships with them. It's no surprise that Renault have decided to pull out from engine supply. It's also no surprise that Red Bull are finding it hard to get another supplier. If I was Christian Horner I would pay Ferrari for the design to their engine and get a third party involved to build engines and take it forward.
I really hope Renault buy out Lotus as the Enstone team deserve to be in F1 due to their heritage. I wish Renault would decide what they want to do with F1. They're in, they supply engines, they're out, then they're in and then back to supplying engines. Make your mind up.
And now to McLaren Honda. What a disaster. When the McLaren-Honda tie-up was announced everyone thought, wow the two powerhouses are getting back together, everyone hould look out. I wasn't convinced. This is Honda's fourth time in F1, and only their second venture as an engine supplier to Williams and McLaren was successful. At the end of that period they had been superceded by Renault. Their third coming was poor. McLaren isn't the power it used to be either. Their last constructor's championship would have been 2007 (apart from the spying scandal) and was 1998 before that.
The car is slow, the drivers de-motivated and cracks are appearing in the management structures. Honda has a policy of rotating technical staff into the F1 programme and then out into the road cars. They don't bring people in from outside. This time they have bitten more than they can chew and they need to eat some humble pie. It's such a shame.
The other teams have not really changed their positions or outlook.
As for F1 itself. The season has been more dull than last year with poor races, apart from Silverstone and Hungary. I quite like some of the suggestions to spice up the action. Wider cars, bigger tyres, more horsepower, bigger batteries, ground effects, reduce the number of planes on wings: all these things would improve the racing. A flatter payment system as described in earlier posts would also be a big help.
Now, only a few more weeks until we crown the 2015 champion.
Squiffy.
