2011 FIA Formula 1 World Championship Conclusion

[E90SLAM]

Great season from start to finish, despite the dominance, there were a lot of actions on every race and the points does not reflect the actual race excitement.

Red Bull had showed us a full season of "Catch Me If You Can", and even in a bad day in office, RBR are still pulling away from the closest competitors.

Totally deserved champions and I thoroughly enjoyed the season. Probably even more than the past couple seasons overall. There were many races that kept me on the edge of my seat with full suspense whether the guys behind Vettel can catch him or not.

Driver / Team of the season: Sebastian Vettel / Red Bull Racing
(Who is going to argue? Total dominance!!!)

Rookie of the year: Paul di Resta / Sergio Perez
Daniel Riccardo is in a slow car so can't really judge how good he is, and Pastor Maldonado has been disappointing overall, maybe 50% of the slow Williams and 50% of himself.

Most improving team of the season: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes / Scuderia Toro Rosso
McLaren slow start and catching up quickly with the Red Bulls, where they need desperately is to get the season started on the first race, first qualify, and first practice sesson. They've been doing catch since 2009 and that is not a winning team should do.
Toro Rosso has done a great job catching up since Valencia, and showing decent pace since then. Unfortunate events caught out and put them behind Sauber.

Most disappointing team: Lotus Renault
Had a great start of the first two races, then their development went backwards and slide down the grid.

Most disappointing driver: Felipe Massa, Vitaly Petrov, Pastor Maldonado
Massa just hide under the radar for the entire season, except when he collided with Hamilton. Petrov's had a great start in Australia with a podium, but poor car development prevented him achieving any better, hinders his chance to shine. Maldonado just didn't impress as good as other drivers this season when you compare to other rookies, but certain percentage was down to a poor car.

Biggest surprise of the year: Button's win in Canada, BBC-Sky deal, Pirelli Tires, Petrov's Flying car, Button entered the wrong pitbox in China, Vettel's tire burst in Abu Dhabi.

Best race of the season: Canada, Germany, Monaco, Hungary, Japan.
Many other races are pretty good as well!!!

Most boring race of the season: Valencia, Singapore, India, Abu Dhabi.
Valencia, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi for sure. I put India on the list because the track is so green and lack of grip, I hope to see more actions next year.

Looking forward to 2012!!!

[JCtx]

Pretty good wrap up of the season . And thanks for the always awesome pics man .

[EINSER M]

thnx for providing all the 411 and amazing pics for every race. enjoyed this season immensely. as an RBR and VETTEL fan i will sit on the camp of the totally satisfied!

[jonasaurus]

Thanks for all the great pics, look forward to the start of next season in Melbourne

[BrokenVert]

Id also put Kobayashi under disappointing driver. Did he manage to qualify north of Q2 in the second half at all?

[E90SLAM]

Originally Posted by BrokenVert

Id also put Kobayashi under disappointing driver. Did he manage to qualify north of Q2 in the second half at all?

Once, and a few more times that Perez was ahead of him.
Consider having the same car, overall this season Sergio had done a better job overall, given the lack of development and the pace of the car.

[UltimateBMW]

Thanks for the pics and threads all year long.

Too bad Sauber didn't get those points from Australia.

[Echo M3]

Thanks for the pics, I'll my own thoughts to this thread.

While Vettel dominated, I think a few other drivers stood out (in my books). While Hamilton had a poor year, Button managed to be hugely impressive and show that he deserves his race seat at McLaren. Alonso was also impressive as ever, putting his car in positions that it did not deserve to be close to. And his starts were terrific. I also thought that Schumacher was impressive this season, and showed a lot of improvement from last season. If it were not for some bad luck and poor decisions, he might have beaten Rosberg this season.

In regards to teams, I would say that Williams was worst of the teams, with HRT a close second. The reason I single out HRT is that they ALWAYS seemed to be in a position to ruin someone's race while being lapped. I'd give the 'most improved team' award to Force India and Toro Rosso - FI in particular improved tremendously in the 2nd half of this season, and were mixing it in with Mercedes in the last race.

I agree regarding circuits and everything else. I think the Indian GP circuit has huge potential, as long as they clean it up (a LOT) and buy some of those street washing machines, like Martin Brundle suggested.

A big thumbs up to Pirelli and KERS, too. Not sure how I feel about DRS after a whole season - it helped at the boring circuits, but it ruined some of the classics, such as Spa and even Interlagos. I think Pirelli and KERS are enough, as the emphasis is clearly shifting back towards mechanical grip these days.

What will I miss most? BBC live coverage .

[E90SLAM]

Jake Humphury's season review...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/jakehumph...eason_rev.html

[UltimateBMW]

Is it bad if I really hope Maldonado loses his drive for next year?

That guy just really does nothing for me. I'd much rather see one of the exciting up and coming young bloods than a has-been GP2 driver. Give it to Senna, imo. Senna and Sutil would make a decent team.

[BrokenVert]

Saw on sky news today that Kimi is coming back, hes getting into a Renault

[gary88]

Monaco was great up until lap 72.