I'm a Formula One fan and have been since the 90s. While the current 2019 season is on its summer break I thought I'd talk about the F1 cars that I've liked the most over the years.
5] Mercedes AMG W08 - 2017
Since 1998 F1 cars had been made to be 1.8m wide and for 2017 the rules had changed and the cars went back up to 2m wide. With bigger tyres as well, the cars were back to being brutes that were more of a handful for the drivers. It was also the last year for F1 cars to be without the 'halo' . Reigning champions Mercedes faced much sterner competition than previous hybrid era years and Ferrari at times had the superior race car but better reliability, development and having the greatest F1 driver of all time (sum total of race wins + pole positions as a measurement IMO) in Lewis Hamilton at the wheel secured another constructor and driver championship double. This would be higher on my list if it wasn't for the 1.6 litre V6 turbo hybrid engine nonsense. F1 cars don't need to be road car relevant - that's what GT and touring cars are for.
4] Williams-BMW FW23 - 2001
When F1 engines were F1 engines. BMW had returned to F1 in 2000, supplying Williams with engines. For 2001 it had put together a monster of a V10 giving the Williams car an advantage on any straight bits of track. Against the backdrop of Ferrari's dominant era, Juan-Pablo Montoya even should've even had his first win in his very first race at the first race of the 2001 season in Brazil if it wasn't for Jos Verstappen piling into the back of him. Montoya would've won the German GP at the classic Hockenheim circuit were it not for engine failure (his team mate Ralf Schumacher won it though) but did win the Italian GP at the super fast Monza circuit (above). I was never a fan of Williams due to their mid 90s dominance with drivers I didn't think were that great in the title hunt but I've always been a fan of the big German marques, as you can tell.
3] McLaren-Mercedes MP4/23 - 2008
Having lost out on the 2007 driver and constructors championships mainly due to the 'spygate' espionage scandal (where then driver Fernando Alonso tried to blackmail CEO Ron Dennis with going to the FIA president with evidence that McLaren had illegally obtained technical information about the Ferrari car - which included Ferrari's illegal moving floor by the way - if Dennis didn't stop allowing then rookie team mate Lewis Hamilton to race him on equal terms, which forced Dennis to admit this to the FIA eventually resulting in huge fines and being thrown out of the 2007 constructors championship) McLaren bounced back with a competitive enough car to give Lewis Hamilton another chance to win the drivers championship - which he did on the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season in Brazil! A crushing victory by Hamilton in the rainy and wet British GP (above) was a highlight of the season. All this despite Ferrari having marginally the better car over the year. I got to see it in the flesh (carbon?) when I went to my first ever grand prix - the first ever Singapore GP in 2008. That race was later discovered to be a fix as Fernando Alonso, who had moved to drive for Renault, won because of a strategic pit stop just before his team mate Nelson Piquet Jr was instructed to crash on purpose, bringing out the safety car. Ironically, in the flurry of pit activity that followed, Hamilton's main title rival Felipe Massa at Ferrari drove away from his pit box with the fuel rig still attached - this chaos costing him the chance of a good finish thus helping Hamilton's title chances.
2] Ferrari 412T2 - 1995
When Ferraris were Ferraris - Agip fuel, scarlet red, gold wheels, likeable charismatic drivers, a V12 engine and a car fast at times but only enough to win or secure pole every now and then. Obviously, the clinical and dominant Schumacher era put me off Ferrari for life but before that I was a fan believe it or not! And this last ever V12 F1 car sounded great and was driven by one of my favourite F1 drivers in Jean Alesi, who managed to achieve his first and only GP victory that year, and of his F1 career, at the Canadian GP. Such underachievement was a travesty considering his talent, but he would've won more races if the Ferrari was more reliable - retiring from winning positions at the Belgian and Italian GPs particularly irk.
1] McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 - 1998
McLaren-Mercedes managed 3 wins in 1997 before the change to skinnier cars and grooved slick tyres presented a new technical challenge to all the teams. McLaren were on top of this for 1998 as new designer recruited from Williams (they didn't want to make him a partner in the company!) Adrian Newey came up with a masterpiece. He has an engineering degree from the University of Southampton, so that's what we both have in common. True story. The MP4/13 with its long wheelbase and - before it got banned - two brake pedals was much faster than anything else at the first race. This was the first season in F1 that I watched where a driver I actually liked got to regularly win races. Mika Häkkinen went on to win the drivers championship but it was a lot closer than it should have been due to reliability and Ferrari performance gains from Goodyear's tyre development as well as the usual Ferrari gamesmanship (e.g. crying to their FIA mommy about the aforementioned extra brake pedal and bending the rules in that end to the British GP). McLaren deservedly won the constructors championship.
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