We are just over halfway through the month of July and ten of 20 Formula One races have been complete this season. Hungary is just over a week away and after that will be the summer break. This season has seen a reintroduction of wider tires and greater downforce and it has brought the field closer together and has tightened the championship battle in the process.
How should we look back on the first half of the Formula One season? Let's answer these eleven questions:
Is Mercedes Winning Every Race?
No they are not but Mercedes is still at the front and are the team to beat. The German squad has won six of the first ten races and leads the Constructors' Championship by 330 points but despite that record, neither Lewis Hamilton nor Valtteri Bottas lead the World Drivers' Championship.
Sebastian Vettel leads the World Drivers' Championship with 177 points after three victories and four runner-up finishes in the first ten races. He is only one point ahead of the Lewis Hamilton, who picked up his fourth victory of the season at Silverstone last Sunday but Vettel's consistency has got him the championship lead while Hamilton has struggled to consistently be on the podium. Since starting the season with finishes of second, first and second, Hamilton's only other podium finishes this season have been his victories at Spain, Canada and Great Britain.
The blemishes on Hamilton's results have mostly been out of his control. He battled overheating issues at Sochi and could not advance beyond fourth position, he was caught out by an accident on his qualifying run in Q2 at Monaco and had to start 14th, he and Vettel got together at Azerbaijan and a loose headrest forced him to make an unscheduled stop and dropped him to fifth and he had to serve a five-spot grid penalty for Austria and went from eighth to fourth in the race.
While Vettel and Hamilton live up to their previous success, Valtteri Bottas gained his footing quickly at Mercedes and the Finnish driver trails Vettel by 23 points. Bottas picked up his first career victory at Sochi and he doubled his win total at Red Bull Ring. Bottas has stood on the podium more times in 2017 than his teammate (seven to Hamilton's six), he has four consecutive podium finishes and his only retirement was an engine failure at Barcelona.
Meanwhile, Kimi Räikkönen has had a respectable season. He was going to win at Monaco before team orders swapped him and Vettel and he got the better of Vettel at Silverstone last week prior to the pairs' dueling tire failures in the final two lap of the race that cost Räikkönen a podium and then gave it right back to him as Vettel had to nurse his car back to the pit lane.
Mercedes is still the Mercedes we have seen the last three seasons. When everything is clicking nobody can beat that squad but this year we have seen more minor trip ups in the first ten races of 2017 than we did in the previous 59 races over the last three years. Vettel and Hamilton will likely go at it over the final ten races and there will probably be one or two races where Bottas and Räikkönen will be carrying the flag for each manufacture.
Has Red Bull Been Competitive?
Red Bull has been getting better since the start of the European portion of the season. The Austrian team was the distant third manufacture but the team has clawed itself back into a competitive form. The team only qualified in the top four twice through the first ten races but after only two podium finishes in the first five races, Red Bull picked up four podium finishes in the second quarter of the season.
After the emergence of Max Verstappen last season, Daniel Ricciardo has regained hold of the top spot within the Red Bull team. The Australian had five consecutive podium finishes from Spain to Austria and he picked up the team's first win of the season at Azerbaijan. Ricciardo finds himself fourth in the championship, 60 points behind his former Red Bull teammate. Ricciardo's most notable performances this season have come despite poor starting positions. He won Azerbaijan after starting tenth and he finished fifth at Silverstone after starting 19th. Ricciardo has twice started sixth and finished third.
Verstappen on the other hand has not been able to avoid misfortune in 2017. The Dutch driver has retired from five of ten races in 2017, most because of things out of his control but his only podium finish remains a third-place finish at Shanghai in the second race of the season after starting 16th on the grid. He has had mechanical issues end his race on three occasions while a collision he was directly involved in took him out in Spain and another collision where he was collateral damage took him out in Austria.
Red Bull has slowly been rolling out updates to the RB13 and another set of updates are coming in Hungary but it is hard to remember a time when we have seen a midseason update boost a team from perpetually third-best on the grid to being the team to beat halfway through a season. Red Bull might get another win or two before 2017 is out but they appear to be too long gone to be a championship contender this year.
Has There Been Any Other Team That Should Have Won This Year But Shot Itself In The Foot?
Why yes, yes there has. Force India did not just shoot itself in the foot once but did it twice. First was the Canadian Grand Prix where Esteban Ocon had the pace to chase down Daniel Ricciardo for third only he was held up by his teammate Sergio Pérez and instead of Force India getting a car on the podium by invoking team orders and telling Pérez to get out of the way, both Pérez and Ocon were passed by Sebastian Vettel and Force India had to settle for fifth and sixth place finishes.
Two weeks later at Azerbaijan, Force India once again found both cars at the front but contact between the two punctured Ocon's tire and forced Pérez to retire from the race. After Hamilton was forced to stop to secure his headrest and Vettel forced to serve a ten-second penalty for contact with Hamilton during a safety car period, Ricciardo took the lead and went on to win the race. If Ocon and Pérez had not gotten into each other it would have been Force India 1-2 on track after the stops by Hamilton and Vettel. Instead, Ocon was the only points scorer for the team in sixth.
Pérez and Ocon are seventh and eighth in the championship respectively with Pérez nine points ahead of his teammate. The Frenchman has scored points in nine of ten races, one more points-paying result than his teammate. Force India rarely gets the chance to be on the podium and it blew two opportunities already this season and one was an opportunity for a victory. I am not sure they can count on a third podium opportunity coming.
Has Lance Stroll Been As Bad As Most Hoped He Would Be?
No, but most will not admit that is the case. Stroll has not been the greatest thing since sliced bread. He has made his mistake, most of them came in preseason testing, and a few things have happened to him that were out of his control (see him getting spun on lap one at Sochi by Nico Hülkenberg).
Stroll''s first home race of his Formula One career was as close to a dream as you could get, going from 17th to ninth at Montreal and while everyone ahead of him ran into each other at Baku, he avoided contact and found himself in second at the start of the final lap only to have Bottas beat him to the line by a tenth of a second but the Canadian got his first career podium in his eighth start. Stroll made it three consecutive points-paying finishes with a tenth in Austria.
Don't get me wrong; Stroll has not taken Formula One by storm. He trails his senior teammate Felipe Massa by five points and he has been out-qualified nine to one through ten races. Stroll has a way to go but he has not done anything boneheaded enough in a Formula One car to deserve the vitriol he has been getting every week regardless of how he does.
Which Pair of Teammates Are Not Getting Along The Most in 2017?
Carlos Sainz, Jr. and Daniil Kvyat and it is not getting any better any time soon. They nearly got into each other at Baku with Sainz, Jr. swerving to avoid the Russian rejoining the circuit. Kvyat has caused collisions the last two races and at Silverstone it was between him and Sainz, Jr. The Spaniard's race was over before the end of lap one, his third retirement in four races and Kvyat continued only to finish a lap down in 15th.
In 27 races as teammates, Sainz, Jr. has outscored Kvyat 79-8 and Kvyat's best finish since returning to Toro Rosso is ninth while Sainz, Jr. has finished better than ninth 12 times in those 27 races. Sainz, Jr. clearly is the superior driver, however he has had his own missteps in 2017 (see Bahrain and Montreal) but he wants a promotion from the Red Bull B squad. That is understandable but there is no room at the big team and both Ricciardo and Verstappen are being paid handsomely.
It is hard to see how these two will remain teammates through the rest of 2017 and we will get to that in a moment.
How is Haas Doing?
The American team is doing well. Haas has 29 points from the first ten races, matching their points total for the entire 2016 season. The team has eight points-scoring finishes, three more than it did during the entire 2016 season and the team picked up its first double points finish at Monaco with Romain Grosjean finishing eighth and Kevin Magnussen finishing tenth.
While Haas has matched or succeeded previous results, the team is still seventh in the Constructors' Championship. Grosjean was really competitive at Austria and he has made the final round of qualifying five times through ten races. Magnussen trails his teammate by seven points in the championship and has yet to make it to Q3 once in 2017.
The good news for Haas is Toro Rosso is on the verge of imploding and Haas only trails STR by four points in the Constructors' Championship. The bad news is Renault trails Haas by only three points and could be shaking things up in hopes of scoring more points. It is going to be a tough fight for Haas if it wants to improve on its final Constructors' Championship result from its debut season.
Is McLaren Making Strides In The Right Direction?
No. Not really. I mean... yes. Things are looking better and the car has its moments and the car is making it to the end of the race occasionally but McLaren is still lost and its future with Honda could not be any more uncertain and Fernando Alonso appears to be on his way out unless McLaren returns to Mercedes engines in 2017 and Stoffel Vandoorne is just along for the ride this year.
Alonso has been a stud this year. His impressive qualifying run at Barcelona to end up seventh on the grid is the stuff of legend. Unfortunately for Alonso, he has had the car die on him at least three times in the final five laps and it cost him points at least once. The small moral victory for Alonso is he got on the board with a ninth-place finish at Baku.
Vandoorne has finished the last four races and Silverstone was by far the Belgian's best race of the season as he made the final round of qualifying for the first time, qualifying ninth and starting eighth after Bottas served a five-spot grid penalty and he finished 11th.
I think McLaren will finish in the points again this season but how good of a result will it be? Will it be just surviving to a ninth or tenth place finish or can McLaren recreate Alonso's Barcelona glory or what Vandoorne did at Silverstone, start in the top ten, finish on the lead lap and potentially pick up a handful of points and could McLaren be able to do that three or four times in the final ten races?
Are Any Drivers' On The Verge Of Being Replaced Midseason?
Yes but Renault will keep saying it is not replacing Jolyon Palmer until they replace Jolyon Palmer. The British driver has yet to score a point this season while his teammate Nico Hülkenberg is responsible for all of Renault's 26 points and the German matched his season-best finish of sixth at Silverstone.
Palmer has been close to points. He had finished 11th in three of the four races prior to his car dying on the formation lap for his home race, a race where Palmer was going to start 11th.
The en vogue rumor is Renault wants to replace Palmer with Carlos Sainz, Jr. but it appears it would cost Renault $8 million to buyout the Spaniard. If Sainz, Jr. were to move, it appears Pierre Gasly, the defending GP2 Series champion and current Super Formula driver, would take over the open spot at Toro Rosso.
If Sainz, Jr. does not switch to Renault and the French team wants to replace Palmer, who is plan B? Sergey Sirotkin is the team's reserve driver and the 21-year-old Russian, who will turn 22 years old the day of this year's Belgian Grand Prix, finished third back-to-back years in the GP2 Series championship and he finished in the points in his only two Formula Two races this year at Baku.
Am I Forgetting Anybody?
Yes! Sauber! The little Swiss team using Ferrari hand-me-downs is ahead of McLaren in the Constructors' Championship with five points.
Pascal Wehrlein has overcome missing the first two races of the season after a back injury suffered in the Race of Champions and he finished eighth at Barcelona and tenth at Baku with his only retirement coming at Monaco. Marcus Ericsson has not scored this season but he has finished 11th twice. Ericsson has not scored points in his last 38 starts.
Can Sauber hold on to finish ahead of McLaren? It could be closer than the team wants. McLaren just needs one eighth-place finish in the final ten races to regain control of the battle for ninth in the Constructors' Championship. Sauber has to hope its reliable year-old Ferrari engine package can hold off whatever Honda throw out there in the second half of the season and get a few more finishes in the points.
What Driver or Drivers Are Setting Themselves Up For a Formula One Seat in 2018?
Ferrari Driver Academy product Charles Leclerc is making it really hard for nobody to hire him in 2018. The Monégasque driver has won five Formula Two races this season and he has won pole position for all six feature races this year. Leclerc leads the Formula Two Championship by 67 points over Artem Markelov.
Where could Leclerc land in 2018? Ferrari has not given a driver a Formula One debut since Arturo Merzario in the 1972 British Grand Prix and the last driver whose first full season in Formula One was solely with Ferrari was Gilles Villeneuve in 1978. The good news for Leclerc is his career ascendance comes at a time where Ferrari is not solidly committed to two drivers for the long-term. Kimi Räikkönen will be 38 years old by the time the 2017 season comes to a close. Leclerc will only be 20 years old but if he is coming off back-to-back titles in GP3 and Formula Two then there will be no better time to put him in a Formula One car than 2018 and it would not make any sense for Ferrari to hire another driver for a few seasons and farm Leclerc out to Haas or Sauber.
Then there is the left field return of Robert Kubica. The Polish driver has not raced a Formula One car since the 2010 season after he suffered severe injuries in a rally accident in early 2011. Kubica tested a three-year old car for Renault at Circuito Ricardo Tormo in Valencia last month and he tested at Circuit Paul Ricard in France about two weeks ago. Kubica could participate in the Hungary test after the Hungarian Grand Prix later this month. There are a lot of hurdles in his way to getting a full-time seat besides his physical limitations but perhaps his outing at Hungary could cement a return come 2018.
What Will Happen In The Final Ten Races?
Your guess is as good as mine. I expect Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull all at least get one more victory. I expect the title to go back-and-forth between Vettel and Hamilton. I think Mercedes will minimize the errors that cost them through the first ten races of the season. I think Palmer will be ousted at Renault before the season is over but I don't expect Sainz, Jr. to be that replacement. I think we are more likely to see Gasly replace Kvyat at Toro Rosso than Sainz, Jr. leave. McLaren will announce its divorce from Honda and Honda will announce its withdrawal from Formula One entirely.
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