2019 Formula One Predictions: Revisited

We are in early December and we now look back at predictions made nearly a full year ago.

This was the latest end to a Formula One season since 1963 and it saw Lewis Hamilton pick up his sixth World Drivers' Champion. Along the way, Formula One had its 1,000 grand prix, it saw a Monegasque on the podium for the first time since the second race in Formula One history, a Thai score points for the first time since 1954 and all 20 drivers start all 21 races. Both Renaults were disqualified from Japan and a five-second penalty decided the winner of the Canadian Grand Prix.

It was quite a season but how did those predictions fare? This is where we find out.

1. Lewis Hamilton will move up to second all-time in fastest laps
Correct! Hamilton picked up fastest lap six times, giving him 47 fastest laps in his career and surpassing Kimi Räikkönen's 46 fastest laps for second all-time in this category.

Hamilton's fastest laps came at Barcelona, Silverstone, Monza, Sochi, Suzuka and Abu Dhabi. He left his fastest laps until later in the season and he didn't get second all-time outright until lap 53 of 55 at Abu Dhabi. I will come clean here and admit if he finished level with Räikkönen on 46 fastest laps I would have given myself this one, one because I needed it as you will see as we move on and, two, because I never said anything about Hamilton being outright second.

2. Mercedes surpasses Brawn for best winning percentage in Formula One history
Correct! Mercedes has won 102 of 210 entries and that gives Mercedes a winning percentage of 48.6%, which is now ahead of Brawn's 47.1% winning percentage after Brawn won eight of 17 races in 2009.

Mercedes picked up its 100th victory in Mexico and in doing so joined Ferrari, McLaren and Williams as the only constructors with at least 100 victories. In case you are wondering, Mercedes is 12 points behind Williams for third all-time.

3. Charles Leclerc does not out qualifying Sebastian Vettel on speed in the first six races 
Wrong! Leclerc won pole position in his second race with Ferrari at Bahrain. It was the only time Leclerc qualified ahead of Vettel in the first six races and Vettel did qualify second in Bahrain, so though I was not even close to getting this prediction correct and it is a lot closer than it appears on paper.

I thought it was going to take Leclerc the first-quarter or first-third of the season to get up to Vettel but he was there from the start and he was the better driver than Vettel for majority of the season. It ended with Leclerc fourth in the World Drivers' Championship, 24 points ahead of Vettel, nearly a race victory more in points than the four-time world champion.

4. Antonio Giovinazzi scores at least 66% of Kimi Räikkönen's points total
Wrong! Giovinazzi scored only 14 points compared to Räikkönen's 43 points, meaning Giovinazzi scored 32.558% of Räikkönen's points total.

I will mark this down to Räikkönen doing slightly better than I expected and Giovinazzi doing slightly worse than I expected. I guess I thought this would be a case where Räikkönen would have scored 30 points and Giovinazzi would have scored 20 points.

5. Robert Kubica does not start all 21 races
Wrong! Kubica started all 21 races and he scored a point in Germany.

I thought the combination of a lackluster Williams and physical difficulties would lead to Kubica to miss at least one race or pull out of the team early but neither were the case.

I am glad Kubica got this opportunity and, in some way, closure for a career that was derailed at the start of the decade. Kubica is far from his prime but he was respectable and though the Williams was slow, it was reliable.

The team has a long way to go and Williams and Kubica have parted for 2020 but both sides deserve a little recognition for what each did in 2019.

6. At least five constructors get a podium finish
Correct! Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren and Scuderia Toro Rosso all put a car on the podium.

The surprise is Toro Rosso not putting one car on the podium but two with Daniil Kvyat picking up third in Germany and then Pierre Gasly taking second in Brazil.

Speaking of Brazil, this prediction was not fulfilled until Interlagos and well after the checkered flag when Lewis Hamilton was handed a penalty for avoidable contact after he spun Alexander Albon. This dropped Hamilton from third and lifted the McLaren of Carlos Sainz, Jr. to the podium. It was Sainz, Jr.'s first podium of his Formula One career in his 101st start and it was McLaren's first podium since the 2014 Australian Grand Prix.

At Germany, I picked up a lot of hope this prediction would be fulfilled. It didn't seem likely this would be a correct prediction at the start of Brazil. Sometimes, crazy things happen.

Although, looking back I thought Renault would get a podium and Haas could get a podium. The Haas one seems nuts in hindsight. Renault only got close at Monza when Daniel Ricciardo was fourth with Nico Hülkenberg in fifth.

7. A driver will end a drought of 50 races or more without a podium finish
Correct! See Sainz, Jr., who had never had podium in his first 100 starts

8. None of the rookies break 39 points
Wrong! Two of the rookies broke 39 points. Alexander Albon scored 92 points and Lando Norris scored 49 points.

Albon did switch to Red Bull midseason and scored 76 points in his nine starts with Red Bull. The only race after switching to Red Bull where Albon did not score points was Brazil, where Hamilton spun Albon out from third.

Even if Albon hadn't switched to Red Bull, this prediction would have been incorrect because of Norris. He had 41 points after the United States Grand Prix with two races to go. I thought Norris would only score about 31 points.

9. Daniil Kvyat does not improve his best finish with Toro Rosso
Wrong! See third in the German Grand Prix. Other than that third in Germany, Kvyat bettered his previous best Toro Rosso best finish of ninth with seventh place finishes at Monaco and Spa-Francorchamps.

To put Kvyat's season into context, 40.54% of the points Kvyat scored in 2019 came in the German Grand Prix. He achieved a personal best at the team but this was far from a stellar season.

10. There will be at least two grand slams
Wrong! There was only one grand slam and it was the finale, where Lewis Hamilton led every lap from pole position and did not pick up fastest lap until lap 53 of 55.

An interesting note, besides Hamilton at Abu Dhabi, the only other time a pole-sitter picked up fastest lap in 2019 was Leclerc at Bahrain.

I thought we would see a few grand slams and with the return of point for fastest lap I thought it would be more frequent. It just didn't play out that we had many sheer dominating races where the pole-sitter pulled away.

In 2018, only four times did the race winner also pick up fastest lap. In 2019, it happened seven times, five of those occurring in the first 11 races.

11. At least three countries have multiple driver finish in the top ten of the championship
Wrong! In fact, the top ten drivers in the World Drivers' Championship represented ten different nationalities, the first time this has occurred since the 1974 season.

I thought Finland would get two representatives with Bottas and Räikkönen. Räikkönen missed out by nine points. I thought Germany would get it with Vettel and Hülkenberg. Hülkenberg was not even close, 15 points out. Gasly ended up seventh in the championship but Romain Grosjean was 18th with only eight points. The only other drivers not to break into double-figures were the Williams drivers, Kubica and George Russell.

Norris nearly made the United Kingdom the only nation with multiple drivers and it would have ruined ten nationalities in the top ten but he fell three points short and he lost tenth in the closing laps. Sergio Pérez got ahead of Norris for seventh in Abu Dhabi and that flipped Pérez back into the top ten with 52 points and dropped Norris to 11th on 49 points. If Norris had finished seventh, he would have been tenth with 51 points to Pérez's 50 points.

By the way, shout out to Pérez for finishing tenth. Pérez was definitely the least mentioned of the top ten championship finishers and because of Haas' struggles, Hülkenberg's struggles and the ineptitude of Williams, Pérez might have been the 14th or 15th most mentioned driver. Pérez has had a great career of just scoring points. He has finished in the top ten of the championship in seven of nine seasons. Pérez is the Formula One driver United States Formula One fans should want.

12. The championship is not clinched in Mexico
Correct! Hamilton clinched his sixth World Drivers' Championship in the United States.

Five out of 12. That is not good at all. A few I was close on and a few I could not have been any farther off than I was. Plenty of room for improvement in 2020.