The fat lady sang, it AND the shouting is all over, so apparently we came to the fork in the road and took it. The F1 season finished up in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, and Lewis Hamilton is now a two-time world driver champion, so congrats to Lewis and his Mercedes-Petronas team for casting an evil spell against Lord Valdemort, and....I mean, congrats to the Mercedes team for winning the constructors title too!
Over on our 2014 Standings page you can find all the individual driver and constructor's team points standings, and what our predictions were before the season started. Back in March we knew that the Mercedes team had been much faster during the pre-season testing, so we both were correct in putting Hamilton and Rosberg in our top three. I have to humbly point out that my picks were EXACTLY right for 1st and 2nd on drivers while Brian had them 2nd and 3rd with his belief that Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso would somehow win the title. Maybe my picks were just a bit better for drivers, here's how it went:
2014 DriversPredictions:
Brian's Pre-Season Picks: 1. Alonso 2. Hamilton 3. Rosberg
Robert's Picks: 1. Hamilton 2. Rosberg 3. Massa
...and how they finished:
1. Lewis Hamilton
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2. Nico Rosberg
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3. Daniel Ricciardo
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4. Valtteri Bottas
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5. Sebastian Vettel
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6. Fernando Alonso
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7. Felipe Massa
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---Team wise, here's what we predicted:
2014 Constructors Predictions:
Brian's Picks: 1. Mercedes 2. Ferrari 3. McLaren
Robert's Picks: 1. Ferrari 2. Williams 3. Mercedes
...and here's how they finished:
2014 Constructors Final Standings:
1. Mercedes
2. Red Bull Racing
3. Williams
4. Ferrari
5. McLaren
So team wise, Brian's top 3 finished 1st, 4th, 5th, while my top 3 were 4th, 3rd, and 1st.
I'm not sure how they would score that in the Olympics, but I think Brian wins for correctly choosing the winning team of Mercedes.
In summary, 2014 was a new and exciting year with the introduction of smaller power units, turbo power, a change to the energy regeneration system, double points in the last race, new tracks in Russia and Austria, several rookie drivers, the first points ever for Marussia, the first team title for Mercedes, and a close driver's battle that wasn't decided until the final race.
On the negative side, we have to mention that Marussia driver Jules Bianchi remains hospitalized for a terrible crash in Japan back in October, and we hope that he recovers as much as possible. Racing wise, nothing is more important than that, so I'll just mention that Formula 1 takes a good look at all their safety procedures, and can at least prevent similar accidents from happening again.
Yesterday and today the F1 teams were busy doing more on track testing in Abu Dhabi in advance of the 2015 season, so we'll be keeping an eye on what's going on there, and get ready for another exciting season in 2015. Maybe we can get a little better in our predictions next time, so for now that's about the finale of 2014!