Formula One winners and losers in 2014 (so far)

The 2014 Formula One season has now reached its halfway point. With eight events still remaining on this nineteen-race calendar, the drivers’ championship is still very much open.

The constructors’ championship on the other hand seems to be out of question for Mercedes AMG’s rivals, with a 174-point lead over the second placed Red Bull Racing team.

2014 has introduced Formula One into a new era, an era of hybrid technology. Out went the loud and proud V8 engine and in came the technically marvellous hybrid V6 turbocharged power-unit. There have been mass changes on the aerodynamics side of the sport too, with a reduction in downforce by almost 50% than the cars from last year.

Now let’s take a look at some of the big winners and unfortunate losers so far in the 2014 campaign. We’ll start with a few of the winners.

Mercedes AMG
If the speed and consistency the team showed in pre-season testing wasn’t ominous enough, the nine race wins out of eleven so far and also the six one-two finishes further asserts the dominance the team has had this year.

Nico Rosberg currently leads the championship over his teammate Lewis Hamilton by 11 points. Rosberg’s season so far has been all about consistency. Despite his teammate winning four races in a row from Malaysia to Barcelona, the German made sure he was second in all of those races to minimise Hamilton’s gains.

Hamilton on the other hand has had a fairly wild season to say the least, riddled with driver errors in qualifying and also a few issues on the car side. But when he’s had his way, he has been dominant.

Winning those four races back-to-back after his first race retirement in Melbourne and then of course that emphatic victory at his home grand prix, after Rosberg retired, highlighted that the Briton will fight to the bitter end.

With double points on offer at the final grand prix of the season in Abu Dhabi, an 11 point deficit to his teammate seems not so terrible at the moment for Hamilton. However though, reliability problems have slowly crept up on the team in recent races, so whether that serious affects their performance in the second half remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, Mercedes AMG have demonstrated that they are the biggest winners so far in 2014. All the alterations they undertook in the three years leading up to this season, with the hiring of important personnel such as Toto Wolff, Paddy Lowe, Aldo Costa and even Niki Lauda is has paid very handsome dividends for Ross Brawn’s old team.

Daniel Ricciardo
Coming into the 2014 season, the expectation for Daniel Ricciardo by many was that he would play a supporting role to his four-time championship-winning teammate Sebastian Vettel. It was thought that the young Ricciardo would be in the capacity to learn from the experienced Vettel, but from where both Red Bull drivers are currently positioned in the championship, it seems Vettel could do with some learning from his junior.

After a horror pre-season, Red Bull came to the first race in Melbourne on the back foot. The unreliability of the Renault power-unit was a major thorn in their side, but qualifying second for the race and then finishing second demonstrated to the paddock he was no ‘number two’ driver.

Despite the exclusion from the race result in Australia over the fuel flow metre saga and a retirement in Malaysia not of his own volition, Ricciardo has shown that as a young driver he has a cool head on his shoulders. His two fourth place finishes in Bahrain and China were followed by back-to-back podium appearances in Barcelona and Monaco.

In Canada, his excellent form was rewarded with his first career victory. He had picked up the broken shards of the retired Hamilton and a wounded Rosberg, to become the first non-Mercedes AMG driver to win in 2014. Another podium at Silverstone and a surprise second race win in Hungary cemented the Aussie into third in the championship.

Marussia
After being at the bottom end of the sport for five years, the Marussia team finally scored their first championship points since entering the sport in 2010. The team’s belated first points came at the chaotic Monaco Grand Prix, where their star driver Jules Bianchi finished ninth.

The two points they scored as a result has put them ninth in the constructors’ standings, ahead of the lacklustre Sauber squad and ahead once again of their wooden spoon rivals Caterham. For a team like Marussia, a mere two points will go a long way in terms of securing their future in the sport, with the prize money that is awarded at the end of the season.

The fans
Even though there are some fans who are still disgruntled over the quieter engine sounds and double points in Abu Dhabi, overall there has been great praise for the racing that they are seeing this season.

The frequency of wheel-to-wheel battles between all the drivers have been greater this season it seems compared to the last. Hamilton and Rosberg have had their fair share of intense battles for race wins, especially in Bahrain which many fans on social media have branded the best race of the year.

Fernando Alonso has also been involved in many great encounters too this season, with the likes of Nico Hulkenberg, his arch rival Vettel and even Ricciardo to which after he gave high praise to the Aussie.

And now then a few of the unfortunate losers for this season so far.

McLaren
During the off-season, McLaren underwent a number of drastic changes within the team to ensure that the atrocity that was their 2013 campaign would not repeat in 2014. Ron Dennis resumed control of the team in an executive role, while Eric Boullier was poached from Lotus to assume a trackside manager’s position.

Initially after their double podium result in Melbourne, it seemed McLaren were on their way back up, but that was indeed short lived. The best result for the team after the podiums in Australia was two lots of fourth place finishes in Canada and Silverstone for Jenson Button.

Danish debutant Kevin Magnussen on the other hand has endured a tougher season than his veteran teammate, with the incidents he’s had with Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen and then later with Felipe Massa in which he was not to blame.

With aerodynamics being the area in which the MP4-29 lacks in, numerous updates through the season are slowly bringing the team back into the points. In the second half, it is expected that the team continue to progress forward.

Ferrari
It’s arguable that Ferrari are the ‘biggest’ losers of 2014 so far. It was expected that being a factory team in that they build their power-unit in house that they would be on the same level as Mercedes AMG and with their two world championship winning drivers, they’d be vacuuming up the points.

That’s sadly not the case. While Alonso has wrestled the animal-like F14 T to two podiums this season, Räikkönen has struggled to get to grips with the new car. There have already been calls to send the Finn packing again, after just return to the team where he won his maiden championship.

But the fact of the matter is that Ferrari must be on to make Räikkönen more comfortable in the 2015 car, with him now within the team to advise his old Lotus designer James Allison in making a chassis suited to him.

After playing second fiddle to Red Bull for four straight years, the Scuderia will have to work through another agonising season, before they can start anew with new Team Principal Marco Mattiacci at the helm.

Sebastian Vettel
The four-time world champion and driver to beat for the last four years has been brought to his knees in 2014 and it hasn’t just been to Rosberg and Hamilton. His new, younger Aussie teammate Ricciardo has had the measure of the mighty Vettel since the first race of the season, despite his exclusion.

Vettel like Räikkönen is believed to be struggling with the lack of downforce on the new cars. After dominating in cars that had the most downforce of any on the grid, it has come as no surprise to some that the German is unable to tame this year’s bull.

By the midpoint of the season in 2013, Vettel had won four of the ten races and had been on the podium another three times. In 2014 his best result has been a pair of thirds. One of which was in Canada, where he was overshadowed by his teammate’s win.

Caterham
Seeing their long-time rivals Marussia score their first points in Formula One would have been a dreadful sight for everyone involved with the Caterham F1 Team. The biggest impact would have certainly been on the then team owner Tony Fernandes who started this project as Team Lotus in 2010.

Both drivers Kamui Kobayashi and rookie Marcus Ericsson have had lacklustre seasons involving a plethora of reliability issues, both on the team’s side and the Renault power-unit side. Ericsson scored the team’s best result of the season in Monaco when he finished eleventh, but was overshadowed by Bianchi’s points.

The team with their new owners – a consortium of Middle Eastern and Swiss investors – and new Team Principal Christijan Albers are aiming to bring upgrades to the next race in Belgium. But at the same time the team are undergoing plenty of internal issues with staff redundancies and potential law suits from former staff.

With eight races to go, the possibility of the team ousting Marussia’s ninth position or even beat Sauber in the constructors’ championship looks unlikely. There is definitely a big question mark now over the future direction of the team and what to expect from the team in green.

So that’s just a few of significant the winners and losers of 2014 so far. Who else has won or lost in the 2014 Formula One season?