From Rosberg and Verstappen, F1 season’s best and worst

Mercedes dominated the season with 19 wins from 21 races, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Renault’s Jolyon Palmer enjoyed breakthrough years. Manor’s Rio Haryanto, less so
   
Best driver
In terms of extracting the most from himself, Nico Rosberg. No driver worked harder than the champion in 2016, both with his team and with himself, changing his diet, his sleeping patterns, his gloves, turning his mobile phone off for two weeks and emptying his mind of all distractions.
Daniel Ricciardo was also superb and consistent.  Everyone knows that Lewis Hamilton is the best driver out there. But apart from those technical issues he failed to always get the best from himself, was way off form in Singapore and took a long time to get over his issue with bad starts.
   
Worst driver
Rio Haryanto, if you remember him. He always looked destined to replace the maladroit Pastor Maldonado in our hearts. He made his debut in the first race in Australia and crashed into Romain Grosjean in practice. He was handed a three-place grid penalty and had two points added to his licence; he retired from the race on the 18th lap. In August Manor demoted him to reserve team driver.
The most disappointing driver, though, was Kevin Magnussen. Many thought him unlucky when he was demoted to test and reserve driver at McLaren. But at Renault he ended the season looking second-best to rookie Jolyon Palmer.

Best team
Mercedes. No argument there, surely, even though Red Bull saved the season from becoming totally predictable, while Force India, those habitual overachievers, came a magnificent third for the first time. But Mercedes, admirably dissatisfied with their dominance in 2014 and 2015, remained well ahead of the game, winning 19 of the 21 races. They have dominated even more completely than Red Bull did between 2010-13.
    
Worst team
Ferrari. No, not Manor, or Sauber, who were never going to achieve much with their limited resources. Ferrari are the biggest and richest team of them all but they again frustrated their passionate supporters, and everyone else in Formula One who wanted to see somebody step up and challenge Mercedes.
If they were bad enough last year, when they won only three races and finished a distant second to Mercedes, they were dire this time round, with problems with their chassis, their aerodynamics and their strategy.
They failed to win a single race and finished 367 points behind Mercedes and 70 points behind second-placed Red Bull. And they let their brilliant technical chief James Allison leave, suggesting they lack not only performance but ambition too. The mystery is how team principal Maurizio Arrivabene was allowed to survive it all.
    
Best drive
Although Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had 19 wins between them, I’m not picking one of them. I’m going for Max Verstappen – but not his famous maiden victory in Barcelona, where he became the youngest ever F1 winner.
It was a great performance there by Verstappen but it came after Hamilton and Rosberg had collided, and after his team-mate Ricciardo had been placed on a three-stop strategy against his own two-stopper.
No, it’s his drive in Brazil, at sodden Interlagos, which caught the eye more than any of his other sensational performances. He dropped to the back of the field after making an unnecessary extra stop and then carved his way back through the pack in thrilling fashion to finish a most unlikely third, having made up 13 places in 16 laps.
    
Best race
The aforementioned Brazilian Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the year, literally got the thumbs down from the locals when it started behind a safety car.
And there was plenty of booing when the five safety cars stayed out too long, and on the two occasions the race was red-flagged.
But by the end, three hours after the start, they had seen a wet drive of rare mastery from Hamilton, bringing back memories of his famous victory in the rain at Silverstone in 2008, and bravery and skill from almost everyone else. It was breathless, it was chaotic and it was difficult to follow at times.
If Verstappen caught they eye more than any other driver they all contributed to the spectacle. At the end they cheered local hero Felipe Massa, but that had more to do with the fact that this was his last home race than for any ability driving in wet conditions.

Most daring overtake
In the context of what was at stake, it has to be Rosberg’s pass on Verstappen in Abu Dhabi. Verstappen has pulled off some of the most memorable passes of the season – and his team-mate Ricciardo has been no slouch either. But in the end it is Verstappen being overtaken that will live in the memory for ever. Rosberg was told that he had to make the move.
He delayed for a while and then almost collided with the prodigy when going past through turns eight and nine of lap 20. If the German had got it wrong he would have seen his entire season’s work go up in smoke. He is often criticised for not being the equal of Hamilton when it comes to wheel to wheel action – and he’s not – but this was a move to remember.
    
Hero of the year
Jolyon Palmer. This is a slow burner of a driver. It took him a long apprenticeship in GP2 before he finally won the series and now the same thing appears to be happening to him in F1.
After a hesitant start he has settled in at Renault and, in the latter part of the season, regularly got the better of his more experienced teammate, Kevin Magnussen. He may not be a future world champion but he is a British driver to be proud of.
    
Villain of the year
Sebastian Vettel. He is a four-time world champion but he has forgotten how to win. That is mostly because of his inferior car. But too often his frustrations spilled over and he was too aggressive with his driving and a little too blue with his language.
There were far too many petulant outbursts and he was lucky to get away with swearing at race director Charlie Whiting following the Mexican Grand Prix.
What Formula One must do next
Improve the product. The new regulations for 2017 will help. The tyres will be fatter, the cars will be more aggressively designed and they should be four or five seconds faster too. But that is only a start. New owners Liberty Media must show their vision for the future.
They must address falling attendances and TV audiences. They must embrace social media and do their best to attract a younger audience, while not alienating the old. Rules and regulations should be simplified.
But it is also up to the teams to raise their game. It is no good blaming Mercedes for being too good.
We need more teams and drivers competing for wins, we need more overtaking – or least attempted overtaking. We need a better show.