2018

The 2018 World Championship had 21 rounds: it opened with the Australian Grand Prix on 25 March and ended with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on 25 November 2018. Every race was won by a driver from one of three teams: Mercedes had 11 wins, Ferrari six and Red Bull four. All of Mercedes’ wins came from Lewis Hamilton, while his team-mate Valtteri Bottas did not win a single race and finished fifth with 247 points.

Hamilton became champion for the fifth time, with 408 points and 11 wins. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was second with 320 points and five wins, and his team-mate Kimi Räikkönen third with 251, two points ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Mercedes won the Constructors’ Championship for the fifth year running: 655 points to Ferrari’s 571 and Red Bull’s 419.

Vettel won the first two races, in Australia and Bahrain, and led after each of the first three rounds. Hamilton took his first win of the season at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 29 April and moved ahead, but the lead changed hands four more times before the end of July. Vettel went back to the top after the Canadian Grand Prix on 10 June and the Austrian Grand Prix on 1 July, where Hamilton retired, and after winning at Silverstone on 8 July he was eight points clear.

At the German Grand Prix on 22 July Vettel started from pole and crashed out, while Hamilton won from 14th on the grid and took the championship lead once more — this time for the rest of the season. From the Italian Grand Prix on 2 September to the Japanese Grand Prix on 7 October he won four races in a row, and his lead over Vettel grew to 67 points.

The title was not yet settled at the United States Grand Prix on 21 October: Hamilton finished third and Vettel fourth, and the race was won by Räikkönen. It was his first win since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, and the last of his career.

A week later, at the Mexican Grand Prix on 28 October, Verstappen won and Vettel came second, but fourth place was enough for Hamilton: with two races to go he was 64 points ahead of Vettel — more than could be scored in the remaining races. Hamilton won the Brazilian and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix as well and finished the season 88 points clear.

Ten teams took part. Besides the works team, Force India and Williams used Mercedes engines, while Haas and Sauber had Ferrari engines. McLaren raced with Renault engines, Toro Rosso with Honda. The top ten scored points, from 25 for a win to one for tenth place; there was no extra point for the fastest lap yet.

Renault finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, with 122 points, 69 of them scored by Nico Hülkenberg, seventh in the Drivers’ Championship. Williams finished last, with seven points all season.

Charles Leclerc at Sauber and Sergey Sirotkin at Williams spent their debut seasons in the championship. Leclerc scored 39 points, finished 13th and moved to Ferrari the following year, while Räikkönen went the other way, to Sauber, which raced as Alfa Romeo from 2019. The 2018 season remained Sirotkin’s only one in the championship: he scored one point.

After the season Fernando Alonso, Stoffel Vandoorne, Brendon Hartley and Marcus Ericsson left the championship; Alonso came back in 2021. Esteban Ocon was also left without a seat for 2019, returning in 2020. Daniel Ricciardo moved from Red Bull to Renault, and Pierre Gasly from Toro Rosso took his place at Red Bull.