How Hamilton made it six and Ferrari fell short

The facts of the 2019 Formula 1 season were substantially the same as the previous five in the V6-turbo-hybrid era. Mercedes won both championships with Lewis Hamilton its star, Ferrari flattered to deceive, and Red Bull sniped for victories without ever threatening to fight for the title. Despite the new front-wing regulations, designed to make it easier for cars to follow each other, the naysayers moaned that grand prix racing needed to change the record.

But this wasn’t the same old story, not by a long shot. It was a profoundly different tale, with performance swings, surprises and purple patches for all three of Formula 1’s big teams – not to mention whispered accusations about the legitimacy of Ferrari’s engine supremacy.

Even though there was no title fight to speak of, despite Valtteri Bottas gamely hanging on to Hamilton’s coat tails and showing admirable fortitude in recovering after his 2018 slump, this was a season that will live long in the memory. Full of unexpected twists, engaging subplots and welcome revivals – not least Honda putting its McLaren nightmare behind it with a trio of victories in the back of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull RB15 – you couldn’t look away from the 2019 season. Even if the outcome was the same old.

Prologue: first blood to Ferrari in testing

Ferrari won the testing war. Those inside the team knew it, those inside rival teams knew it and Mercedes itself knew it – and fully expected it even before turning a wheel in Spain. While Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton set fastest laps that were separated by just three thousandths of a second, the Ferrari had a margin on adjusted single-lap and long-run pace. The Ferrari revival seemed on.

Mercedes opted to run the first test with a far earlier version of its 2019 car, signed off in November so that could be built while work on the ‘real’ car could be pushed as late as possible. Then, it brought a massive upgrade to the second Barcelona test confident of a big step in performance. But it didn’t quite work out like