Formula 1: Who will win the
2019 Driver Championship?
Roughly three and a half months removed from the 2018 Formula 1 season finale, we are just one week away from the opening race of the 21-race 2019 season, the Australian Grand Prix, at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne, Australia.
A total of 20 drivers representing 10
teams are set to compete this season. Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis
Hamilton is set to enter the season as the two-time reigning champion. The
five-time champion has won four championships in the last five seasons.
Will Hamilton win his third
consecutive championship in the 2019 season, or will another driver be crowned
champion for the first time since Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg edged out his teammate
to be crowned champion in the 2016 season?
If he can cut down on the unforced errors that have cost him the chance to be a true
championship contender in each of the last two seasons, Scuderia
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel can certainly be a factor when it comes to the 2019
championship battle.
Vettel’s new teammate, Charles Leclerc, is also projected to make an immediate
impact in his first season driving for the team after an
ultra-impressive rookie season driving for Alfa Romeo Sauber that led to him
being named the replacement for Kimi Raikkonen at
the Scuderia for the 2019 season.
Mercedes’ Valtteri
Bottas knows that he is at risk of losing his ride to Mercedes reserve and test
driver Esteban Ocon for the 2020 season, so he should be extra motivated to perform at a high level in the 2019
season.
With Aston
Martin Red Bull Racing set to switch from Renault engines to Honda engines for
the 2019 season, they expect have better reliability and more power
from their engines. They fully believe that Max
Verstappen has what it takes to win this year’s championship, and Pierre Gasly has emerged as somewhat of a dark horse
candidate to do so as well.
The 2019 championship battle is shaping
to be one of the most competitive championship battles that the sport has seen
in quite a few years. But at the end of the day, it is going to take a
near-perfect if not perfect season to dethrone Hamilton, and I simply don’t see
that happening from any of the five other drivers who drive for one of the
sport’s top three teams.
2019 driver championship prediction:
Lewis Hamilton
Since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid
era, Hamilton has earned 51 victories, an all-time
record for a five-year span. He has recorded four seasons of at least 10 victories during this span.
There have only been four other seasons of this variety in the sport’s history,
and no other driver has recorded more than two of them.
Aside of his five-point defeat (385 to
380) in the 2016 championship battle with Rosberg, the closest that Hamilton
has come to losing a championship during the V6 turbo hybrid era is his
46-point (363 to 317) victory over Vettel in second place in the 2017 season.
His lowest single-season win total of the V6 turbo hybrid era is nine.
Only once has a driver other than
Hamilton earned more than six victories in a season during the V6 turbo hybrid
era. Rosberg pulled this off when he earned nine victories in his
championship-winning 2016 season.
The bottom line is this. There are
several drivers who have the potential to dethrone Hamilton this season. As
stated, this season’s championship battle is expected to be one of the closest
championship battles in quite a few years.
But the odds of any of these drivers
performing at a higher level than the driver who is pursuing the all-time Formula 1 championships and wins records over the course of an entire 21-race
season are extremely small, especially considering the fact that this driver
drives for the team that are aiming to win their sixth consecutive constructor
championship this season.
Even when Rosberg won the 2016
championship, he did so in large part due to the red-hot start that he had to
the season and the cushion that he built up in the standings as a result of it,
and this took place in large part due to the
momentum that he built up at the end of the 2015 season. Of the
final 15 victories between he and Hamilton throughout the 2016 season, Hamilton
earned 10.
Will Lewis Hamilton win his
third consecutive championship, his fifth championship in the last six seasons
and his sixth career championship in the 2019 Formula 1 season? If not, which
driver will win become the first driver not named Hamilton to win the
championship since Nico Rosberg won it in the 2016 season? The 2019 season is
scheduled to begin on Sunday, March 17 with the Australian Grand Prix. To see
the full 2019 schedule, click here.
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