2012 Highs and lows

[markfarrell9572]

2012.  What a season.  What are your highs and lows, heroes and zeroes?

Highs:

Kimi, how good was it to have him back? He says little and mumbles what he does say, but despite his lack of charisma and personality, he oozes charisma and personality, his win was a long time coming but so well deserved.

Williams winning.  Seeing Frank's team winning again was... well it was just brilliant.  Although it didn't come near to returning to the highs of that day in Spain, Williams became a winner again. 

KK on the podium in Japan.  The chants of the crowd as he stood on the podium were something to hear

Austin.  Beautiful track.  Great race.

Massa, returning to form at last.  I like Felipe, he just seems a decent bloke and it was great to see him return to form after a couple of tough years.

Great racing.  Even Bahrain and Valencia weren't bore fests this year.


Lows:

Williams pit fire.  Pity a great team couldn't fully enjoy a great victory.

Pastor Maldonado.  Such talent but how does he get so involved in so many needless, stupid incidents?

Romain Grosjean.  See above, only perhaps the talent is greater.

Lewis and twitter.  Tweeting confidential  information showed how spoilt and removed from reality Lewis is.  He's such a great talent but he acts like a petulant child.  Maybe 3 years in a car that isn't a front runner will make him realise how luck and blessed he was at McLaren.

KK not returning in 2013.  F1 is heading back to the era of the pay driver.  Luckily the pay drivers are of fairly good quality, but how long before we start going down the road of picking the likes of a Taki Inoue or Giovanni Lavaggi again?

Bahrain.  Yes it was  good race.  Yes sport and politics shouldn't mix, but the Bahraini government used this event to show all is right when it isn't.  The event was a tool for a struggling dictatorship. 

The concorde row.  Time for the teams really to grow some balls and and stand up as one.  They put on the show and yet a private equity firm drains a large percentage of the money out.





Merry Christmas everyone and heres hoping 2013 is just as great.

[F1fanaticBD]

Nicely put Mark, but you have missed one big Hero of the Year, Pirelli which ensured that we have 8 different winners in this season, and kept the season in balance for pretty long time, and at times there was 5 contender for WDC.

I think I would like to mention David as being the Hero as well because he managed to get some pics from Spa this year, that should be congratulated. If the race was in Indy instead of Austin I think we could have another set of great pics from Cos, but alas it wasn't to be.

[Dare]

Michael was a high and low for me.One more
year with him competing and a low with him retiring

Highs

Kimi's return

Alonso's run for the WDC

Williams improvetment

multiple race winners

Lows

Marko

Lauda

Vettel's whining

Hamilton whining and lack of respect for his 2nd Mclaren

Mercedes ousting Haug

[David]

All in all it was a hell of a year, and here's hoping 2013 even comes close. 

The only low I can add it the BBC coverage, spoiled my full enjoyment this year. 

[Ian]

My two lows were the BBC coverage and no laptop for the chatroom towards the end of the season. As David said, cracking season of racing.

[cosworth151]

Highs:

Kimi back on form. Good to have him back.

Sauber & Williams resurgence. Two longtime favorites getting back up where they belong.

Record number of different winners to start the season. Good to have things shaken up.

Having everyone here at GPW to share the sport with.

Lows:

My performance (or, lack of same) in the Grid Game. 

Schumacher's lack of performance. I hoped that he would win at least one race.

The loss of Haug and the return of Lauda. Well, so much for Mercedes, especially if Gerhard Berger replaces Haug.

Questionable calls by the stewards. I'm sure that most of you have your own favorite examples of that.

Austin. Inaccessible, mediocre track with astronomical pricing. The attendance was about the same as the smallest USGP Indy.

[Williamsfan]

Highs:

Williams winning and Maldonado pulling off a stunning drive holding off Alonso.  It was a fantastic afternoon!

Watching Alonso at the peak of his abilities, what a season he had. 

Seeing Raikkonen back in F1 and performing so brilliantly. 

Having 6 World Champions on the grid.

Seeing so much open racing.

Lows:

Careless driving from so many racers- Grosjean and Maldonado in particular.

Seeing drivers losing seats for no reason other than they didn't have the budget to stay in (ie- Kobayashi and probably Kovalainen).

Williams having the pitfire, losing Adam Parr and now losing Mark Gillan. 

[vintly]

Ace post Mark - I agree on all points, which is a rare thing!

I didn't used to have much feeling for Kimi, and now I absolutely love him. If I had to pick one high it would be him. And one low would be the decision to race in Bahrain.

What a fab year, roll on March.

[Irisado]

Kimi, how good was it to have him back? He says little and mumbles what he does say, but despite his lack of charisma and personality, he oozes charisma and personality, his win was a long time coming but so well deserved.

I disagree with your choice of adjectives.  Raikkonen has no charisma at all.  Charismatic people do not mumble, shuffle, or speak in such monotone, and uninspiring ways.  He is one of the least charismatic people I have ever seen.  I do agree that he is different, and has character, but that does not make him charismatic.

On to my highs and lows:

Highs:

The Brazilian Grand Prix - Tense all the way in terms of the title battle, the battle for victory, and the crucial battle between Caterham and Marussia over tenth place in the constructors' championship.  If only more of the races had been this exciting.

Grosjean - His accidents, and collisions livened up the season.  With reliability being too good (see the lows), driver errors are needed to spice a lot of the dry races up.

Alonso - Not for many years has a driver driven so brilliantly and not won the title.  He should have won it, in my opinion, as Vettel was extremely lucky in both Abu Dhabi and Brazil.

Sauber - A very good overall result for the team, and some very competitive performances in the first half of the year, and at the Italian Grand Prix.

Massa - A great turn around in performance for him.  At mid season I thought that he was for the chop in 2013, but he showed immense character to turn everything around.

Williams' victory - I'm not a massive Williams fan, but I was pleased to see them win this year.  They had a good car, and they deserved it.  If only they had had more consistent drivers, they could have scored a lot more points.

Lows:

Vettel winning the title, Vettel's finger, Vettel's childish outbursts - I make no secret of my dislike for this man's behaviour, but this year it really did grate.  His ridiculous double outbursts against Karthikeyan, his sulking moments when he didn't win, and his childish finger when he did win, just all really got to me.  I'm sick to death of this guy, and if he didn't have such a good car, and wasn't on the front row so often, he wouldn't win anywhere near as often as he does.

Sanitised circuits - This problem continues to get worse.  Put the gravel traps back in, and make the drivers pay for their mistakes.  This is Grand Prix racing after all.

DRS - Too artificial, and makes passes on some straights way too easy.  It should only be used on circuits where overtaking is very difficult.  Let the tyres do the rest.

Ecclestone - Just retire please.  I'm fed up of his pernicious influence on Formula 1.

Ferrari - They need to sort that wind tunnel out.

Mercedes - After that great victory in China, what happened?  Ross Brawn seems to have lost his magic touch.

Schumacher - An ill judged comeback from start to finish.  His pathetic moving over to allow Vettel past him was also an insult to the viewing public.  He should have made him work for the pass as he would have done with any other driver.

The end of Hispania - The drivers and mechanics deserved so much better.  Thespian Capital is not on my Christmas card list.