The 2017 Formula 1 World Championship took a very different form to previous years. Not only did the cars look radically different with the aggressive new aerodynamic regulations, but a less dominant Mercedes squad brought the prancing horse back into the championship fold.
With Ferrari vying for top honours, and no longer bogged down by the political backdrop of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s in-fighting, the race between two top teams and two top drivers restored a purity to the title fight. It was total war, not civil war.
But on the basis of his performances in the second half of the season, no man was going to deny Hamilton. In qualifying, in the wet, in wheel-to-wheel combat and across a race distance; the Brit took real ownership of his fourth world title with truly world-class heroics at the wheel.
Elsewhere in 2017, we saw a prodigious double-champion in a battle for recognition, a 20-year-old superstar stake his claim for future glory, the continued decline of a Finnish fan favourite and the rise of several more young contenders for future stardom (some, like Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and McLaren’s Lando Norris, aren’t even in F1 yet).
Here’s how F1’s class of 2017 stacked-up:
