By Callum McAvoy & Joe Weimerskirch, reporters

The Formula One season ended with a bang. And we are not only talking about the fireworks, donuts and Will Smith operating the cameras. There was Hulkenberg’s huge crash, Alonso’s emotional farewell and of course the chance to look back at our 2018 season predictions we made all the way back in March.

It was an audacious attempt by ourselves to accurately predict every place in the driver and constructor standings. And it is fair to say that we failed spectacularly. In both tables we were only able to correctly predict three places. We correctly said that Mercedes would win the constructors championship and Toro Rosso would finish 9^th. And Sergio Perez finished 8^thin our predictions and real life.

Unfortunately, that was the extent of our success. With a few drivers and teams, we were only a place out, but in this sport every position matters, so join us as we review the 2018 season and look back on the high the lows and our own shortcomings.

Ricciardo flop, Hamilton top

Starting at the top, we made a bold claim that everyone’s favourite Daniel Ricciardo would win the title. To be honest we didn’t have much faith in this at all and so it was proved with the Aussie finishing in 6^thplace and last of the frontrunners. This wasn’t necessarily his fault though after he failed to finish eight races, six of those down to mechanical issues with his Red Bull. Further problems with the team were apparent after they began to show favouritism towards young star Max Verstappen. The always smiling Ricciardo dropped the nice guy act and before the summer was out, he agreed a move to Renault for next year.

Verstappen continues to impress and at times displayed the winning mentality that champions are made of. But his immaturity still holds him back and that was highlighted with his fight with Force India’s Esteban Ocon in the garage after the two collided on track. With Riccardo now out of the way the Dutchman will be looking to lead a now Honda powered Red Bull back to the front of the grid in 2019.

Meanwhile it was business as usual for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. The Brit romped home to his 5^thworld title to make him one of the greatest of all time. He started the season off the pace of his Ferrari rival Sebastian Vettel, who at times looked set to emulate his hero Michael Schumacher and become a champion with the Scuderia. But just like last season, a mixture of mistakes, poor strategy and just pure bad luck plagued the Ferrari garage and their wait for a trophy goes on. The image of Vettel hitting his steering after crashing out of his home grand prix in Germany, will go down in the sports history.

Hamilton meanwhile is in the best form of his life, now able to balance being the best driver on the track with his celebrity lifestyle off it. Just when it seems that the brit has lost all interest in pursuing titles, he responds with performances that underline why he and not Vettel is considered in the F1 GOAT debate amongst the likes of Schumacher, Fangio and Senna. His hunger for victories goes on and if he is able to keep this up, he might even surpass Schumacher’s tally of 91 race wins and seven world titles.

One thing that we certainly did not expect was the resurgence of a certain Kimi Raikkonen. The 2007 champion had been a shadow of his former self in previous years and we claimed that this would be his last season in the sport. But against all the odds, the Iceman outscored both Red Bulls and Valtteri Bottas of Mercedes and was even able to take his first win since 2013. However, it was not enough to secure a Ferrari drive for next year and Kimi will now see out his career at Sauber, the team that he made his F1 debut for all the way back in 2001. On the other hand, fellow Finn Bottas struggled to match the pace of the other front runners and the pressure is on him to turnaround his form. He started the season brilliantly and was arguable robbed of victories in China and Azerbaijan. But for the rest of the season he was relegated to supporting Hamilton’s title campaign and was forced to yield victory to his teammate in Russia. Toto Wolff’s comments calling him a perfect “wingman”, did nothing to help his confidence. He’ll be hoping to change that soon.

As a result of all of this Mercedes, as we predicted, were crowded Constructor champions again, but Raikkonen’s surprise performances meant Ferrari finished runner up ahead of Red Bull, not what we had predicted.

A midfield battle for the ages

So often the midfield fight is the real highlight of a grand prix season and 2018 provided us with one of the most thrilling and closely contested ones in years. Whilst the gap between the top 6 drivers and the rest of the grid was even more apparent this year, five teams were inseparable. Every race weekend, a different team emerged as the best of the rest and in the end only … points separated them.

We believed that Force India would triumph, and they may well have, had they not been bankrupted half way through the season and stripped of all the points, they had accumulated up until that point. As a result, they could only manage 7^thbut it would have been 5^thwithout the points deduction. The team were saved from collapse by billionaire Lawrence Stroll and will be known as Racing Point F1 from next year onwards. If that name wasn’t bad enough, Stroll’s son Lance has been spoon-fed a seat at the team replacing the more highly rated Ocon.

Renault ended up taking 4^thwith Hulkenberg finishing 7^thand the best of the rest in the drivers table. It’s this form and the promise of more to come that has tempted Riccardo join the banana team with many speculating a title push will be on cards by 2021.

Haas started the season positively but couldn’t keep the momentum up, but 5^this still the best finish for the American outfit. Despite being free of Honda, McLaren were ultimately very disappointed. Alonso has finally had enough, and the two-time world champion has called it quits. The rebuilding process goes on for the Woking based team.

And there was one additional surprise in the midfield. Against all the odds Sauber were reborn again and competing. Marcus Ericsson so often ridiculed as the worst driver on the grid impressed at times but the real success story this year came from the team’s rookie Charles Leclerc. An impressive drive to 7^thin Azerbaijan announced him to the world but his performances throughout the season earned the 21-year-old from Monaco a seat at Ferrari next year with many anticipating what he will be able to do with a top car.

Bringing up the rear

As already mentioned, Sauber did better than expected, while Williams were completely left behind. Finishing last, we expected the British team to struggle, but not to this extend. Amassing just seven points, Williams season just came and went with no impact whatsoever. Indeed, the most exciting to happen to them this year came after the final race. When it was announced that Robert Kubica will be returning to Formula 1 with the team, over eight years after his near-fatal rally crash.

Toro Rosso were the only other team whose final position we correctly guessed. Things began well, with Pierre Gasly somehow finishing 4^thin Bahrain. Bar that, the Red Bull B-team did absolutely nothing else, with Gasly being called up to the senior team to replace Ricciardo for next year.

The chequered flag

The 2018 season will likely not go down as one of the greats in F1 history, rather another bookmark in the Hamilton/Mercedes domination era. But it was hardly a snoozefest and it set the foundations for what will surely be an enthralling next few years of motorsport.

Below are the full standings for the season next to our far from perfect predictions:

What actually happened		What we predicted
Driver standings
1	Lewis Hamilton	Daniel Ricciardo
2	Sebastian Vettel	Lewis Hamilton
3	Kimi Räikkönen	Sebastian Vettel
4	Max Verstappen	Valtteri Bottas
5	Valtteri Bottas	Max Verstappen
6	Daniel Ricciardo	Kimi Räikkönen
7	Nico Hulkenberg	Fernando Alonso
8	Sergio Perez	Sergio Perez
9	Kevin Magnussen	Esteban Ocon
10	Carlos Sainz	Romain Grosjean
11	Fernando Alonso	Carlos Sainz
12	Esteban Ocon	Nico Hulkenberg
13	Charles Leclerc	Kevin Magnussen
14	Romain Grosjean	Stoffel Vandoorne
15	Pierre Gasly	Lance Stroll
16	Stoffel Vandoorne	Pierre Gasly
17	Marcus Ericsson	Brendon Hartley
18	Lance Stroll	Charles Leclerc
19	Brendon Hartley	Sergey Sirotkin
20	Sergey Sirotkin	Marcus Ericsson
Constructor championship
1	Mercedes	Mercedes
2	Ferrari	Red Bull
3	Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer	Ferrari
4	Renault	Force India
5	Haas Ferrari	Mclaren
6	McLaren Renault	Haas
7	Force India Mercedes	Renault
8	Sauber Ferrari	Williams
9	Scuderia Toro Rosso Honda	Toro Rosso
10	Williams Mercedes	Sauber