The 2014 Formula 1 World Championship hinges on 55 laps of Yas Marina Circuit on Sunday, an echo of 2010 when the title race went to the final grand prix of the season.
Whereas four years ago four drivers had a mathematical chance of being crowned world champion, this year has only ever been about one team and their two drivers: Mercedes and driver duo Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
The championship has ebbed and flowed. After the Belgian GP, Hamilton was deemed dead and buried after dropping 29 points behind Rosberg in the standings before a string of five consecutive races.
Such are the vagaries of F1 racing, that no one really knows how this race and hence the championship will unfold, the big uncertainty being the reliability issues that Mercedes have endured.
On paper, Hamilton is the favourite, 17 points clear and with 10 wins to Rosberg’s five. If the German is being truthful, he knows his team-mate is quicker but F1 has a habit of producing the unexpected.
For Mercedes, the highs have heftily outweighed the lows. From winning the first six races of the season: Hamilton’s four to Rosberg’s two, to Hamilton’s winning streak in the latter part of the year, the German manufacturer have dominated.
But it has not been a season without blemishes. Reliability issues first reared their ugly head in Canada when both drivers suffered near simultaneous power-unit failures leading to Hamilton’s retirement and Rosberg losing pace and Daniel Ricciardo claiming the first non- Mercedes victory of the season.
And then there is the small matter of a fractured friendship, first established when Hamilton and Rosberg were mere youngsters. At the season start, the pair pledged such a friendship – born out of mutual respect – could be maintained but the fissures in that amicability were felt almost from the outset.
The animosity moved up a notch in Monaco when Rosberg parked his car in qualifying, effectively denying Hamilton, who deemed it a deliberate move, the chance to pip his team-mate to pole position at the street circuit.
A sense of amicability remained, just, until the events of the Belgian GP where the pair clashed, Rosberg very publicly held to account by his Mercedes team, who to their credit all season long have allowed their drivers to race rather than solely focus on their own championship ambitions in the constructors’ standings.
If anything, that Spa prang put the bit between Hamilton’s teeth as he produced arguably some of the best driving of his entire career to win five races in a row. Where once he was over a race in terms of points behind Rosberg, suddenly it looked like he was racing away to a second championship to add to the one attained in 2008, that is until Rosberg’s timely win in Brazil.
This season was always going to be one of change, the new hybrid engines bringing an end to Red Bull’s dominance and putting Mercedes in the ascendancy.
But Red Bull, the only other team to have enjoyed race wins in 2014 – thanks to Ricciardo’s three victories – have perhaps surpassed their own early expectations after a torrid winter of testing in which they appeared unable to string together even a sequence of laps without their power unit capitulating.
Sebastian Vettel, though, has struggled with the new-look and new-feel cars while Ricciardo has been like a star born and, with Vettel off to Ferrari for 2015, the smiling Australian will very much become the team’s No1 next season.
Of the best of the rest, Williams scored more points in the first race of the year in Australia than they had in their entire 2013 campaign.
Of the established teams, Ferrari and McLaren have had a dire time of it. Among the lows being the result in Japan where both Ferrari drivers were out of the points, a first for the team in 82 races.
McLaren had been devoid of a podium finish in 2013, which they made amends for with second and third at the season opener in Australia. But that was as good as it got.
But McLaren’s plight has been exceeded by that of Marussia, who have folded with two races to go just weeks after Jules Bianchi’s horrific crash in Japan, and Caterham, who have enjoyed an Abu Dhabi lifeline after raising the funds required to race courtesy of crowd funding.
It is a year, though, that has been about Hamilton v Rosberg, a pulsating battle from start to finish that, with double points at stake, could go down to the final lap of the season.
