Categories: FeatureFeatures

2014 v 2015: Driver comparisons

The new season has brought competitive racing and a surprise winner, but also seen big teams struggle after the optimism of pre-season.

Following yesterday's look at how each team has fared compared to last season, today F1i analyses the changing fortunes for the drivers. Of the top five teams from last season, only Mercedes and Williams boast unchanged line-ups to give a comparison between their own personal improvements, while we can also look at which drivers made good or bad moves over the winter.

The most high profile switches occurred at Ferrari and McLaren, with Sebastian Vettel joining the Scuderia to replace Fernando Alonso who headed to Woking. Unsurprisingly, Vettel - who won in Malaysia this year - has one of the biggest gains compared to a year ago as he has all but doubled his points tally across the opening four races.

It's Vettel's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen who has the biggest gain. Raikkonen struggled with the handling of last year's Ferrari and scored just 11 points across the opening four races of the season but 2015 has seen him start in much better form as second place in Bahrain brought him 18 points alone, leaving the Finn with a total of 42 points so far this season.

By contrast, the two McLaren drivers - Alonso and Jenson Button - had scored 64 points between them last year, but have yet to register a point so far in 2015. A similar dip in form has hit Force India, with Nico Hulkenberg 30 points down on the same stage 12 months ago.

Below, F1i compares the fortunes of drivers from the seven teams boasting line-ups which do not feature a rookie driver:

Click here for a look at the brake-by-wire system which caused Mercedes problems in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.