2011 in Review: Motorsport

In the first of my reviews of the year of sport, I look back at the year of 2011 in motorsport.

Unfortunately, 2011 will be remembered as one of motorsport's darker years with the death of two of its great stars, Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli. Their deaths at the end of October were a timely reminder that motorsport is still a highly dangerous sport even with safety standards at an all time high.

In fact, it should be said that without those standards, more of their colleagues would be dead. It is a testament to the work the FIA has done since that dark day in May of 1994 when motorsport lost its greatest star of time, Ayrton Senna.

Speaking of Senna, the iconic yellow and green helmet made some comeback this year - on the big screen with his namesake's film - the best sports film ever made in my opinion, and on the track courtesy of the nephew Ayrton himself rated highly.

I thought Bruno Senna did really well taking over from Nick Heidfeld midway through the season at the Renault team. It has to be remembered that taking over mid-season isn't what it was 10 years ago - there's no more mid-season testing and any testing you want to do has to be done on race weekend.

Thus it was a surprise that it was announced Romain Grosjean would be Kimi Raikkonen's teammate for next year. Having said that, Grosjean does have a GP2 title under his belt and is claimed to have matured greatly since his very auspicious debut in F1 4 years ago.




Having said that, maybe Senna might be driving a Williams next year. Who knows? Ayrton's great nephew certainly deserves a drive in F1 and the chance to prove he is as good as the plethora of champions we now have in F1.

Despite Vettel's utter domination, this year's F1 was quite a nice vintage courtesy of DRS, KERS and those Pirelli tyres. There was a lot more overtaking and strategy - and a lot of very exciting finishes.

Pirelli created a tyre that is a bit like a Kookabura cricket ball after being hit by Dave Warner's heavy bat. That along with rules requiring all drivers to use both hard and soft compounds in the race meant we had some crazy race finishes.

In the end, Sebastian Vettel stood tall and continued to show he belongs in F1's elite. Yes he had the best car in the field by a country mile but the fact that he utterly destroyed his capable teammate, Mark Webber, shows the Monty Python German from Hoffenheim is indeed special.

Jenson Button also had a brilliant season and deserved his runners-up finish. Yes he wanted to be champion but given the circumstances, second behind a genius of a driver is not bad at all. Will he remain ahead of Hamilton next season - who knows.

Of the rookies, Sergio Perez and Paul di Resta stood out with Perez even touted as a replacement for the lacklustre Felipe Massa.

As for Massa, 2012 looms as a big year for the likeable Brazilian. Felipe is clearly not the same driver after his horror shunt in qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix and surely with Ferrari lagging behind Red Bull and McLaren, an underperforming Massa will have to be cut loose.

So a classic season in F1 closes and another one looms - one that could break records for length. Vettel's domination may be nice but let's hope McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes and even Lotus can really close that gap to the Red Bulls. Given a quarter of the 2012 field have been crowned world champion, that would be great.

In other news, Dario Franchitti won the Indycar championship on the same weekend Dan Wheldon died. It was the Scotsman's third championship but it will be one he won't quite remember as fondly as the other two. Casey Stoner won the MotoGP title for the second time - the short Australian still looks as young as the day he made his MotoGP debut back in 2001.

Driver of the year? Sebastian Vettel. Easily. The German is not only fast but very likable. And he's very intelligent too. Could get even better. Will he stay at Red Bull though?

RIP Dan Wheldon & Marco Simoncelli.

RIP Marco Simoncelli

Motorsport has been hit by its second tragedy in less than a week with the passing of Italian MotoGP rider, Marco Simoncelli.

Here is more from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motogp/15420069.stm.

I've watched a bit of motorcycle racing and quite enjoy the slipstreaming and overtaking action. I haven't really watched it in the last few years as Sky didn't have the rights to the MotoGP for a while and there's always another sport on to watch.

Nevertheless, despite safety advances, motorcycle racing is still highly dangerous - even more so than car racing given that the bikes go at tremendous speeds and the riders are less protected than the drivers.

At Suzuka in 2003, MotoGP lost young upstart and former 125cc World Champion, Dajiro Kato as a result of an accident during the first race of the season. The race was not stopped at the time - something I'm glad officials have learnt is not the right thing to do in the circumstances. Kato died two weeks later from his injuries.

As I said with Dan Wheldon's accident, motorsport is a highly dangerous sport and the participants know of the risks involved. But as most petrolheads would know, there is such an adrenaline rush when racing these machines at high speeds. Denying someone that joy would be a bigger crime against humanity.

At least Simoncelli died doing what he loved to do: racing motorbikes on a Sunday. RIP.