Autosport's F1 experts review 2015

The 2015 Formula 1 season may not have featured a classic title fight or wide-open competition, but it was not short of intriguing storylines on or off track.

We asked our team of F1 writers to pick their highs, lows, surprises and more from the grand prix year just gone.

The panel: Ben Anderson (Grand Prix editor), Gary Anderson (Technical consultant), Lawrence Barretto (F1 reporter), Dieter Rencken (F1 contributor), Ian Parkes (chief F1 correspondent), Edd Straw (Autosport magazine editor)

WHO WAS YOUR DRIVER OF THE SEASON?

BEN ANDERSON (@BenAndersonAuto): Lewis Hamilton was unstoppable for most of the campaign, but this season will be remembered for Max Verstappen's emergence as a future superstar, despite only one previous year of single-seater experience. Remarkable.

LAWRENCE BARRETTO (@lawrobarretto): Without a doubt, it was Max Verstappen. Aged 17 and with just one car racing season under his belt, Verstappen could have folded under the pressure and expectation. But he dealt well when poor reliability threatened to derail him early in the season and took advantage when opportunities came his way. His overtaking judgement was superb, his tyre management impressive and in the face of criticism, he has been unflappable.

IAN PARKES (@ianparkesF1): It's obviously hard to look beyond Lewis Hamilton. But there was one driver who stood out for his exuberance on track, who was unafraid to express himself, and while not showing any lack of respect for reputations, was not in awe of them either. That driver was Max Verstappen who displayed talent at times way beyond his years, reminding me very much of a young Hamilton.

DIETER RENCKEN (@RacingLines): Max Verstappen, and not on only account of his on-track performances, which belied both his age and lack of single-seater experience. The way the 17-year old handled crises and disappointments was revelatory, and points to unprecedented confidence in one so young. Forget Senna and Schumacher: the future is MV33-bright.

EDD STRAW (@eddstrawF1): Lewis Hamilton. It's a predictable choice, but while he had the best car, he made devastating use of it. The underwhelming finish to his year doesn't really count against him as he'd already won the title.

GARY ANDERSON: Sebastian Vettel. After a difficult final season with Red Bull he seems to have got his mojo back at Ferrari. Settling into a new team is never easy and with major changes for 2015 fitting in at Maranello must have been doubly difficult. But Vettel managed it and more importantly he has managed to mould the team around him.

WHICH TEAM WAS YOUR STAR OF THE YEAR?

DR: Imagine what Force India could have achieved with the funding to commission its full 2015 package pre-season rather than mid-year. On less than half the budget enjoyed by Red Bull it regularly ran the quadruple champion team close, at times scaring even Williams.

BA: Force India. The way it went from midfield straggler to beating Red Bull and Williams on merit at the season finale was extraordinary.

GA: Force India, because of financial problems it started the season on the back foot but the people there kept their heads down and the B-spec car introduced mid-season showed the team's true engineering potential as it ended up with a fine fifth place in the championship.

LB: Ferrari was in a world of pain at the end of last season, but an incredible improvement over the winter, particularly on the engine, together with a new feelgood, relaxed atmosphere in the team and a harmonious driver pairing in Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen transformed its fortunes. When Ferrari had chances to win, it took them and the team has now emerged as Mercedes' closest challenger.

IP: You could make a case for Ferrari given the strides made throughout the winter, and for keeping Mercedes honest at times, and even Force India for a constructors' best finish of fifth. But you really have to take your hat off to Mercedes because while 2014 was an exceptional year, in 2015 it managed to raise the bar a little higher. It again won 16 races, but there was a new F1 record of 12 one-two finishes off the back of 15 front-row lockouts, spearheading the clinching of back-to-back constructors' and drivers' titles.

ES: Toro Rosso. It produced a genuinely good car, made the best of the Renault engine early on while Red Bull was struggling and also fielded a dynamic driver line-up in Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen. The only negative is that, as usual, a few too many points were missed out on.

WHAT WAS THE BEST OVERTAKE OF THE CAMPAIGN?

ES: Max Verstappen at Spa around the outside of Felipe Nasr at Blanchimont, completing the pass at the chicane. It wasn't technically the best by any means but it's what it represented - an exciting young talent putting it on the line - that made it memorable.

LB: Many of the memorable overtakes this season have involved Max Verstappen. The best, in my opinion, was the Dutchman's sublime pass around the outside of Felipe Nasr at Blanchimont. That he rehearsed the move on a computer game makes it all the more brilliant.

GA: I don't really think I could really pick out one, for me it was the continual ability for Max Verstrappen to find a way of pulling off an overtaking manoeuvre. Other than Monaco he managed these moves with regular precision when the others just didn't really bother to try. Over the season in competitive situations he must have pulled off more overtakes than the rest of the drivers put together.

DR: Its got to be Max Verstappen doing Nasr through Blanchimont at Spa; for good measure he followed up with stunning stuff on Perez at Interlagos.

BA: Max Verstappen going around the outside of Sergio Perez at the Senna S in Brazil. Doing what he did to Nasr's Sauber in Belgium was brave, but the Perez move was equally well judged, and against a faster car.

IP: There are two in contention here, and as everyone has already pointed out we're back to that man Verstappen again. The Spa move was wheel-to-wheel brilliance, and the way he flexed his muscles with Sergio Perez at Interlagos was superb too.

WHAT WAS YOUR HIGHLIGHT OF THE SEASON?

IP: The United States GP from early Friday through to the conclusion of the race itself was something else due to rain of biblical proportions. We had FP2 cancelled, fans locked out of FP3, cancelled qualifying, the drivers trying to entertain in the pitlane, and Q3 called off after the session had switched to Sunday. The race was one of the best you will see, and with a twist in the tail as a major mistake by Nico Rosberg allowed team-mate Hamilton past to clinch the title. Epic!

BA: October's US Grand Prix at Austin. F1 at its brilliant and unpredictable best.

ES: Seeing Williams run first and second in the British Grand Prix to break the monotony of silver cars up front.

LB: Formula 1's return to Mexico was a roaring success. Admittedly, the race wasn't a classic but you'd hardly have known it if you were there. The fans packed the grandstands, cheering from lights to flag to create a fantastic festival atmosphere.

DR: The way Mexicans turned up in droves for the country's comeback race - adrenaline and pure passion pumped all weekend. The grand prix was a throwback to the 1970s, and so, too, was the fans' enthusiasm. More like that, please Bernie.

GA: Was there a highlight? We had some reasonable races but in the end it was dominated by Mercedes with the odd wake-up call from Ferrari. If Mercedes got its act anywhere near right then it was business as usual and as a team it has been more dominant than Red bull or Ferrari ever were.

WHAT WAS SOMETHING TO FORGET FROM THE 2015 SEASON?

LB: The rift between Red Bull and Renault was a thread that tainted this season. After months of bickering and mud-slinging, neither has come out the other side well and they only had themselves to blame. Here's hoping for a more agreeable future.

IP: Red Bull's shocking treatment of Renault. Four fantastic title-winning years have virtually been forgotten as Renault's name has been dragged through the mud by comments from Dietrich Mateschitz, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko. Success is naturally sweet and revelled in by all those involved, but if there is one thing you learn in sport is that it cannot be sustained forever. So when the bad times come along - as they always do - acting with a degree of humility and grace in such circumstances would be wise. Red Bull did neither.

BA: The ban on in-season helmet design changes. What a complete waste of regulatory time.

GA: The continual bickering between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. They are two drivers living the dream, so set an example to some of the younger generation watching, show some maturity and responsibility to your fans, enjoy it, and congratulate each other on success.

DR: The manner in which Ferrari triggered a historic veto - intended for sporting/technical purposes - solely to protect its commercial interests.

ES: The embarrassing, meandering, goldfish-bowl attention span, easy answer, quick fix, shallow and completely ineffective way in which Formula 1 sets its long-term direction. This has long been a problem, but having promised spectacular cars and stunning racing in '17 based on some pretty flimsy premises (that faster cars equals better racing), the world is going to be very disappointed in just over a year. Time for a research-based approach based on trying to understand a problem and its solution before just implementing whatever sounds good in the moment.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF 2015?

DR: Sebastian Vettel's seamless bedding into the new-look Ferrari - after a lacklustre 2014, given a new driver and revised management structure, the Scuderia could so easily have bombed further, yet by the second race Vettel was on the top step of the podium.

ES: That Ferrari won so quickly. The pre-season predictions of two wins sounded foolish, but were proved justified, to the benefit of F1.

LB: Williams consolidating third in the constructors' championship, beating the likes of Red Bull and McLaren despite only having the fifth biggest budget. Its form only tailed off when it stopped development early to focus on next season.

GA: Honda's performance. A lot has been said about this but in reality Honda never really moved forward during the season and between it and McLaren with the power unit installation the reliability was without doubt the worst in the pitlane. The package's end of season performance was still way off where most expected McLaren-Honda to start the 2015 season.

BA: That Manor Marussia made it back onto the grid.

IP: Ferrari's decision to take up the option on Kimi Raikkonen's contract for 2016. After spending all of 2014 in Fernando Alonso's shadow, Raikkonen entered '15 with a car far more to his liking. But a litany of mistakes, particularly in qualifying over the first part of the year, suggested the writing was on the wall. Out of the blue, though, the Scuderia opted to give the Finn one more chance, surely his last if he again finds himself playing second fiddle to Sebastian Vettel in '16.

WHO OR WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR?

ES: McLaren-Honda. Expectations were stupidly high - and that's McLaren's and Honda's fault, not anybody else's - and that created a rod for the alliance's back. But even for a first year, it wasn't good enough. There will be a big step for 2016, but will it be enough?

IP: There is only one contender - McLaren-Honda. Well, at least they've now won something this year! No one could have foreseen just how embarrassingly bad it has been, making fools of two champion drivers in Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button into the bargain. Surely things cannot get any worse in '16, and the only way is up. Surely, right?

BA: McLaren-Honda. I expected it to be bad, but not that bad...

LB: Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn's team-mate Sebastian Vettel took three wins, among 13 podiums, in the same car. Raikkonen managed just three podiums and scored just over half of his team-mate's points.

DR: That Renault failed to get its act together for a second straight year - screwing up once is bad enough, but doing so twice in succession reeks of management ineptitude. Will buying Lotus turn Renault's fortunes around? How can it?

GA: That the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone don't realise F1 needs an injection of sportsmanship and competitiveness. There should be changes for next year to help the engine manufacturers that are struggling to catch up and there should also be changes to the aerodynamic regulations to reduce the performance return from spending more money. Other than Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull the teams are all struggling financially, how many have to go out of business before someone takes notice?

IF THERE WAS ONE THING YOU COULD CHANGE FROM 2015, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

ES: It would have been interesting to see if Williams could have had a better shot at trying to win at Silverstone had Valtteri Bottas got past Felipe Massa early on and the Brazilian been used as a spoiler to disrupt Mercedes. Of course, for that to play out with any slight chance of a positive outcome also relies on the late-race rain having stayed away.

LB: That Mercedes allowed Hamilton to change his strategy in Brazil, as it later did in Abu Dhabi, to see if the world champion could have beaten Nico Rosberg.

GA: The regulations and event procedures that allowed a young driver in Jules Bianchi to lose his life still require work over a year on. We are still a long way from any consistency of how and when a safety car or virtual safety car is deployed. Never mind the viewers; even the drivers themselves are pretty confused with what to do when either is deployed now.

IP: Jules Bianchi's death was a salient reminder that despite the advancements in safety and technology over the years, as it says on the back of every grand prix ticket, motorsport is dangerous. I'm sure everyone connected with F1 in some way or another, and not just his close family and friends, wishes the genial Frenchman was still around now.

DR: The moment F1's commercial rights holder and the Nurburgring failed to agree terms, and not simply because a grand prix was lost, but due to the wider implications: the country that invented the motor car was absent from motorsport's premier playground, during the year its inventor celebrated its first constructors' championship. If such a historic venue could be so easily lost, consider the very real threats to Spa, Monza and Silverstone...

BA: That Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso hadn't wasted their talents at the back of the grid.