F1 2021's final seven races: Where Red Bull or Mercedes is the favourite

OPINION: Formula 1’s current campaign is the closest the championship has witnessed in five years, with Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes narrowly leading Max Verstappen and Red Bull with seven races left. Here’s how those venues favour the title protagonists

The 2021 Formula 1 season is rather different to the four most recent campaigns.

On the eve of the 16th race of the 2020 championship, Lewis Hamilton had already wrapped up the title of a season that was at its penultimate point (and he was in fact absent after contracting COVID-19).

While that campaign was rather unique in modern times thanks to the pressures the infernal pandemic created, the same race number in the previous three years had Hamilton in command over his closest rival (65 points over Valtteri Bottas heading to Sochi in 2019, 40 in front of Sebastian Vettel before the same event in 2018, and 34 ahead of the German going to Japan in 2017).

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Author Alex Kalinauckas

Alex Kalinauckas is Autosport's Grand Prix Editor, covering every Formula 1 race since the start of 2020. After completing a master's degree in journalism at Goldsmiths College University of London in 2014, he worked for a range of motorsport and technology publications while covering national racing as an Autosport freelancer.

A lifelong motorsport fan - no one in his family can explain quite how or why such a development first occurred - Alex joined the Autosport staff in April 2017 as the magazine’s Assistant Editor covering Formula 2 and GP3, before being made Formula E correspondent and Autosport.com’s Plus Editor in March 2018. He lives in north-east London and is constantly frustrated by the Central Line.