F1 in 2014 - The Highs and The Lows Quiz

Answer: Monaco Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton's 11 race victories left him fifth in the all time standings at the end of the 2014 season with a total of 33 wins (still some 58 victories behind the record holder, Michael Schumacher). His penultimate victory of the season at the United States Grand Prix also broke the British record for most F1 victories, taking that title from the 1992 world champion, Nigel Mansell.

Hamilton finished second to his team-mate Nico Rosberg at the Monaco Grand Prix following a highly controversial qualifying session in which Rosberg went off the circuit while in provisional pole position, thus preventing Hamilton from completing his own lap. Hamilton pushed Rosberg hard throughout the race until the final laps when he was slowed down by a piece of dirt that somehow got through his helmet and into his eye...

During 2014 Hamilton also won the inaugural Russian Grand Prix and took his second victory at his home race, the British Grand Prix (his first victory at Silverstone was in 2008 when he also went on to take the world championship title).

Answer: 1.6 litre V6, turbocharged with energy recovery systems

The new engines for 2014 were smaller, quieter and significantly more fuel efficient than their predecessors. The engines also had the interesting effect of completely shaking up the F1 pecking order, with Red Bull - the champion constructor for the previous four years - suddenly finding themselves with a less competitive Renault engine. The use of new, potentially road relevant, energy recovery technology also helped to ensure the continuing presence of major car manufacturers in the sport.

Whether the new engines were a high or low point of the season very much depends on your point of view. New greener technology seemed like a good idea to some; however the much quieter engine noise was derided by a large number of fans and F1 personnel alike.

The 2.4 litre V8 engines were used in F1 from 2006 to 2013 and 3.0 litre V10s were used from 2000 to 2005. F1 has never used 2.0 litre V12 turbocharged engines.

Answer: Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo joined Red Bull Racing for 2014 after two seasons driving for their 'B' team, Toro Rosso. He replaced fellow Australian, Mark Webber, who had retired at the end of the previous season. His promotion was clearly well deserved as he out-performed his reigning world champion team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, and was the only non-Mercedes driver to take a victory during the whole year.

Ricciardo made his F1 debut at the 2011 British Grand Prix, driving for perennial backmarkers, HRT, before moving to Toro Rosso. He finished third in the drivers' championship in 2014 with a total of eight podium finishes (including the three victories), despite getting off to a bad start when he was disqualified from second place at his home race for breaching the rules regarding the management of fuel flow to the engine.

Kevin Magnussen (McLaren), Valtteri Bottas (Williams) and Sergio Perez (Force India) all claimed podium finishes in 2014 but didn't manage to record a maiden victory.

Answer: Belgian Grand Prix

Rosberg and Hamilton were pretty close in the points standings with Rosberg holding a slender 11 point advantage going into the Belgian Grand Prix (the 12th race of the 2014 season). Rosberg took pole position but Hamilton had a better start to the race and was ahead by lap two when Rosberg made a clumsy attempt to overtake and ending up puncturing one of Hamilton's rear tyres with his front wing. Rosberg needed a replacement front wing, but the damage done to Hamilton's car by the flailing tyre on his (very slow) trip back to the pits was severe enough to result in his retirement later in the race. Rosberg was later publicly blamed for the incident by Mercedes and forced to issue an apology.

Hamilton and Rosberg battled closely with each other at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but Hamilton came out on top on that occasion. Rosberg waltzed to victory in Germany after Hamilton had to start from the pit lane following a brake failure in qualifying and also took the win in Brazil with Hamilton just behind in second place.

Answer: Williams

The Williams team first competed in F1 in the 1970s and regularly won both races and championships throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The 21st century had however proved more difficult for them with only a handful of wins and plenty of lowly championship finishes. In both 2011 and 2013 the team scored only five points and finished in ninth place in the constructors' championship (although strangely they managed to win a race in 2012). The 2014 season showed real promise of a return to their old form and although they didn't quite manage to win a race, they did record nine podium finishes and a total of 320 points. Quite a comeback!

Ferrari suffered a downturn in form in 2014, while McLaren barely improved over their awful season in 2013 when they failed to score a podium finish for the first time in over 30 years. Sauber have never really been a winning team (they managed one victory in 2007 while competing under the name BMW Sauber) and 2014 was the worst year in their history as they failed to score any points at all amidst rumours of financial difficulties.

Answer: Suzuka, Japan

The 2014 Japanese Grand Prix went ahead despite the threat of severe weather caused by Typhoon Phanfone. Unsurprisingly it ended up being a wet race and it was initially red-flagged on only the second lap due to torrential rain and terrible conditions. It was eventually restarted after the weather abated, but conditions deteriorated, resulting in Adrian Sutil and then Jules Bianchi crashing at Dunlop corner. Unfortunately for Bianchi, his car hit the recovery vehicle that had come out onto the circuit to retrieve Sutil's stricken car.

Bianchi's accident caused the first severe injury to a F1 driver since the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, when Felipe Massa suffered a serious head injury when he was hit on the helmet by a stray piece of another car at high speed. It also occurred shortly after the 20th anniversary of the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Answer: Nico Rosberg

Prior to 2014, Lewis Hamilton had never been out-qualified by a team-mate over the course of a whole season (and those team-mates included the former world champions Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button). However, Rosberg showed amazing form in qualifying and took 11 pole positions to the seven won by Hamilton. The 'Pole Trophy' was probably scant consolation though for missing out on the world championship at the final race.

Aside from Rosberg, only two drivers sat on pole position during 2014 - Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa of Williams, who took his solitary pole position at the Austrian Grand Prix. If the 'Pole Trophy' had been available in 2013, then it would have gone to Sebastian Vettel.

Answer: Caterham

Overall, F1 is an extremely wealthy sport which has been valued at billions of dollars. However, if you took a trip to the back of the grid in 2014 you would be hard pressed to find any evidence of this wealth. Caterham became the first team to enter administration in late October 2014, with three races of the season remaining, and Marussia followed them about a week later.

Caterham's administrators did manage to organise a crowd funding initiative that raised enough money for the team to compete at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi. This gave British driver Will Stevens his F1 debut, alongside their regular driver, Kamui Kobayashi. Marussia's last race in 2014 was the Russian Grand Prix. Sauber were also dogged by rumours of financial difficulties in 2014, while Force India were vocal campaigners for a more equitable distribution of the sport's wealth between all teams, rather than just those at the top.

Answer: McLaren and Ferrari

Mercedes took their first ever victory in the constructors' championship in 2014. The campaign was just their fifth season since they re-entered the sport by buying out the 2009 constructors' champions, Brawn GP. The company previously competed in F1 in the mid-1950s, powering Juan Manuel Fangio to two drivers' world championships - however, at that time the constructors' championship did not exist.

The previous record for the most F1 wins by a team in a single season was jointly held by McLaren and Ferrari. McLaren won 15 of the 16 races held in 1988, while Ferrari won 15 races in both 2002 and 2004 (although out of 17 and 18 races respectively).

Red Bull won 13 out of 19 races in 2013 while Williams took 12 out of 16 in both 1984 and 1996.

Answer: Awarding double points for the final race

The controversial double points rule for the final race of the season was suggested by Bernie Ecclestone. The teams initially agreed but several backtracked later when the unpopularity of the idea with the fans became known. However, it was too late and the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix duly awarded double points to the top ten finishers including 50 (rather than the standard 25) to the winner.

Luckily, in the end the new rule had no impact on the ultimate outcome of either the drivers' or constructors' championship as Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes would have won either way. However, it did have the effect of making that final race much tenser than it might have been. The only driver who actually benefitted was Sergio Perez; he finished 10th in the championship but would only have been 12th if the 'normal' number of points had been applied. After the end of the season the FIA announced that the double point rule would not be used in 2015.

The idea of using a sprinkler system to create artificially wet races was actually once suggested by Ecclestone, but never adopted; reverse grids are often used in lower formulae (such as GP2) to mix up results; and F1 did use a system of disregarding drivers' worst results from 1950 to 1990.