The year in motorsport 2020

Handicapped by COVID and driven by commercial necessity, the world’s major motorsport categories ducked, dived, adapted and rejigged to keep their shows on the road in 2020.

Sadly, they were also forced to cancel many events, including the most important in the local calendar, the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.

In fact, Albert Park last March was the moment when the reality of the pandemic really hit home for many people.

It was to be months before wheels would hit tarmac again in anger and grace our screens for our entertainment. Miraculously, F1 completed a 17-event calendar and Supercars here in Australia a barely less remarkable 10.

Of course, most other motor racing and championships fell by the wayside. The promising carsales TCR Australia Series and the boisterous S5000 open-wheelers were among many stopped in their tracks.

The good news is something akin to normal service will resume in 2021. Well, we hope anyway.

Australia’s only truly professional motorsport championship managed to complete its traditional opening round in Adelaide before the COVID clamps went down for three months and e-racing temporarily filled the breach.

By July the Victorian teams had been forced to hit the road as that state went into lockdown. They stayed away for more than three months, earning a debt of gratitude – along with the officials, workers and championship personnel that stayed out there with them.

A truncated calendar, a switch to shorter sprint races and the retention of the Bathurst 1000 as the only two-driver race didn’t stop a very familiar theme emerging at the top of the pointscore.

For the third year in a row Scott McLaughlin won the drivers’ championship while DJR Team Penske, reclaimed the teams’ championship from Triple Eight.

Team owner Roger Penske withdrew from Aussie racing at the end of the season and took McLaughlin with him to start his IndyCar career. Happily, the Stapylton squad retains proper funding and reverts to its traditional guise as Dick Johnson Racing in 2021.

T8 was able to add the 2020 Bathurst 1000 trophy to its many spoils courtesy of Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander. It was appropriate that Holden’s last race as a motorsport entrant would be at the track where it first appeared and that it would go out with its 34th win the Bathurst enduro.

Of the rest, Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters was undoubtedly the best. The Mustang driver had a monster second half of the season, finishing second at Bathurst with Will Davison and in the drivers’ championship.

Van Gisbergen’s teammate Jamie Whincup was McLaughlin’s primary challenger for much of the year, but a WTF wall-banger at Bathurst dropped him to fourth in the standings. His current contract expires at the end of 2021 and he’s probably already made his mind up about whether he goes on again.

Others popped up here and there with speed and wins; Nick Percat, Fabian Coulthard, Jack Le Brocq and Anton De Pasquale.

The racing – with the help of some controversial tyre rules – was mostly interesting, sometimes entertaining and occasionally ball-tearing. But the cars are too fast, have too much downforce and produce too much turbulence to make following and passing consistently achievable.

By the end of the year COVID had impacted massively on Supercars’ commercial base, although there were good stories. Its naming rights sponsor Virgin went bankrupt; but replacement Repco spent up big. Channel 10 also declined to renew its free-to-air TV deal, but Seven stepped back in promising a bigger commitment for fans who can’t – or won’t – afford Fox Sports.

The category’s money-spinning government-backed races also took a hit. Adelaide is gone perhaps never to return, the Gold Coast is due to come back in 2021 and Newcastle in 2022.

But 24 cars entered for the 2020 championship and only one dropped out during the economic grind caused by the pandemic. That entry was soon replaced and in 2021 there could have been 26 cars on the grid, such was the interest from potential backers.

In 2022 Supercars is scheduled to swap to the Gen3 Ford Mustang and Chev Camaro. Supercars promises they will be cheaper and provide better racing. Teams will be excited by the former and the fans the latter.

Achieving F1’s 17-race calendar was truly a thing of miracles.

But once the actual on-track action started the best teams, cars and a drivers quickly came to the fore. As they should in a sport/business where spending is virtually unfettered.

Which means a Mercedes-AMG and Lewis Hamilton domination.

The Briton won his fourth F1 drivers’ championship in a row in 2020 and his sixth for Mercedes-AMG. His first world championship came for McLaren, also with Mercedes power.

He now matches the legendary Michael Schumacher with seven drivers’ championships.

But Hamilton has surpassed Schumacher in other ways. He has now won a record-setting 95 GPs and claimed an equally record-settings 98 pole positions in 266 Grands Prix.

Mercedes-AMG won its seventh constructors title in a row in 2020. Since the three-pointed star’s return to racing in 2010 it has won 106 races, the vast majority in the hybrid era that began in 2014.

Hamilton won 11 races in 2020 and some of them were astonishingly dominant. Exploiting the Mercedes-AMG W11’s ability to qualify at the front on medium tyres when many rivals resorted to less durable softs, he would then disappear into the distance combining withering bursts of speed with superior tyre life.

If the W11 had a weakness it was in traffic as Hamilton’s struggles to drive back through the field at Monza after a penalty showed. Frenchman Pierre Gasly took an unexpected win for AlphaTauri (formerly Toro Rosso) as the Mercs took a rare beating.

But by the time Hamilton contracted COVID and missed the Sakhir Grand Prix the championship was safely his.

His brilliant drive to secure that title on intermediate tyres at the Turkish GP skating rink spoke volumes for his talent and the Benz’s unique tyre-saving Dual Axis Steering that’s banned for 2021.

Teammate Valterri Bottas qualified on pole and won the first race of the year but was rarely able to match Hamilton’s superior pace over a race run. He was a distant second in the championship, never quite able to shake off the attention of Max Verstappen and the Red Bull-Honda throughout the year.

Based on performance rather points Verstappen was the second best driver of the season, winning twice – as Bottas did – in an inferior and less reliable car. In fact, the Finn also got schooled by stand-in George Russell, who was promoted from the backmarker Williams for the Sakhir GP when Hamilton was on sick leave. If not for a fumbled pit stop the young Briton would have won the race.

That victory instead went to Sergio Perez, breaking his duck in his 190th F1 start. The Mexican was brilliant for Racing Point, driving the car known as the ‘pink Mercedes’. Accurately as it turned out, because the FIA penalised the team for copying.

Early in the season, Perez was told he would be making way for Sebastian Vettel in the squad to be remade as Aston Martin in 2021. Somehow, he got the flick while the team owner’s fast but flaky son stayed on the driving roster. Go figure.

Perez finished fourth in the championship, one spot ahead of Australia’s own Daniel Ricciardo. His second and final year at Renault was a vast improvement on the first and he claimed two third place podiums. The first, in Germany, was Renault’s first since its F1 return in 2016.

The year was also a return to form for McLaren, which snatched third from Racing Point in the constructors’ championship at the final race. The storied team swaps from Renault to Mercedes power in 2021 and Ricciardo joins Lando Norris on the driving roster. Here’s hoping for front-running speed.

Ricciardo’s predecessor at McLaren, Carlos Sainz, will be hoping the same about his shift to Ferrari. A slow, difficult car meant the Scuderia never figured in the fight at the front. Charles Leclerc still shone, but Vettel looked like a spent force. Will Aston revitalise him?

There were other comings and goings, but the craziest farewell was that of Frenchman Romain Grosjean. He escaped a fiery blaze in Bahrain that ended his GP career, but thankfully he lives to race again elsewhere.

FIA International Formula 3: Young Australian Oscar Piastri won the F1 feeder category at his first attempt. Driving for the elite Prema team, the young Melburnian endured some tense moments in the final round at Mugello as he battled forward to seventh to secure the required points. Managed by former Aussie F1 star Mark Webber, Piastri is part of the Renault junior academy and has already tested an F1 car. He will drive in F2 in 2021 and could be in the premier category as soon as 2022.

World Endurance Championship: Conducted over 2019-20, the final WEC under the awesome and expensive LMP1 regulations was a triumph for Toyota Gazoo Racing. Mike Conway, Kamui Koyabashi and Jose Maria Lopez won the title while teammates Sebastien Buemi, Kiwi Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima won the rescheduled Le Mans 24 Hours. Aston Martin won the GTE championship for production-based cars with the racing version of the Vantage.

World Rally Championship: Sebastien Ogier and navigator Julien Ingrassia added a seventh world title to their collection, becoming the first duo to do so with three different manufacturers (Volkswagen, Ford and Toyota). Ogier overhauled teammate Elfyn Evans in the final event of the truncated seven-round championship to achieve the feat.

IndyCar: Kiwi Scott Dixon won his sixth US open-wheeler crown. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver defeated Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in a tussle that became tighter as it progressed. Aussie Penske driver Will Power was fifth. Supercar champ Scott McLaughlin debuted in the final race of the schedule and showed impressive speed but failed to finish after a tangle on a restart.

Formula E: The 2019-2020 electrified open-wheeler series was won by Brazilian Antonio Felix da Costa driving for the Chinese DS Techeetah team. He was a dominant series winner ahead of Mercedes-Benz driver Stoffel Vandoorne and his DS teammate and defending champion Jean-Eric Verge. The 2020-21 championship has been hit by the withdrawal of both Audi and BMW.

World Touring Car Cup: Restricted to a quick-fire six-round series in Europe, the hot hatch shootout was won by Frenchman Yann Erlacher driving a Chinese Lynk & Co 03. His uncle and teammate Yvan Muller was second and yet another Frenchman, Jean-Karl Vernay, was third in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta.