Your Reject of the Race - Abby Dabby

[Londoner]

1. Valtteri Bottas - He's managed to go winless this year. Driving a bathplug Mercedes. No idea what he was trying to achieve against Verstappen, and then on fresh tyres he still lost time to the leaders.

2. Will Smith - He got more TV time than most of the Formula B drivers.

[Pacific Edge]

Got to agree about Will Smith, that was really "nothing" coverage.

My other nominations are

The spread: Really, this is ridiculous, at one point, Bottas in FIFTH was more than 2 stops ahead of Sainz who didn't really do anything wrong. Looking at the state of the 4th+ teams, it seems that only Renault could even come close to challenging the top 3, and even then, I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Sauber: One car didn't make it, and they cost Leclerc MLP with some bad strategy.

[WaffleCat]

ROTR for me has to be Valtteri Bottas -- If he keeps this up, Ocon may actually find himself with a seat next season. Early this season Valtteri lost out on races either due to insane performances from other drivers (Vettel at Bahrain) or just sheer dumb luck (Baku). Now he's just shatteri'd the bed.

Alternative ROTR has to be reliability. Haven't seen this amount of mechanical failures in a while. And all of them striking on drivers in their last race with a team. Wows.

[dr-baker]

Did I miss the TV footage of the close finish between Leclerc and Perez (0.4 seconds), or was it not shown at all? If not shown or missed by the cameras/TV director, that is my ROTR.

[Bobby Doorknobs]

ROTR for me has to be Valtteri Bottas -- If he keeps this up, Ocon may actually find himself with a seat next season. Early this season Valtteri lost out on races either due to insane performances from other drivers (Vettel at Bahrain) or just sheer dumb luck (Baku). Now he's just shatteri'd the bed.

Yeah, that guy. I nominate that guy.

[good_Ralf]

Bottas, as much as I like him, earns a nomination from me too. But to be fair, I'd argue that he hasn't had a single stroke of genuine luck this year (the timing of the SC in Baku doesn't count, given what happened afterwards). I could still drop my nomination for him, since apparently it was a tyre/brake issue causing his extra stop and lack of pace. Still, I'm worried that on current form, he'll struggle find a drive in F1 after 2019, never mind at Mercedes. I feel sorry for Valtteri anyway, since he is still truly worthy of a place in F1 on merit IMO.

And as I have unofficially jinxed the outcome of the race (see the main race thread), perhaps I deserve a dishonorable mention. If you're still not tempted in banning me for this, Londoner, I'll use this thread as an opportunity to admit I'm a regular reader on the WTF1 site (not the YT channel however)...

[Meatwad]

Another nomination for Valtteri Bottas who had quite an awful race. Dishonorable mention for the podium flags – we already had Porsche Supercup flags on the podium earlier this year, while now Verstappen's Dutch flag suddenly turned off!

[rachel1990]

Bottas wins this hands down for this race- he could have been in a position where Hamilton might have given him the race win as a thank you for Russia. But no.

Once again he stuffed it up with some quite frankly awful driving especially when Verstappen was trying to overtake and then had to do a second stop where his teammate did a one-stop much earlier in the race ON THE SAME TYRES. Then after his second stop, it looked frankly more likely that Sainz would catch him than Bottas would catch the Red Bulls. On Fresh tires!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He needs a big improvement next season otherwise Ocon may get a seat sooner than expected...

Oh and I forgot to mention that he cost himself third place in the Championship as well. On a day when Kimi's car lost all power, Bottas couldn't even manage that.

[Alextrax52]

Another nomination for Bottas from me. I don't know whether it was the wingman comments made by Toto after Hungary or some other issue but the fact is he's been extremely poor since the summer break. He was in a position to maybe be gifted the win as a thank you present but the meekness in which he just caved in was astonishing. And as mentioned Hamilton on tires a good 10 laps older made the finish while he had to stop again. All this on a track he won very well at last year

Honourable mention to unreliability for ruining a number of farewells (Raikkonen, Ericsson, Gasly etc)

[James1978]

Bottas and Will Smith for me. I am starting to wish Mercedes had taken a punt on Ocon instead. (Could have been some juicy battles between him and Mad Max, and also it would have meant 4 drivers out of the top 3 teams would be young guns, only Hamilton and Vettel being the exceptions)!

[Rob Dylan]

- Will Smith and, by extension F1 media coverage: shameless level of celebrity endorsement coverage. That was way more than some of the drivers themselves got. I counted just over ten appearances, and I only started watching ten minutes before it began. There could have been more that I didn't see, and yeah, that's bloody stupid.
- Valtteri Bottas: Baku and Russia seem to have both knocked his confidence, and he needs to regain that soon. If he doesn't pick up in 2019, he's not getting a fourth season at Mercedes. In fact, Wolff is perhaps regretting moreso after today that Ocon has basically been benched for next year.
- Sauber strategy: although all's well that ends well, Leclerc really could have finished 6th today, and moved a step closer to unrejectification. Now that he's going to Ferrari next year it looks increasingly unlikely that he will unrejectify himself in the near future.
- Retirees: did anyone end on a happy note who was moving onward? The closest was Ricciardo, but Christian Horner's speech rang very much of PR and didn't feel like there was much heart in it. But then again that's Christian Horner.

[Bobby Doorknobs]

- Sauber strategy: although all's well that ends well, Leclerc really could have finished 6th today, and moved a step closer to unrejectification. Now that he's going to Ferrari next year it looks increasingly unlikely that he will unrejectify himself in the near future.

Yeah, it's certainly looking like he won't be able to unrejectify himself this year.

[mario]

Bottas, as much as I like him, earns a nomination from me too. But to be fair, I'd argue that he hasn't had a single stroke of genuine luck this year (the timing of the SC in Baku doesn't count, given what happened afterwards). I could still drop my nomination for him, since apparently it was a tyre/brake issue causing his extra stop and lack of pace. Still, I'm worried that on current form, he'll struggle find a drive in F1 after 2019, never mind at Mercedes. I feel sorry for Valtteri anyway, since he is still truly worthy of a place in F1 on merit IMO.

And as I have unofficially jinxed the outcome of the race (see the main race thread), perhaps I deserve a dishonorable mention. If you're still not tempted in banning me for this, Londoner, I'll use this thread as an opportunity to admit I'm a regular reader on the WTF1 site (not the YT channel however)...

As you note, it does sound as if Bottas was being hampered by problems with his rear brakes in that race, but overall his performance was still poor.

As you note, whilst Hamilton could manage his tyres until the end, Bottas managed to burn through his tyres at a far faster rate than his rivals - Bottas himself has admitted that is his major failing this season - and ended up in the worst of both worlds when he was going too slowly to make a two stop strategy pay off, but was not able to manage his tyres and his pace to stretch out his strategy to the end. It does feel as if Bottas is starting to suffer from the same thing he was criticised for at Williams, where he goes into an extended slump in performance that seems to be entirely self inflicted whenever his confidence dips below a certain level.

I'd also have to agree with Sauber for the way they handled their race - Leclerc did manage to salvage a reasonable result, but they were arguably a little lucky to hold off Perez at the end and Ericsson was hit with mechanical problems despite running fairly competitively. Has he not retired, Sauber might even have had an outside chance of nicking 7th in the WCC from Force India - he was in 8th at the time and was setting fairly respectable times compared to Sainz Jr and Perez ahead of him.

[You-Gee-Eee-Day]

Will Smith - he got more screen time than half the teams in a Formula 1 race. Spot the desperation.

Romain Grosjean - for yet another "racing incident".

[Fetzie]

Bottas. Completely non-existent in the race, couldn't even put Mercedes in the position to consider asking Hamilton to let him through to make up for Russia.

[novitopoli]

- Will Smith and, by extension F1 media coverage: shameless level of celebrity endorsement coverage. That was way more than some of the drivers themselves got. I counted just over ten appearances, and I only started watching ten minutes before it began. There could have been more that I didn't see, and yeah, that's bloody stupid.
- Valtteri Bottas: Baku and Russia seem to have both knocked his confidence, and he needs to regain that soon. If he doesn't pick up in 2019, he's not getting a fourth season at Mercedes. In fact, Wolff is perhaps regretting moreso after today that Ocon has basically been benched for next year.
- Sauber strategy: although all's well that ends well, Leclerc really could have finished 6th today, and moved a step closer to unrejectification. Now that he's going to Ferrari next year it looks increasingly unlikely that he will unrejectify himself in the near future.
- Retirees: did anyone end on a happy note who was moving onward? The closest was Ricciardo, but Christian Horner's speech rang very much of PR and didn't feel like there was much heart in it. But then again that's Christian Horner.

That's pretty much it. Add Gasly in for driving a complete lap with a broken PU and ruining Verstappen's chances for P2 (and P3 in the championship) in the process.

[Rob Dylan]

It's the final race of the season, and the final poll. You have 48 hours, as usual

[Rob Dylan]

Well it was a close-run thing, but I think we can always agree that this was the most rejectful thing of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and indeed he had been in the running since Mexico. It's of course Will Smith we're talking about, a celebrity apparently integral to the success and long-lasting popularity of Formula 1. The coverage showed us this by its extensive airtime of him, whether he was waving flags, covering his ears, dressing up in Mercedes gear, operating cameras - he did it all! Unfortunately one or two people (though I'm sure they're just a myth) complained that there was too much coverage of the man.

But yeah, seriously, it was very jarring to keep seeing something so completely unrelated to the race, especially when the on-track racing was actually decent. He certainly shouldn't have been getting more airtime than some of the drivers and even teams. The forum waves goodbye to F1 2018 with a kindly "get lost Will Smith".