Our Top 20 Most Read Stories of the Year

For the last post of the year, I turn the spotlight on readers of this site and present the GrandPrix247.com Top 20 Stories of the Year, the ones that were most read by visitors to this site during 2018.

The site published 3,080 posts during the course of the past year, attracting 1,228,000 Users who indulged in 14,862,463 Page Views as Google Analytics refers to them.

The top twenty stories as read by visitors to this site also provides an intriguing snapshot of the season, a top 50 or top 100 would probably summarise the entire year pretty aptly

With this last post it is also fitting to wish all readers a great 2019, may it be packed with blessings, health and wealth, that we all connect again soon in the New Year. Thank you for your interest and support.

Warts and all here are our Top 20 Stories of the Year:

20. Exactly why we will miss Sergio. R.I.P.

Marchionne: We have made a crap car or a real beast!

19. Politics was a big player in the year’s news

Have Ferrari ditched Mercedes and sided with Liberty?

18. The question still being asked or maybe there is a fix? Time will tell.

Just where did it all go wrong for McLaren?

17. Interesting story that was mostly ignored for some reason or other, but intrigued readers.

Inside Line: Is Eyetime part of a Ponzi scheme?

16. April Fool’s joke which might not be funny come next season.

Stroll to replace Bottas at Mercedes starting in Bahrain

15. And so it shouldn’t feel great, no need for team orders as it turned out.

Hamilton: It doesn’t feel great.

14. The worst season in the team’s history and there was simply nowhere to hide. Credit to Claire for wearing her heart on her sleeve as they just kept sinking.

Claire Williams: We never saw it coming it’s a big shock

13. Not so sure about that Maurizio… Seb never won after Spa, Monza he needed help and didn’t get it. So if Kimi did no wrong then the team screwed up.

Arrivabene: What did Kimi do wrong at Monza?

12. Max stating the obvious and not making friends in the process.

Verstappen: Hamilton’s teammate is not there anyway

11. We all enjoy a good money story!

Hamilton mega-deal puts Kimi, Seb and Schumi in the shade

10. The occasional gossip also got more eyeballs than I expected.

Vandoorne has eyes for boss’s daughter Anna de Ferran

9. Seb trying to tell us he is one of us…

Vettel: I cook, I do the school run, I go shopping, I take the bus

8. Silly little spat the Lewis insists on pursuing while Nico has been a true gentleman in constant praise of his former teammate who he beat in 2016. Get over it Lulu!

Hamilton gets F1 to axe Rosberg from interview team

7. This Charlie versus Seb story is going to be top dollar entertainment no matter which way it goes. Watch this space!

Marciello: Leclerc will beat Vettel from day one

6. And it wasn’t tea or mineral water. Kimi stories, since he got his mojo back from Monza onward, were always well read. But his book was rubbish.

Raikkonen: I drank for 16 days in a row between races

5. The thing about Max, he tends to call it as he sees it and for some reason, he tends to divide fans in the way Lewis does or Ayrton did when he was alive.

Alonso: With the same car we could all be like Lewis

4. Another April Fool’s spoof triggered by silly rumours of Bernie and Flav starting an alt.F1!

Grand Prix One™ is born to take on Formula 1

3. Scary moment in the pitlane in an era when too many people with no place being there are allowed. Maybe it will take some (God-forbid) serious bad stuff to happen before they wake up.

Hamilton: I could have killed them all

2. Very sad story, shocking for how one moment you are here and the next you are not. Big Guy gone too soon and the news obviously resonated with readers.

Marchionne replaced by Elkann as Ferrari chairman

1. Money! Money! Money! That’s the number one Formula 1 story of the year.

Formula 1 drivers salaries set for shake-up

0. Yep! Not a Formula 1 story but rather Sophia’s scary crash got three times more views than our best story, a massive and unexpected spike perhaps triggered by being out early with that story, as it unfolded. It was an unexpected tidal wave of traffic for a couple of days last month.

Video: Sophia Flörsch survives horror crash in Macau