Outside Line: A Season to Remember in a Year to Forget

Welcome back Ben! Take it away:

As much as we might like every F1 season to be an all-timer, the simple reality is that can't always be the case. On-track parity – both between teams and teammates – is far from the norm, and as much as this sport lends itself to controversy and politicking, it's not every year you get something truly earth-shattering. So when a season like 2018 comes along you've got to revel in every moment – well, assuming you actually can, of course.

For me, that, unfortunately, wasn't an option. Long-time readers of this site might know I started writing for GP24/7 at the start of the 2017 season, and being able to share my passion with similarly-minded fans throughout the year was something I really cherished. Certainly, I had no intention of stepping away in 2018, but then life had other plans.

In my case, those other plans involved me contracting an infection in my left eye known as Acanthamoeba Keratitis. A bacteria commonly found in water, Acanthamoeba is a particularly nasty bug that primarily affects contact lens wearers like myself, who can catch it when showering or swimming. Suffice to say, it's not something you want to put into google image search.

Making matters worse, my particular infection proved especially hard to diagnose. I was actually treated for an eye infection for the first time in September 2017, but a speedy response and five-night hospital stay (getting eye hourly eye drops 24 hours a day) seemed to get on top of it, even though the doctors weren't positive what I had (most eye drops treat multiple types of infection).

The usual corneal scrapes – where they run multiple scalpels over your eye with just local anaesthetic – turned up nothing conclusive either, and while they suspected Acanthamoeba, in any case the treatments seemed to work. By the end of the year I was completely off antibiotics, only taking steroidal drops to treat some lingering inflammation, assured I would soon be in the clear.

As it turned out, that was just the beginning. Come the end of January, I was almost weaned off the steroids when my eye flared up again. As it turned out, the infection had never gone away, but 'hid' in a cyst, which the steroids had pumped-up while weakening my resistance to other bacteria.

Now I wasn't just dealing with a bigger, angrier Acanthamoeba, but four

other bacteria, meaning I now had five infections at once.

As such my entire life had to be put on hold. Where before I had just a bit of vision impairment and light sensitivity, now my eye was completely fogged over, with so much swelling as to make any real brightness unbearable.

The fact I still had one good eye didn’t matter, even at 0% brightness I couldn't look at a monitor, and I needed someone to lead me if I went outside in the daytime. I tried an eye patch, but that proved ineffective, and given the discharge that was constantly coming out (I'd go through a box of tissues a day), I couldn't keep it on anyway.

So for most of 2018, my life has been confined to dark rooms, taking all sorts of medicine to slowly kill off all the bacteria. After five unsuccessful scrapes (which I'm reliably informed is a Sydney Eye Hospital record!), and a corneal biopsy they finally confirmed the Acanthamoeba, and that still remains somewhat of a concern.

Thankfully, the light sensitivity has largely dissipated and I'm slowly returning to normal living, but the second round of infection has left a "cloud" of scarring over my eye that means I have no central vision, and will likely need a cornea transplant to get it back. So on the off chance, you happen to have a spare cornea lying around I could use, please let me know.

In any case, I'm simply glad to be back, able to watch and write about this sport I love. Certainly, it's been a hell of a season to miss, and one I have many thoughts on, namely:

It's pretty rare we get a sequel that matches the quality of the original, but the second season of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel taking on Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton has done exactly that. 17 points separate Hamilton from Vettel in the driver's, and only 15 lie between the Silver Arrows and the Scuderia in the constructor's, but both standings could be easily reversed given the see-saw battle in performance and role race strategy, uncharacteristic driver mistakes and plain old luck have played in it all. Let's just hope the fight continues to build towards a satisfying, winner-take-all finale, and doesn't crash-and-burn like last year.

Thanks to Fernando Alonso's retirement and Daniel Ricciardo's move to Renault, we've already had a particularly lively year on the driver market, and there's certainly more to come with at least six more seats available, including potential openings at Ferrari and McLaren.

Indeed, just going off the ones that have happened, you could feast on hot takes for the next year. Personally, I'm disappointed to see Alonso go, and while he leaves behind a complicated legacy considering his failure to win another world championship with either Ferrari or McLaren, I still believe he is the best driver on the grid with an unmatched ability to adapt to every car he drove, and would have loved to see him given a shot at Red Bull.

Speaking of Red Bull, Ricciardo has put in himself in a position to look like either a genius or an idiot with seemingly no in between, but it's actually understandable when you consider 1. Honda's recent track record 2. Max Verstappen already having entrenched himself in the team, while being marginally (but consistently) quicker and 3. He'll get paid significantly more money. Still, this is Renault we're talking about, and I wouldn't trust Cyril Abiteboul as far as I could throw him.

As for their replacements, Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly, it's really hard to judge until we see them in a few races next year. Neither driver has really set the world alight in their current situation, but nor have they done anything to diminish the high regard most in the paddock seem to hold them in.

That said, it will definitely be interesting to see how much of a leash they're given in their new teams, particularly Gasly, who now finds himself in the exact same position Daniil Kvyat did – thrust into the senior team by an unforeseen personnel change – and will be under immediate pressure to perform.

A story as disheartening as it is unsurprising, the demise of Force India has been a long time coming. Never the richest of teams, the continued difficulties F1 has in financially supporting privateer teams has once again reared its head (see: Sauber, Lotus, Manor, Caterham), and their predicament was undoubtedly exacerbated by the endless legal woes affecting owners Vijay Mallya and Subrata Roy's ability to invest in the team.

In any case, this story is unlikely to die anytime soon, with the ongoing issues of whether this is a "new" team – the lost championship points say it is, the immediate three-year prizemoney payouts (that has drawn Haas' ire) say it isn't – and whether Russian billionaire Dimitry Mazepin was unfairly shut out of the bidding process eventually won by Lawrence Stroll and pals.

On a related note, while it's great the team will go on, it's a shame it will only be to use as a safety net for either Stroll's son Lance, or Mazepin's son Nikita. No team, but particularly one with the recent success on the level Racing Point/Force India have enjoyed should be dependent on such a scheme to stay afloat, and it only hurts worse knowing it leaves a legitimately talented driver like Esteban Ocon looking for another job.

If there's been any 'advantage' to catching up on the 2018 season after the fact, it's having the chance to digest a particularly topsy-turvy year for Max Verstappen. After the first six races the 20-year-old might as well have been the second-coming of Jean-Marie Balestre for all his unpopularity, averaging an incident per race in repeated displays of ill-discipline.

Naturally, he followed that up with a string of excellent results, including Red Bull's first-ever home win in Austria, and continues to outpace Daniel Ricciardo in the qualifying head-to-head 10-2. Love him or hate him, he's undoubtedly as much a star of F1's present as he is of its future, and his impetuousness is something we'll all have to live with, for better and worse.

Last but not least, it's worth remarking on the sheer number of memorable races we've had this season.

Has the racing always been great? No, and the continued difficulty evenly-matched cars have following one another still needs to be addressed, but between Australia, Bahrain, China, Azerbaijan, Monaco, France, Austria, Great Britain and Germany, almost every race has provided excitement, drama, or momentum swings in the championship, if not all three – a remarkably high hit-rate for a sport not unfamiliar with the occasional snore-fest.

And yet, as special a year as 2018 has been, it's also one that has taught me not to take any