Formula 1: Who will win the 2019 driver championship?

The 2019 Formula 1 season is scheduled to get underway one week from today. Who will be crowned champion by the time the season ends in December?

Roughly three and a half months removed from the 2018 Formula 1 season finale, we are just one week away from the opening race of the 21-race 2019 season, the Australian Grand Prix, at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne, Australia.

A total of 20 drivers representing 10 teams are set to compete this season. Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton is set to enter the season as the two-time reigning champion. The five-time champion has won four championships in the last five seasons.

Will Hamilton win his third consecutive championship in the 2019 season, or will another driver be crowned champion for the first time since Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg edged out his teammate to be crowned champion in the 2016 season?

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If he can cut down on the unforced errors that have cost him the chance to be a true championship contender in each of the last two seasons, Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel can certainly be a factor when it comes to the 2019 championship battle.

Vettel’s new teammate, Charles Leclerc, is also projected to make an immediate impact in his first season driving for the team after an ultra-impressive rookie season driving for Alfa Romeo Sauber that led to him being named the replacement for Kimi Raikkonen at the Scuderia for the 2019 season.

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas knows that he is at risk of losing his ride to Mercedes reserve and test driver Esteban Ocon for the 2020 season, so he should be extra motivated to perform at a high level in the 2019 season.

With Aston Martin Red Bull Racing set to switch from Renault engines to Honda engines for the 2019 season, they expect have better reliability and more power from their engines. They fully believe that Max Verstappen has what it takes to win this year’s championship, and Pierre Gasly has emerged as somewhat of a dark horse candidate to do so as well.

The 2019 championship battle is shaping to be one of the most competitive championship battles that the sport has seen in quite a few years. But at the end of the day, it is going to take a near-perfect if not perfect season to dethrone Hamilton, and I simply don’t see that happening from any of the five other drivers who drive for one of the sport’s top three teams.

2019 driver championship prediction: Lewis Hamilton

Since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era, Hamilton has earned 51 victories, an all-time record for a five-year span. He has recorded four seasons of at least 10 victories during this span. There have only been four other seasons of this variety in the sport’s history, and no other driver has recorded more than two of them.

Aside of his five-point defeat (385 to 380) in the 2016 championship battle with Rosberg, the closest that Hamilton has come to losing a championship during the V6 turbo hybrid era is his 46-point (363 to 317) victory over Vettel in second place in the 2017 season. His lowest single-season win total of the V6 turbo hybrid era is nine.

Only once has a driver other than Hamilton earned more than six victories in a season during the V6 turbo hybrid era. Rosberg pulled this off when he earned nine victories in his championship-winning 2016 season.

The bottom line is this. There are several drivers who have the potential to dethrone Hamilton this season. As stated, this season’s championship battle is expected to be one of the closest championship battles in quite a few years.

But the odds of any of these drivers performing at a higher level than the driver who is pursuing the all-time Formula 1 championships and wins records over the course of an entire 21-race season are extremely small, especially considering the fact that this driver drives for the team that are aiming to win their sixth consecutive constructor championship this season.

Even when Rosberg won the 2016 championship, he did so in large part due to the red-hot start that he had to the season and the cushion that he built up in the standings as a result of it, and this took place in large part due to the momentum that he built up at the end of the 2015 season. Of the final 15 victories between he and Hamilton throughout the 2016 season, Hamilton earned 10.

Will Lewis Hamilton win his third consecutive championship, his fifth championship in the last six seasons and his sixth career championship in the 2019 Formula 1 season? If not, which driver will win become the first driver not named Hamilton to win the championship since Nico Rosberg won it in the 2016 season? The 2019 season is scheduled to begin on Sunday, March 17 with the Australian Grand Prix. To see the full 2019 schedule, click here.