Formula 1: Three races into 2019, the championships have been decided

Only three of the 21 races on the 2019 Formula 1 schedule have been contested, but the constructor and driver championships have effectively been decided.

The 2019 Formula 1 season only got underway just over four weeks ago with the Australian Grand Prix, and only three of the 21 races on the schedule have been contested. But even with 18 races remaining on this year’s schedule, it is safe to say that the constructor and driver championships have already been decided given how the season has started.

At this point, it is all but safe to crown Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton champion for the sixth season in his career, including the third consecutive season and the fifth season in the last six years, and it is all but safe to crown Mercedes constructor champions for the sixth consecutive season and the sixth overall season in team history.

As far as the constructor championship is concerned, Mercedes have opened up the season with three consecutive 1-2 finishes, something that they had not yet even pulled off in the V6 turbo hybrid era despite the fact that they have been the dominant team since it began in the 2014 season.

In fact, this historical feat had not been achieved since Williams pulled it off in the 1992 season with Nigel Mansell winning the season’s first three races ahead of Riccardo Patrese in second place.

Valtteri Bottas won the season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, ahead of Hamilton in second place before Hamilton went on to win the next two races, the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Chinese Grand Prix, respectively, ahead of Bottas in second.

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As a result, Mercedes lead the constructor standings with 130 points. Scuderia Ferrari, meanwhile, are their closest competitors in the standings, just as they were in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, and they have only earned 73 points.

To put it bluntly, through decisively poor strategy calls and mechanical errors, they have reached the status of a self-destructing also-ran, and the fact that their gap to Mercedes is 57 points, a point total that is not achievable in a single race, through only the season’s first three races shows it.

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, the only other team aside of Mercedes and Ferrari that have won any of the last 121 Formula 1 races going back to the season opener, currently sit in third place in the constructor standings with only 52 points, and they have come nowhere close to competing with the Silver Arrows in any of the season’s first three races.

As far as the driver championship is concerned, Hamilton and Bottas have both scored almost as many points as Ferrari have on their own. Bottas sat atop the driver standings following both of the season’s first two races while Hamilton sits atop them standings now with 68 points. Bottas sits in second place with 62 points.

While Bottas is currently close to Hamilton in the driver standings, as he trails him by only six points, Hamilton has outscored him 50 to 36 and finished well ahead of him in the last two races, and having dominated him in each of their first two seasons as teammates, there is no reason to believe that anything will change in terms of who the team’s top driver is.

The 29-year-old Finn effectively needs to be perfect and have the 34-year-old Briton make numerous mistakes throughout the remainder of the season to have a legitimate chance at challenging him for the championship, two things that aren’t at all likely.

Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen is the closest driver to either of the Mercedes teammates in the driver standings, as he sits in third place and nearly one full win’s worth of points behind Bottas and more than one full win’s worth of points behind Hamilton. He has scored 39 points so far this season.

Ferrari teammates Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc sit in fourth and fifth place in the driver standings having earned 37 points and 36 points, respectively, so far this season.

The fact that Leclerc has been quicker than Vettel on a regular basis this season coupled with the fact that the Italian team insist on using team orders to prioritize Vettel is one of the key reasons why they are in the massive holes that they are in both in terms of the constructor and driver championship battles through only the first three races of the season.

So without further ado, (an early) congratulations to Mercedes on winning their sixth Formula 1 constructor championship, and (an early) congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on becoming just the second driver in Formula 1 history to win at least six championships!

Of course, these results are in no way guaranteed, as the season is not actually over yet, nor is it even close to being over; it is not scheduled to end until early December. The next race on the schedule is the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and this race is scheduled to take place on Sunday, April 28. This race, which is the fourth race of the season, is set to be broadcast live on ESPN2 from Baku City Circuit in Azadliq Square, Baku, Azerbaijan beginning at 8:10 a.m. ET.