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"         The 2010 F1 season was an exhausting marathon, 19 races long. The championship lead changed nine times\u2014a record. The three leading teams\u2014Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull\u2014were like planets in outer space, each in its own orbit and totally preoccupied with F-ducts, blown diffusers and flexible wings that were the currency of speed. Each took a different approach to car design and team management, and while one or another might enjoy a momentary advantage, their performances over the long arc of the championship produced an almost identical result. It was as if a magnetic force manipulated crashes and wins to keep things close, and four drivers started the last race still in the hunt\u2014also a record.           My friend John Love has observed that races and championships fall with odds-defying frequency to the driver whose win makes the best story. But in 2010, it was the loser&amp;#039;s story that offered the most depth and dimension. Fernando Alonso, my choice for the No. 1 ranking, had a season that extracted the full measure of what F1 demands in these times. On one hand, he is a genuinely nice guy, while in the cockpit he&amp;#039;s ruthless and implacable, wholly at ease with F1&amp;#039;s culture of aggression. Beat your teammate! Push, push, push! Block anyone trying to pass you!   To get Alonso, Ferrari bought out Kimi R\u00E4ikk\u00F6nen&amp;#039;s contract and agreed to make him their number one\u2014a back-room deal that instantly marginalized the supremely talented Felipe Massa, who was making an emotional return after a life-threatening crash in 2009. Alonso led Massa home in the season opener, but as the other teams found their stride, the new F10 fell behind. By the time the team was competitive again, midsummer had come and Red Bull had five wins, McLaren four. I factor into these standings how a driver responds to adversity\u2014a Degree of Difficulty rating\u2014and Alonso proved his toughness during this frustrating period. Alonso clawed and scratched his way to every point. Always on the limit, he made mistakes\u2014a massive qualifying crash at Monaco, a jumped start in China\u2014but he kept the team&amp;#039;s morale up with his self-confidence. Massa was almost equal in speed, but Alonso&amp;#039;s mental toughness\u2014typified by his dangerous, brazen pass of Massa down China&amp;#039;s single-lane pit entry road\u2014confirmed his number one status.   Hockenheim was the anniversary of Massa&amp;#039;s accident\u2014and the revamped F10 was ready. Like the car, Massa was fully recovered and took the lead, heading to a storybook ending\u2014until Ferrari, acting on another of Alonso&amp;#039;s back-room deals, ordered him to let Alonso pass. The rules forbid team tactics, but Massa, dazed, complied. Alonso was a distant 5th in the standings, 47 points back, and many wondered if eight points\u2014the difference between 1st and 2nd in the expanded scoring system\u2014was worth the bad publicity. But Alonso had felt the Ferrari come right, and sensed before anyone else that he had a chance at the championship. He regarded the win, and the points that went with it, as rightfully his. Like Michael Schumacher, he sees his success as fulfilling a moral imperative\u2014what&amp;#039;s right for Alonso is right for Ferrari, and by extension, right for the sport. Not surprisingly, Massa was devastated. After Hockenheim his season collapsed. He swallowed his pride and re-signed for 2011, despite knowing that he was offered the ride not because he&amp;#039;s fast but because he&amp;#039;s not as fast as Alonso.   Tainted or not, the Hockenheim points\u2014which cost Ferrari only a wrist-slap of $100,000\u2014propelled the Spaniard into contention. His victory at Monza, in front of Ferrari&amp;#039;s idolatrous fans, was the emotional high point of the team&amp;#039;s year\u2014and a reminder of just how fast Alonso can be. Two weeks later he won in Singapore, holding off Sebastian Vettel in the nimbler Red Bull RB6. His win in South Korea was his fourth in eight races, thrusting him into the championship lead. A cautious 3rd in Brazil, he arrived in Abu Dhabi with a comfortable lead over Mark Webber.   In an unlikely scenario made possible by multiple contenders, Alonso keyed off Webber, Webber had a bad day, and Vettel leapt from 3rd place in the standings to steal the championship. The Ferrari brain trust had two Red Bulls to watch for and picked the wrong one. Abu Dhabi was a nasty shock, but Ferrari found its first real leader since Schumacher, and historically the Scuderia is at its best with a strongman in the cockpit. Winners don&amp;#039;t lose, the saying goes, they just run out of time...and Alonso, slumped on the garage floor, was a man who would have done anything for another chance. He&amp;#039;ll be very tough to beat in 2011.           Sebastian Vettel, my pick for No. 2, was the highest scorer in the second half of the 2009 season, but didn&amp;#039;t win. To have unfinished business of this sort at 23 is extraordinary. He should have dominated in 2010\u2014the Adrian Newey-designed, Renault-powered Red Bull RB6 was in a class of its own. Vettel won only three of the first 15 races and didn&amp;#039;t score back-to-back wins until the last two. The speed was always there\u2014he won the pole 10 times, tying the record. But he lost Hungary by failing to observe safety-car protocol, at Spa he speared Jenson Button and took out Force India&amp;#039;s Vitantonio Liuzzi, while in Turkey he crashed trying to muscle his way past Webber. For all F1&amp;#039;s emphasis on beating your teammate, it&amp;#039;s etched in stone that you must not run into him. Vettel would have been in the doghouse anywhere but at Red Bull. The company&amp;#039;s founder, Dietrich Mateschitz, regards him as his personal discovery, and Vettel rewarded him by scoring both Toro Rosso&amp;#039;s and Red Bull&amp;#039;s first wins.           My No. 3 is McLaren&amp;#039;s Lewis Hamilton. Martin Whitmarsh, team principal, has acknowledged his man takes chances that don&amp;#039;t always pay off\u2014and that&amp;#039;s fine with him. Hamilton&amp;#039;s risk-taking grows from the deep conviction that when he&amp;#039;s over his head his intuition will sort it out. His win at Spa, on a rainy day with conditions changing from lap to lap, called upon all his self-confidence and skill\u2014and some luck, too, when he got off track and missed the guardrail by inches. It was the drive of the year.   McLaren prides itself on a level playing field for its drivers\u2014equal cars, no team orders. Even when world champions Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna\u2014bitter enemies\u2014drove for them, McLaren stuck to its policy. In Hamilton and Button they again had two champions\u2014only this time they became friends. Lewis had the better year. In qualifying, he trounced Button 14 to five. Button won twice before Hamilton, but then Hamilton won three and outscored Button 240 points to 214.   After his Spa win, he led the championship and looked unstoppable. But he crashed into Massa at Spa and was sideswiped by Webber in Singapore. Two races, no points\u2014while Alonso raked in 50. It was a short slump, but I believe it cost Hamilton a second championship.           Robert Kubica is my pick for No. 4. When BMW withdrew, Kubica was left rideless, ending up at Renault in Alonso&amp;#039;s vacated seat. The car was better than expected, and the tubular Pole qualified in the top 10 at every race but the last one. Every few races he hung onto the leaders and finished on the podium. The physical closeness of the drivers showering each other with champagne belies the harsh reality of how far Kubica is from becoming a regular on that top step. He came into F1 with Hamilton and Vettel, and seeing their success must be reassuring and excruciating. He knows he can win, but the clock ticks. If you look at F1 from his perspective you realize how few championship-caliber rides there are, and how rarely they become available. Lotus has bought a modest share of the Renault team, with plans to expand its position. But that&amp;#039;s the future. Kubica needs a winning car, and he needs it soon.           Mark Webber is my No. 5. In midseason, he went on a tear, winning four of eight, including Monaco and Silverstone. Here&amp;#039;s a guy who only the year before had won his first GP, after eight fruitless years in F1\u2014and now fans were clamoring for him to be champion. But the team had different ideas: At Silverstone, they removed Webber&amp;#039;s front wing, giving it to Vettel. The intra-team tension got to Webber. Vettel began out-qualifying him\u2014by only tissue-thin margins, but it meant he was starting behind the young German, with little chance of passing. Webber was F1&amp;#039;s Zeno\u2014the closer he got to the finish the slower he went\u2014and his crash in rainy South Korea was the mistake of a man driving over his head. Still, he went into Abu Dhabi standing 2nd in the championship, causing Alonso to focus on him and letting Vettel escape. Webber&amp;#039;s credo is Hard but Fair. I would add Brave; in Valencia, he rode out the year&amp;#039;s worst crash without showing a trace of fear. He&amp;#039;s back at Red Bull and while Mateschitz may regard him as a mere journeyman, I believe Webber will again cause Vettel to radio in\u2014as he did in Hungary\u2014asking, &amp;quot;How the hell did Mark get to be leading?&amp;quot;           Jenson Button, 2009 World Champion, is No. 6. Button&amp;#039;s unexpected switch from Brawn to McLaren could have led to a highly combustible rivalry like Vettel versus Webber. But his unfailing good nature kept things calm, plus he won twice early on, and there&amp;#039;s nothing like a win to bond a driver to his team. Button is the ideal number two, or maybe I should say one and a half. Button and Hamilton have their differences, but they&amp;#039;re confined to the esoterics of car setup: Button prefers the stability of understeer while Hamilton likes the quick response of oversteer. Button is exquisitely smooth, and his two brilliant wins\u2014both in the rain\u2014showcased his technique. But Hamilton, trusting his instinct, is a tiny bit faster and better at coping with cars that aren&amp;#039;t handling.           Nico Rosberg, my choice for No. 7, stepped up from Williams to the newly formed Mercedes team, where he was joined by Michael Schumacher. In the flurry surrounding the legend&amp;#039;s comeback, Rosberg was largely ignored. When racing began, however, he scored a pair of 3rd-place finishes early on and later added another. He out-qualified Schumacher 14 to five and outscored him 142 to 72\u2014impressive numbers even if the Schu, absent from F1 for three years, wasn&amp;#039;t at his best. Schumacher likes the rear of the car to pivot around the front, which calls for a &amp;quot;strong&amp;quot; front tire and a &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; rear one. Pirelli has replaced Bridge\u00ADstone as the tire supplier for F1, and first reports suggest that the Italian firm&amp;#039;s rubber, along with a new car, will give the Schu a chance to work his old magic. If Rosberg can keep beating him, Nico could find himself winning GPs.           I rank Rubens Barrichello No. 8. Williams welcomed Barrichello as their number one, delighted to annex his 18 years of F1 experience, especially useful with limited testing. His generous spirit supported and encouraged their high-profile rookie, GP2 champion Nico Hulkenberg\u2014even as Barrichello made sure to out-qualify him decisively, 13 to six. Hulkenberg grabbed the pole at Interlagos in the wet, a dazzling performance for which I name him Rookie of the Year. But the rapid Venezuelan, Pastor Maldonado, the Hulk&amp;#039;s successor as GP2 champ, has dangled $15 million in front of Sir Frank, and Hulkenburg is left looking for a ride.           I include my last two picks\u2014Kamui Kobayashi (No. 9) and Heikki Kovalainen (No. 10)\u2014under my Degree of Difficulty heading. I know they aren&amp;#039;t in a class with, say, Schumacher or Massa, but each produced outstanding performances despite having little to work with. Kobaya\u00ADshi is a fighter and as good an over-taker as there is. He finished 7th at Suzuka, coping with the pressure of racing in front of his countrymen while at the same time conducting a master class in passing. Meanwhile, in the same race, Kovalainen was showing how to be passed, how to stay out of the way while losing as little of your own speed as possible. Like Kubica, Kovalainen was occasionally able to latch on to a faster group\u2014evidence that he may soon resign from the Society of the Moving Chicanes.           Summing up: 2010 offered the excitement of an exponentially complex world-championship battle. The year also saw F1 making good on its plan to reduce expenses by limiting testing, scaling back staff sizes, and restricting engine development. Mega-spending manufacturers Toyota, BMW and Honda have withdrawn, replaced by small private teams. At the FIA, the contentious Max Mosley is gone, succeeded by the far-sighted Jean Todt. Add that F1\u2014knock on wood\u2014hasn&amp;#039;t seen a fatality since 1994, and I&amp;#039;d say the sport is in pretty fair shape. As for this coming season, a young kid in a sinewy midnight-blue car is the defending champ, and he&amp;#039;ll be checking his mirrors for flashes of silver and red\u2014perhaps especially red. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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