2023 Driver Ratings

[KaraK]

Now that the season is over how do we think the Class of '22 did? Here's my ratings - these are just for this season, so not intended in to rank them overall or anything like that.

So.. in WDC order...


Max Verstappen - 9/10

Much as I don't like him Max is an extremely talented racing driver and it's tough to argue with such a dominant display as he put on in '22. True he had easily the best car for most of the season but he still had to go out there and drive it well and he did. The only real blots on his copybook this season are his continued tendency to turn into Neanderthal anytime Lewis is nearby (see Brazil) and his failing to understand you get more out of a wingman in the long run if you don't go around giving them a metaphorical kick in the nuts for the lulz (see Brazil).

Charles Leclerc - 6/10

There's no denying Charles had pure pace this year and that he's shown some decent racecraft. But the errors.. sweet jebus the errors, they didn't cost him the championship - the WDC was never going to be on this year with the reliability issues combined with the team seemingly getting their strategies from badly translated fortune cookies but if those things hadn't been getting in his way I think that his errors would have been enough to kill his WDC bid.

Sergio Perez - 5.5/10

As aggrieved as he might feel about missing out on 2nd in the championship I can't help but feel that Sergio is lucky to have come away with third. At times he really struggled to make the most of his top flight equipment, yes the development of the RB18 pushed it more towards Verstappen's preferred characteristics but Sergio is no newbie - adapt or go backwards. Realistically if Sainz had gotten his st together in the first half of the season Perez would have found himself staring at a fourth place championship finish. We all know that Perez isn't there at RBR to fight for the title, but when your teammate wins two thirds of the races in a season you should be able to cruise to an easy 2nd or 3rd in the Championship, but Checo made real hard work of it.

George Russell - 8/10

Much was expected for George's first full season in the "big leagues" - and he delivered. The car wasn't good enough to be really in the mix but he kept plugging away and ground out solid result after solid result and was deservedly rewarded with that fine first win in Brazil. A few minor goofs here and there but nothing that proved too costly.

Carlos Sainz - 5.5/10

It seemed to take an age for Carlos to get on top of driving the '22 car and by the time he finally did it as too late to make a real bid for the championship. Getting that elusive first win at Silverstone seemed to settle him down a great deal and if anything he looked the better Ferrari driver post-Spa.

Lewis Hamilton - 7/10

Statistically his worst season in F1 - but all things considered he put in a decent showing. At times he was getting himself into the mix with cars that were way faster than the W13 and incredibly he only came away with two less podiums than Checo managed in the (much) faster RB18 and the same number as Sainz in the Ferrari! There were some clumsy moments (see the clash with Alonso at Spa) but there were some brilliant ones too (see the double pass at Silverstone). Overall I don't think he will be happy with his performance in '22 but I think that speaks more to the usual heights he hits rather than it being an objectively bad season in isolation.

Lando Norris - 8/10

A difficult, and largely anonymous season in terms of out and out results belies the fact that, once again, Lando was on some serious form. This year's McLaren clearly wasn't a great car, arguably the Alpine was faster (if a little more fragile). But Lando beat both the Alpine drivers in the standings. I have to wonder how long he's going to wait for McLaren to deliver a car worthy of his talents.

Esteban Ocon - 6/10

I'll admit don't quite "get" Ocon - some people will rave about him and speak of him in the same breath as the great talents of the "new" generation (Norris, Leclerc etc) but I just don't see it. He's a solid midfield runner and returned a solid midfield season, I think if he were to take a look in a crystal ball he'd see Perez's face - because I think he's destined to be F1's next professional journeyman.

Fernando Alonso - 8/10

For all of his, perhaps questionable, politicking out of the car he's still dynamite in it. Alonso put some truly special qualifying laps together this year, particularly in Canada. If it weren't for his disproportionate reliability woes he would have demolished Ocon this year.

Valtteri Bottas - 6/10

Made good use of Alfa's weight advantage early on in the season and he looked racier than I think we've seen from him in years. But as the car's performance faded so did he.

Daniel Ricciardo - 3/10

Another dismal year, and what is there to say about it that hasn't been dissected ad nauseum on F1 sites all year? Funnily enough he perked up a bit once it was confirmed that he was for the chop and he got a bit stuck in during some of the races. His recovery drive in Mexico was superb, unfortunately it only served to highlight just how far off his game he's been for the last two years.

Sebastian Vettel - 6/10

At times I think Seb drove extremely well this year, I'm just not convinced the Aston really let him show it. The A-spec was just plain slow and the B-spec seemed.. moody, particularly when it came to qualifying which I think obscured that Vettel was then quietly getting on with he job on a Sunday and his relative drubbing of Stroll in the points tally (despite contesting two fewer races) reflects that.

Kevin Magnussen - 6/10

This is difficult to call - Kevin put in some eye-catching drives in the first half the season but as the other teams developed the cars Haas just tumbled down the order and more and more you got the sense that Mick was getting on top of things and was starting to give Kevin a serious run for his money. His pole lap in Interlagos was a think of beauty however.

Pierre Gasly - 4/10

The car wasn't great, but I have to say Pierre was scruffy all year long. He can do much better, and he's going to have to next year as he takes his big steps into the the Post-Red Bull stage of his career at Alpine.

Lance Stroll - 4/10

Standard-issue Lance Stroll season really. Occasional flashes of speed in a watery mediocrity soup. Unlike his fellow 4/10 scorers, I think this is probably his level.

Mick Schumacher - 4/10

He really looked to be getting a handle on things in the second half of the season. But it was all too little-too late. Add in that when he got it wrong it tended to be in ways that not even all the T-cut in the world could fix and that probably doomed him - when the team didn't even have the money to be hitting the budget cap in the first place you can't go around writing off chassis every other race. Because that means less money for upgrades, which means lost points, which means lost prize money for next year and I think all that together led to him losing his seat. Hopefully he'll get himself settled in a reserve berth at somewhere like Merc and we'll see Mick 2.0 at some point because I do think he's got more to show us.

Yuki Tsunoda - 3/10

I was willing Yuki to succeed this year - last season I thought he showed promise if he could just channel those flashes of speed into something consistent and cut the errors. I thought it was at least worth giving him another year to find out. Sadly this year he's just been... "meh", he's not looked quick at any point really and when Gasly can underperform as much as he did this year and still nearly double Yuki's points tally I can only assume that he's there next year because Honda want him to be.

Zhou Guanyu - 5/10

It's unfortunate for Zhou that as he started to find his feet was when the car started to slip back down the grid. Otherwise I don't think the points gap to Bottas would have been quite so extreme.

Alexander Albon - 6.5/10

Freed from the black hole of despair, sorry I mean Red Bull Driver program, Albon seems to be flourishing. He seems in a happy place and has taken up the George Russell mantle of dragging that Williams to places it has no business being.

Nicholas Latifi - 1/10

It's over, thank god, it's over. I feel for Latifi I really do, he seems like a nice chap all things considered, but he's way out his depth in F1. I don't know enough about Logon Sargent to know whether he's going to be an upgrade, but it can't be any worse surely?

[KaraK]

parabolica said:

I agree with your scores on the whole but I think this is harsh for Zhou. Agreed the points tally against Bottas tells one story, but Zhou had atrocious luck/reliability in the first half of the season that was beyond his control, not to mention a nasty crash in Silverstone, again not his fault. When his car was able to finish the race, he put in solid performances for a rookie - no major mistakes, no silly coming-together with others (looking at you Latifi) and Fred V talked very highly of him in the Abu Dhabi post race conferences. I’d say maybe 6, not stellar but better than average imo.

Yeah, I could see an argument for 6 - the first three / four races his pace was nowhere compared with Bottas (particularly in qualifying), but he was a rookie and Bottas' single lap pace has never been in doubt. And his campaign in the second half shows a steady improvement.

[KaraK]

cuprabob said:

Have I missed a year or should the title be 2022?

Interesting thread though

Dammit! Yes.. it should have been 2022, clearly I didn't consume enough caffeine yesterday

[KaraK]

wiliferus said:

Generally agree with the OPs ratings.

However, my sticking point will always be Gasly. I just don’t rate him. He entered F1 to a fanfare with high expectations. He’s delivered very very little to show that he’s something a bit special.

That said, the Ocon Gasly show in ‘23 could be very interesting. I’ll be fascinated to see who comes out on top as the competitiveness is going to be off the scale!

I can't see Gasly making the cut as a top-tier driver worthy of championship(s) - but I do think he has good potential nevertheless. Next year will be very telling IMO. Clear (finally) of a Red Bull environment that didn't want him and that he didn't want to be in and up against a solid midfield yardstick in Ocon. If he doesn't demolish Ocon on the regular we'll know once and for all that he's a midfielder for life.

[KaraK]

heebeegeetee said:

Re the driver's ratings, we are told that Hamilton was called upon to do more in the way of trying different set-ups etc of the Merc in the first half of the season (at least), whereas George was allowed to get on with doing his own thing. Do we accept this, and has that been taken into account when rating Hamilton's year?

I do accept that they were doing that - it was pretty clear that, particularly in FP sessions Merc were trialling and exploring some pretty extreme setups on Lewis' car. Which makes sense from a team point of view - you've got a car you're struggling to understand because the real-world behaviours aren't correlating with what you were able to simulate in the wind tunnel and on CFD so you've got to push, pull and twist all the different setup levers and knobs you have available to try and understand it. Given the extremely limited track time available do you use your relative rookie, whose feedback is going to be naturally limited or do you use the driver you've who is not only the most experienced with the Merc cars but far more F1 experience full stop? This would then have a natural knock-on effect on the rest of the weekend but again the more experienced driver is going to be in a better position to mitigate that impact. It's telling that around the time they stopped doing this so much (Canada) is when Lewis seemed to gain a slight advantage over Russell and started clawing the qualifying head-to-head back and his Sundays improved too.

(As a side note the ability to get up speed quickly is an often overlooked skill IMO - and it's one where Max in particular absolutely excels, the amount of times he'd have a disrupted Friday with reliability issues, or giving FP1 up to the junior etc and it would be like water off a duck's back. All the top-tier drivers are pretty good in that regard but Max is probably the best of the current grid, probably with Alonso not far behind)

So I do cut Lewis some slack in the ratings for that period - if anything doing that sort of work is a positive for him. It may not have a direct visible connection to results but I think doing that sort of work absolutely paid dividends for Merc's overall results in the latter half of the season. What really hurt his rating for me was that, by Hamilton standards, he made a few more clumsy-ish mistakes through the year than would be normal for him.

[KaraK]

Rotary Potato said:

I think past performance casts a long shadow over this year's ratings at Mercedes.

Lewis is a multiple time world champ who has shown (again and again) he can produce amazingly fast and consistent results across a whole season. Anything less than that feels like a step down from his ultimate potential.

George had his first season in a (relatively) competitive car, so had no real historic benchmark to be measured against. His ultimate potential was unknown. Nothing about his performance this year felt like a step down.

So while the two finished very close in absolute terms (ignoring actual points - looking at performances across a season), one took the step up that fans hoped he would - but couldn't be certain about. The other took a step back from his mercurial best that we know he can perform at across a season. And it feels to me like those factors were taken into account in these ratings.

Yes to an extent I've taken what I think a driver's "true" level is into account and that's effected (some) of the individual ratings. If asked I'd likely say that Lewis is the best driver on the current grid, but while I think he did a good job this year I don't think he was at his absolute best which does affect how I see his performance this year. By contrast Russell seemed to handle the spotlight that comes with a bigger team well and seemed to improve on some of this weaknesses from previous years, I don't think we've seen Russell's ultimate potential yet - it's still pretty early days in his career.

I don't think it's really possible to ignore this sort of thing - and I don't really think that it would be desirable to do so even if you could. As a silly example if Usain Bolt goes out and runs a 100m race at the Olympics in 12 seconds people will say that he's done a bad job, if (for some reason) I (a forty-something, out of shape bloke with a dodgy knee) am in the next lane over and do an identical time the same people would call it phenomenal.

I think this is one of the key reasons why Ricciardo has come in for so much flak these last two years, including in my list. He's emphatically not a 3/10 driver in general terms - there's no way in hell Stroll is a "better" driver than Daniel for example but he scores higher in this list because Stroll did about as well as could be reasonably expected of him, whereas Danny Ric fell way, way short of how good he can be.