[BTCC frog]

My driver rankings for the 2023 season, with the scores in brackets their position relative to 2022.


1. Max Verstappen (no change). There can be no doubt about who ranks as number one this year. The only real question is whether Verstappen has put in the greatest individual season performance in F1 history, or just one of the greatest. The most remarkable thing about Verstappen’s season in 2023 was his consistency. This could be applied to Red Bull as well, considering they had not a single mechanical problem in a race, and just one in qualifying, all season, but Verstappen himself never had a single off day. There were many situations like qualifying in Silverstone, Zandvoort, Interlagos where the Red Bull may have been the best car but anything less than perfection from Verstappen would have cost him, but he delivered every time. His biggest mistake of the season was a lockup in Singapore qualifying, while only in Baku could there be a case for him being beaten on merit by Perez (he would surely have won in Jeddah without the qualifying problem). Verstappen broke all the records with his 19 victories, and ten consecutive wins, and scored an average of more than 25 points a weekend (thanks to sprint races), also scoring more than double the number of points of Perez in second which is unheard of. It was the most dominant season in Formula 1 history by one driver.

However, I am reluctant to call it the greatest season in history, simply because the dominance of the Red Bull and the underperforming Sergio Perez meant that there was rarely any real pressure on Verstappen, and so he didn’t appear to be performing at his absolute limit. There were no really special performances like his drive in Austin 2021, or that Jeddah qualifying lap. Because of this, I still don’t think it has surpassed Jim Clark in 1965 as the greatest season ever. But I do think that Verstappen has now become more consistent than any of the other greats in F1 history after going through a 22-race season without any significant off-days or mistakes. His best drive was probably in Monaco, both for the brilliant final sector and holding his own on such old tyres in the rain, while his comeback in Austin after the only other mistake in qualifying, was another standout performance and recovering to almost pass Leclerc for fourth in Singapore after all the bad luck was very impressive. The rate at which he closed on Perez in Zandvoort is worthy of a mention, as is the strong racecraft in Mexico City and Abu Dhabi. Miami was perhaps the defining moment of his season, as from a lowly grid slot he was still able to hunt down and pass polesitter Perez for victory in the closing stages. Verstappen’s season was fully deserving of all the records it broke and it is a genuine contender for the greatest season in history, solidifying his place among the absolute elite of F1 history, but hopefully he will be pushed harder in 2024 by the challenging pack.

2. Lando Norris (up one). He may still be winless in Formula 1, although he has now matched Nick Heidfeld’s record for most podiums without a win, but I think Norris is now the second-best driver in the world and the one who would give the biggest challenge to Verstappen in the same car. The start of the season in the old-spec McLaren was very disappointing, but Norris still clearly had the upper hand over Oscar Piastri, whose junior record is on par with that of Leclerc and Russell, and he had some standout performances like Spain qualifying. But after the McLaren became competitive in Austria, Norris became the closest challenger to Verstappen, and scored more points than anyone else. And I would still suggest that he was significantly better than Piastri. The weekend at Austin was his most impressive of the season, getting on the front row out of nowhere and staying in contention for victory for such a long time, while in Brazil he gave Verstappen a genuine challenge for the lead and totally left the rest behind. Norris may have been up against a weaker version of Daniel Ricciardo in 2021-2022, but I would argue that he would still have had the upper hand over even Ricciardo at his peak.

Norris still made quite a few mistakes in 2023, particularly in a number of qualifying sessions towards the end of the year with Mexico the most noticeable and he would surely have been on the podium with a clean qualifying session after that extraordinary fightback in the race, but he has the potential to be the closest rival to Verstappen over the next decade once these are ironed out. Another possible weakness would be his racecraft, although that is considerably less important in the DRS era, but he does tend to allow people to overtake too easily. But while Norris is certainly not a complete driver yet, his raw speed is as good as anyone else on the grid, and surely that first win will come soon.

3. Lewis Hamilton (up one). While he had certainly recovered a bit after the 2022 season, this still wasn’t Hamilton at his best, and perhaps he has now entered the inevitable decline. It is said that qualifying pace is always the first to go when drivers decline, and this year he seemed very evenly matched with George Russell. But Hamilton’s main weakness in 2023 was his consistency, having random weekends like Abu Dhabi or Monza where he was well off the pace of his teammate, and he also made that one huge blunder in Qatar as well as getting away with hitting Piastri in Monza. However, I fully believe that Russell is one of the top talents of the next generation and, on race pace at least, Lewis Hamilton comfortably still had the edge over him. He may not be as good as he once was, but Hamilton is still among the best drivers out there and I think in general he flattered the Mercedes car in 2023. Apart from those off-weekends.

Hamilton’s best drive of 2023 was probably Austin, where he totally left Russell behind all weekend and was a serious threat to Verstappen for victory before the disqualification, while Mexico City was similarly strong as he kept the tyres intact to beat the faster Ferraris. Earlier in the season, Hamilton took podiums when the car was good in Australia and Spain, and took a great pole position in Hungary which unfortunately disappeared by turn one. Singapore was perhaps one that got away, as Russell was quicker for most of the weekend, so Hamilton was stuck behind him for that final charge. I think Hamilton is past his peak now and would no longer be able to beat Verstappen in the same car, but he is still good enough to be world champion in the right circumstances.

4. Fernando Alonso (up one). At the age of 42, it is very unlikely that Alonso is still performing at the level that he did at his peak. It is possible that the Aston Martin, and Lance Stroll, are flattering his performances and there is actually a bit left in the car. But for much of the season it seemed fifth best, so for Alonso to narrowly hold onto fourth in the championship, his best result since 2013, shows he is still among the very top drivers. And the string of podiums at the start of the season when the car was good also suggested Alonso was maximising its potential. But in some of the races at the end, he seemed to drop in performance and Stroll was much closer and sometimes even ahead. I rated Hamilton and Norris ahead because they more often seemed to be putting their cars higher than they should be than Alonso did, although Alonso was more consistent and made fewer mistakes.

The highlight of Alonso’s season was his podium in Brazil. It is difficult for racecraft to be a defining factor in the DRS era, but that day Alonso proved that his is still the best on the grid with a fantastic defence against Sergio Perez. He also made that brilliant pass on Hamilton for third in Bahrain, while second in Canada and Zandvoort were other strong drives, particularly the latter as the Aston Martin was no longer among the top cars by that point in the season. His worst race of the season was Las Vegas with the silly mistake at turn one and lack of pace thereafter. But he will still be fully worth his place on the grid for a few more years, and is doing a better job in his 40s than Schumacher did.

5. Charles Leclerc (down three). It wasn’t as good a season for Leclerc as 2022 had been, with fewer standout races while the mistakes are still there. I still think he has significant potential, a better bet than his teammate to win a title if the Ferrari was good enough, and still popped up with a few brilliant performances, but overall wasn’t much better than Sainz who beat him to the one Ferrari win of the season, where Leclerc was off form. Perhaps the 2023 Ferrari didn’t suit his driving style as much as the 2022 edition did, with Ferrari having to compensate for Leclerc and Sainz having contrasting setup preferences, but Leclerc could have done better in 2023 and had some races where he had no pace at all, such as Miami, Spain and Zandvoort, while he also had quite a few crashes such as in Australia.

But Leclerc ranks ahead of Sainz due to generally still having the edge for pace, and he had more bad luck in the season but just beat him in the points. Bahrain was an unrewarded excellent drive as he was well ahead of Sainz before retiring, while the pole in Baku and third place was also good. Las Vegas was his best weekend of the season, perhaps losing victory to that safety car and recovering second with a brilliant final lap dive on Perez, and he seemed to rediscover his form with a lot of pole positions and a great front row in Abu Dhabi, although he still couldn’t win a race. It wasn’t Leclerc at his best in 2023 but he is still a potential future champion who might be able to give Verstappen a serious challenge in the equal cars.

6. George Russell (no change). To an extent, reputation has to play a part in these rankings. On paper, Russell’s season of finishing eighth to his teammate’s third, and crashing twice, doesn’t look great. But we have to remember that, considering how brilliant he looked at Williams and in that Mercedes call-up in Sakhir 2020, and considering Lewis Hamilton is one of the greatest drivers in history, it is most likely that both are still performing to a very high level, and Russell just isn’t quite as good as Hamilton. His two crashes were black marks for the season, as were the races late on where he was well off Hamilton’s pace such as Austin and Mexico, but over the season as a whole, I suspect the Mercedes drivers flattered the car a little, and for Russell to not be far off Hamilton is an impressive achievement and he did a better job than his final championship position would suggest.

Both Mercedes drivers had off-weekends and poor qualifying performances, but overall ended up tied 11-11 for qualifying, with Russell arguably just about having the edge over the driver with more poles than anyone else in history. While his race pace was less good relative to Hamilton, he still put in some great drives such as the podium in Abu Dhabi, the fightback in Spain and leading the race in Australia before a joke of the red flag cost him. He was also genuinely faster than Hamilton all weekend in Jeddah and in Silverstone before bad luck again with the safety car. His best weekend of the season was Singapore, right up until his costly unforced error, as he outpaced Hamilton again and put himself in genuine contention for victory. Being almost as good as even a past-his-best Hamilton is no mean feat, and Russell is still a potential champion in the right car, although maybe he won’t be the replacement for Hamilton that Mercedes hoped he would be.

7. Carlos Sainz (no change). Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc are all drivers who have absolutely destroyed good teammates, leading to accusations of them having cars built entirely around them. But Carlos Sainz has been teammate to all three, and fared very well against them all. Is it possible that the aforementioned drivers really are that good, and Sainz is just slightly behind them? Maybe, but Hamilton and Alonso are also among the all-time greats, and Russell not far off Hamilton, so I would suggest that the top seven in this list are significantly ahead of the rest. This placing for Sainz is quite harsh but overall, he was still slightly behind Leclerc for pace. It was a far better season than 2022 for Sainz, perhaps as the previous car had exploited Leclerc’s preference for oversteer, while in 2023 Ferrari compensated for Sainz’s understeer more to give the drivers a more level playing field.

However, Carlos Sainz was the only non-Red Bull driver to win a race in 2023, and he did it with the best single race drive of the season in Singapore to hold off a charging pair of Mercedes by giving Lando Norris DRS to protect him. It was not the only time Sainz used DRS tricks, with his defence against Perez in Austria another significant highlight of the season. Beating Leclerc to pole and a podium in Monza was another strong drive. But while he was rarely dominated by Leclerc and didn’t have as many random terrible weekends as his teammate, he was just a little behind him at the majority of races in 2023 so places behind. I am less convinced of Sainz’s ability to win a championship in the future as I feel he has reached his peak now, and so he seems to have less potential than the likes of Norris, Leclerc and Russell who may still improve, but he deserves to have a lot more than two race wins at this point in his career and may surprise me by winning a championship one day.


8. Alexander Albon (up three). It is an interesting statistic that, by outqualifying Logan Sargeant at every race in 2023, Albon became the first driver to get a clean sweep since Max Verstappen did it to him in 2020. Albon seems a far stronger driver than during his woeful Red Bull years, but there is still an element of doubt as to whether he is actually being flattered by a stronger Williams and weak teammates, so this ranking may be too high. While he was actually further ahead of Latifi on outright pace than Russell was, Latifi seemed to have lost it a bit in 2022 and Albon doesn’t give the impression he is flattering the car in the way that Russell did.

However, it was the best season of his career, worthy of a place in the top ten, and the consistency to outpace Sargeant at every single race should be commended. The Williams was at its best on the high-speed tracks, and that also makes it easier to defend with, but Albon still made the difference with his drive to seventh in Montreal, after being the only driver to attempt the one-stop strategy and brilliantly holding off a train of cars for the majority of the race, one of the best drives by anyone in 2023. Seventh and eighth in Monza and Silverstone on similarly good tracks for Williams were also great drives, the former again a defensive drive. Zandvoort was another particularly notable performance, on a track less expected to suit the Williams but where Albon qualified fourth and finished eighth. But a low point of his season was crashing out of sixth in Australia. I don’t think Albon would fare any better against Verstappen than Perez did if he had another go at Red Bull, but he is the ideal driver to lead Williams in the coming years.

9. Esteban Ocon (up one). One of the most difficult decisions of these rankings was which Alpine driver to place ahead. Esteban Ocon seemed to have the edge over Pierre Gasly for the first half of the season while Gasly gained the upper hand towards the end, particularly in qualifying, but overall, I thought Ocon was just about faster than Gasly more often than the other way around, and lost more points to bad luck than the small points deficit that he had. Ocon is very much establishing himself as a top midfield driver, perhaps the Perez/Hulkenberg of the next generation, and while he has the occasional fantastic race, he also had races where he was well off Gasly’s pace for no apparent reason.

The obvious highlight of Esteban Ocon’s season was his podium in Monaco, with a brilliant qualifying lap and perfectly driven race being one of the finest drives of the season overall. He also held on well to his tyres in Las Vegas to take fourth, and was unlucky to lose sixth in Singapore. In the first half of the season, he was generally just that little bit ahead of Gasly with strong drives in Jeddah and Canada, for example, while Qatar was another particularly strong race to take seventh despite being sick in his helmet. Ocon didn’t make many significant errors but was just slow in races like Brazil, Mexico and Italy. Ocon could probably do a good job as a second driver for a top team, but is never going to be a championship contender.

10. Pierre Gasly (up three). Although Gasly ranks just behind Ocon, he generally was the better Alpine driver towards the end of the season, so may be their stronger driver next year. He had some great races where he was on the pace of the leaders, but Ocon usually wasn’t with him due to some random event rather than a comparative lack of pace, and in most races, Gasly was slightly behind his teammate rather than ahead of him.

The final few races were his best point of the season, with great qualifying laps and having a significant pace advantage over his teammate at times, and perhaps a battery problem was a big factor in his total drop off in Las Vegas, rather than just tyre wear. Gasly took one podium in 2023 in Zandvoort, which was probably his strongest drive of the season as he was quite fortunate to find himself in that position but then kept pace with the leaders for the entire race, actually going faster than Sainz, and capitalised from Perez’s penalty to get the podium. Australia was also a great race as he was on the lead pace but then made his biggest mistake of the season by wiping out both Alpines at the end. He also had a great race in Brazil and in Austin, but in most races was slightly off the pace of his teammate. I think he will be ahead of Ocon next year, but Gasly too is probably destined for a career in the midfield.