Quote:
Originally Posted by Skam85
On the flip side, across the grid I think there were at least 10 drivers that had better overall seasons than Checo.
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Possibly. although you would have to attempt a ranking value to each make of car and then assess the driver performance.
Even if you were looking at overall performance or even judgeing them on their errors, you would still be hard pressed to find ten drivers who actually merited a higher value than Perez, despite his struggles and errors.
He won two GPs on merit, when only Sainz managed a win against Max on Max's worst day all year.
Max obviously.
Hamilton, with his equipment nowhere as good as the RB19, still had off days and the incident with Russell, just as Perez did in Mexico.
Russell, but too many mistakes over the year to rank significantly better.
Sainz, yes. Hi win in Singapore a standout, but not the only one. His last two weekends were less inspiring but still definitely a top ten year.
Leclerc in a similar situation. good but not as consistently good as I had expected.
Alonso yes. No question there in spite of the few rough weekends after the midyear break when they seemed to lose their way a bit.
Albon, definitely a top ten driver in a car significantly handicapped. Great job in difficult circumstances.
Norris, a definite top ten. Especially after Austria.
But Piastri, not better than Checo across the whole season, in spite of some great individual races. Maybe not all his fault in some cases but still finding his feet and looking for less variability. Silverstone and Qatar were highlights.
But the potential is enormous.
Gasly and Ocon, both had too much variability for me to rank their year higher than Perez as drivers in 2023.
Hulkenberg? I often wonder what Hulkenberg could have accomplished were he sitting in Perez' seat or in Lance's seat at AMR where he had previously been a reserve driver. But i still wouldn't rank his year as better than Perez on quality or effort.
Tsunoda I would place inside the ten on merit over his results and effort after the midterm break. Lawson did as well when they were head to head but too few races to put in the ten and Ricciardo?
Despite Mexico being his standout, it wasn't enough to better Perez regardless of the recovering hand injury and there were still some places where i expected him to trash Yuki, and he didn't trash him at all.
This is partly why I rate Yuki relatively highly, and I'm a DR fan....
Neither Bottas, Zhou, or anyone else really stood out as being better performer than Perez across the season, so I think he is comfortably inside my top ten.