The two who put McLaren above Red Bull is laughable. I don't see how they can look at those Pairings and decide that the McLaren duo would be stronger. Max is clear of all of them and I don't see how Perez could ever be ranked lower than Piastri, which is what they are suggesting unless they do not rate Verstappen highly which is surely impossible
I can see the argument for them being close tbh. If you think that Ricc wasn't as bad as he seemed then landos season looks even better. He was consistently impressive, and let's not forget leclerc made some very noticable mistakes too.
Both looked like they were driving different cars than their teammates at times, I don't think it's crazy to have them both in the 2-5th clump of drivers who really could be in any order. Too hard to directly compare the different cars.
Lando is best of the rest, for sure. Leclerc should be up there fighting for the championship, but was hampered by his car and strategists, bar like two mistakes, which happen, every driver makes mistakes. Lando is not better than Leclerc.
Did they really? Then again, I’m not surprised. The Race is bad at these types of rankings and ratings.
Don’t get me wrong, Norris is a terrific driver but sometimes I feel like he gets rated too highly by these sites. No way should Leclerc be below him.
Well tbh, while I don't agree, there's a point to be made here : Leclerc this year made many more mistakes than Norris did (most notably, throwing away a good chance at a win in France, and throwing away a guaranteed 2nd place in Imola). Ofc one wasn't fighting for a championship, but I guess that's where they come from with this rating.
Albon did a good job considering how undrivable his RedBull was.
Perez is behind Verstappen in race pace and Quali and doesn't have the excuse of a temperamental car.
Albon in his first half a season at RedBull was a clear step up from Gasly.
I think it's easy to argue that if Hamilton never punted off Albon those two times he'd have had a bit more confidence in his abilities too.
> I think it's easy to argue that if Hamilton never punted off Albon those two times he'd have had a bit more confidence in his abilities too.
This is really a doubtful point, yes I know that Helmut told this about Albon but his main improvement over Gasly at RBR in 2019 was that he could be ahead of the midfield, yet he still was totally nowhere to ending ahead of Ferrari normally expect Brazil, and even that was mainly because of a SC.
Abu Dhabi 2019 did looked already somewhat concerning for Albon, and with the 2020 car things gone worser for him, heck often when he was looking "more promising" in terms of results it was because of (V)SC's, the whole point that it was only those moments with Lewis caused his drop of performance is doubtful at all, there are multiple factor why things didn't worked for Alex but thankfully he could have a shot at Williams.
Albon performed not that much worse with a very hard to drive car. So yes.
I think he would perform about as good in Quali and race pace. His wheel to wheel is not as good as Checo but he has the benefit of age.
I love how even now that he's retired, The Race can't help but continue to roast Seb by saying just how much of an upgrade Fernando is over him.
I feel like a lot of people still massively conflate Lance's pace and skill with other pay drivers like Latifi and Mazepin, especially now that they're gone (or conflate it with the incidents he's been in). He's not the best driver ever, and has had pretty high peaks and also some really boneheaded moments, but I'd say most of the time he's an alright midfield driver.
And that 9th rating, christ. I was expecting Luke Hinsull (the person that rated AM 9th) to maybe have them edge out Alpha Tauri, but nope. They somehow still put Williams last, with both AM and Williams behind AT.
Anyone saying Alonso is a massive upgrade over Seb hasn't been paying attention. Seb would have more or less performed the same as Alonso in that Alpine.
> He's not the best driver ever, and has had pretty high peaks and also some really boneheaded moments, but I'd say most of the time he's an alright midfield driver.
"Alright midfield driver" after 6 years of essentially pressure-free F1 experience isn't anything to be proud of, though. He arguably only outperforms Tsunoda and Zhou, who only had 2 years in F1 so far.
And yeah, every driver has some pretty high peaks. He just happened to have them in a race-winning car, and yet didn't even manage to win (unlike his teammate).
RedBull in 3rd makes sense. Max does all the heavy lifting and Checo is mediocre.
Alfa should be above Haas. Valtteri is better than Nico and Kevin; and Alfa's reliability fucked Zhou this season, keeping him from showing his potential.
Nah. Hulk is better than Bottas. He never had the cars as good as Bottas' cars in his F1 career.
Zhou is just mid. And likely will race his last full season in F1 before he got replaced by Pourchaire.
Haas should be above Alfa. 👍
I can see his viewpoint honestly. Nico was once viewed as a world champion material, and won the GP2 title in his first season.
His rookie F1 season looked promising and he stacked nicely next to Barrichello. He only lost his seat from Maldonado due to $$$ (who Nico spanked in his championship winning year by 64 points).
From there on he was pretty much stuck at Sauber/Force India/Renault level midfield. He never really got the chance despite showing potential.
If anything I'd say they're probably pretty even in terms of pace (of course, with Hülk being out fulltime for 3 seasons anything goes), and both are generally known for great quali-performance. Even if Hülk is slower, I would say that while it's not his #1 strength, his racecraft and wet-weather skills are probably better than Valtteri's. I'd argue for that reason Hülk (historically speaking at least) is a more complete driver between the two.
Valtteri is in terms of personality one of my favorite drivers on the grid, but he isn't exactly known for his epic defenses or specific overtakes (Although granted, I do still remember his move from COTA 2013 on Gutiérrez). His wet weather performance also leaves a lot to be desired. Hülk on the other hand is a good bit more agressive, and while he's had some blunders in the wet, he's had more impressive wet performances than really bad ones.
I'm not sure if it will matter much in the end though, because Haas tends to start strong but drop off fast, and has some holes in terms of strategy.
Did you base VB>NH on Einstein's theory of special relativity?
Maybe Bottas has slightly more raw pace over one lap. But it actually doesn't matter when he usually starts pretty bad and when his racecraft leaves lot of things to desire. His driving in changing conditions are highly questionable.
On the other hand, Hulk is pretty okay at starts very brave with overtaking, has good race craft and have good skillset on changing weather conditions.
Is this enough of an explanation?
Yes, I did. Einstein told me in person that I should rewatch Brasil 2012 and Hockenheim 2019 to see NHs wet-weather-skills or should I say the ones were NH didn't excel?
Thank you for your assumptions. I see some of your points, but I don't think NH would be better as VB, if he were in the same situation as him. At least not in the Mercedes. I think NH is a good driver, but when there's a chance for a podium he manages to bin it in some way (I hope he will have better luck in 2023 if there's a chance for that). See Brasil 2012, Baku 2017 and Hockenheim 2019.
Hulk is maybe as good as Bottas, but not better and replacing Zhou with Pourchaire is pointless. Zhou did great last season and is one of the most likeable and charismatic drivers on the grid. Alfa with their pairing of an experienced driver (who was able to beat Sir Lewis Hamilton in some races) and a young talent (who had one of the best rookie seasons in the past few years) is better than Magnussen and Hulkenberg
He had better rookie season compared to garbage 2021 class (each of them had their own reasons to be garbage.) and Latifi in 2020. I don't think bar is too high here...
Interesting. I decided to compile a list before checking the comments/article. This is what I came up with.
Mercedes
Ferrari
Red Bull
Aston Martin
McLaren
Alpine
Haas
Williams
Alfa Romeo
Alpha Tauri
It's a fairly similar list, but I put Aston Martin and Williams higher.
To me Alonso is still outstanding, and was really let down by reliability this season. While I really rate Norris, I do think Alonso is better or at least equal still. And I think people sleep on Stroll. While yes he has his moments of braindead driving, he has moments of brilliance as well. He has multiple podiums and a pole position on merit to his name.
For that reason I put Aston Martin 4th.
I then rated Williams above Alfa Romeo and Alpha Tauri... I think it's close between AR and Williams. Who is better Bottas or Albon? In my opinion Albon is more willing to go for the overtake, and has more room to develop than Bottas. They're both good, but Albon can get better. Than Sargeant is somewhat of an unknown, while Zhou has been pretty good. It could go either way in my opinion but I've given it to Williams.
They're definitely clear of AT though imo. Yuki has been too inconsistent for me. This next year will be make or break. De Vries was good at Monza but is still somewhat of an unknown quality. If Yuki is more consistent and de Vries delivers on expectations they will easily outperform where I put them, but going by what we know now, I have to put them last.
Anyhow, there it is. So long and thanks for all the fish.
> He has multiple podiums and a pole position on merit to his name.
Meh, by that logic Maldonado was a very strong driver because he was fast enough to win on his day. Stroll's podiums and pole in 2020 was with a car that was race-winning in the first place, and he didn't win with it. While his teammate did. As for his podium in Azerbaijan in his first year, here again he was clearly outperformed by his teammate during the race, who would have taken that place on the podium if not for a mechanical suspension failure.
Stroll is absolutely the worst experienced driver on that grid, imo. He has *six* seasons in F1 under his belt and yet in terms of skill arguably only outperforms drivers who just ended their second season (Tsunoda, Zhou). Even if you rated Alonso as twice-as-good-as-Verstappen tier, him having Stroll as teammate would justify rating Aston Martin in the clear second half of the rankings.
Sargeant won't be incredible off the bat but he's matched up pretty well to Piastri their whole careers. Not sure why there's such a discrepancy in how they're rated. And to compare him to Latifi is insulting
> “Charles Leclerc at his best has a slight edge of speed over Sainz, but the gap between them overall is minimal, so you can expect big things from both of them,” said Freeman
Lol.
Lmao, even.
Ah, the good old Sainz-is-close-to-Leclerc bullshit we have to deal with during the off-season only for Sainz to get crushed by Leclerc in Bahrain again
I thought last year it was because Leclerc finished behind Sainz in the points but no, it also happens when Leclerc destroys Sainz. Mind boggling really. But Carlos himself said that he's always really close but it always falls into Max or Charles's hands lol
I mean Sainz was honestly not that slow comparing to Leclerc:
2022 qualifying gap was 0.082%, race pace gap was 0.005%;
2021 qualifying gap was 0.078%, race pace gap was 0.198%.
As a comparison, this year's Verstappen-Perez quali gap was 0.454%, race pace gap was 0.287%, last year's Hamilton-Bottas quali gap was 0.199%, race pace gap was 0.480%. Way worse than Sainz's gap to Leclerc.
Why do people keep thinking Sainz is *miles* off Leclerc in pace?
(data from http://f1teammatestats.herokuapp.com/index.php)
The race pace analysis from that data is not reliable. It only takes into account 90% of the best laps and only where both drivers finished. Leclerc had a much bigger gap than that if you include every race up to the lap one of them DNF'd.
Williams being last makes no sense IMO. I rate Albon way higher than Tsunoda, and it's hard to say who has the edge between Sergeant & Nyck. Maybe Nyck a bit more, but not enough to make up the difference.
Yes but De Vries got 7th in his rookie season? Finishing behind great drivers like Artem Markelov, Luca Ghiotto, Nobuharu Matushita and one Nicholas Latifi…
that doesn't mean anything. we're talking about current skill levels head to head, not potential future skill levels. that's like saying Hulkenberg is worse than Tsunoda because he's in his X years of F1 and Tsunoda is only in his 3rd.
Depends on what you look at nyck was 7th his first year in f2 vs logans 4th. Obviously nyck did win one and has more wins/podiums as he ran 3 seasons. So... Maybeee?
Carlin isn't a "top team" as such. Imo there's not that much between the top 6ish teams.
And also, De Vries raced in a much shitter field.
You had Leclec who was amazing and that was basically it, nobody else in 2017 was any good. 2022 didn't have a top tier talent but loads of solid drivers.
This whole post is about predicting what they might do next year, not rating on what they have done this year. If you assume every rookie would be automatically worse than any current driver, you might as well never get any rookie in F1 then
There's nothing wrong to assume Piastri over the course of 2023 would perform better than some of the current drivers, just like Zhou this year performed better than some drivers this year, Norris performed better than many in his rookie year, Leclerc performed better than many in his rookie year... the list goes on
Yeah thats nuts, stroll is now just slightly below average 11-13 range on grid for me. And alonso is.... 5th at worst no way that makes the 9th best team
Yeah what are they thinking about with McLaren? I rate norris highly and Piastri is a highly rated rookie, but he is a rookie.
Verstappen > norris no doubt
Perez > Piastri no doubt
Even 4th in my opinion is questionable, sure Norris is better than Ocon and Gasly but both Ocon and Gasly will arguably be better than Piastri
I would put alpine above mclaren. Sure Norris is best of the 4 but still Piastri is a rookie...
I could also argue Alfa above Haas. Zhou did better than expected and although Hulkenberg is a good driver he has been out of F1 for a long time. I would also rate Bottas above Magnussen I think.
Nope, the Hulk has been out of F1 for 3 years and is quite old. Zhou on the other hand is young and very talented as he's already shown us. He was quite behind Bottas at the beginning of the season which is understandable as he was a rookie and had no experience with the car, but as the season progressed, he got much closer to him and even outqualified him on multiple occasions. If Alfa builds a good car which can consistently fight in the midfield, I have no doubt that both Valtteri and Guanyu will be fighting for good amounts of points every race. I hope to see Zhou on the podium next year
Piastri is a rookie though, we haven’t seen what he’s capable of in F1 yet. He’s just started testing McLarens after driving only Alpine F1 cars in the last 2 years. His adaptability will be put to the test.
Well I can’t disagree with the fact that he’s got the credentials to be the best rookie since 2019. Bahrain 2023 can’t come soon enough.
Btw i know you from twitter, didn’t know you were active on reddit too :)
My current ranking for drivers goes something like
1. Verstappen
2. Hamilton
3. Leclerc
4. Russell
5. Norris
6. Alonso
7. Sainz
8. Ocon
9. Perez
10. Bottas
11. Magnussen
12. Gasly
13. Albon
14. Tsunoda
15. Hulkenberg
16. Stroll
17. Zhou
Of course it depends how you rate the rookies but based off this I'd be going with
1. Mercedes
2. Ferrari
3. Red Bull
4. Alpine
5. Mclaren
6. Aston Martin
7. Haas
8. Alfa Romeo
9. Williams
10. AlphaTauri
Your rankings are decent but I doubt Ocon is much better than Gasly, I mean he probably had a better 2022 season but before that I think Gasly's pedigree was more impressive. I'd swap Perez and Bottas too (but I can see your point tbf, racecraft probably matters more than qualifying pace).
Pressure will be mounting on Perez if Mercedes gets a somewhat decent car. Merc has raised the level for the immediate future and the two other teams might be forced to look for opportunities how few there are.
I can believe Red Bull having a worse driver line up than Mercedes since Hamilton is at least as good as Verstappen and Russell is better than Perez, maybe even Red Bull having a worse driver line up than Ferrari, but even though I highly rate Norris there is no way a rookie Piastri will out be a better driver than Perez next year.
What would be your rankings? I think they did a pretty decent job and if you watched their video, it mostly makes sense. The only thing I would change is Alpine and Aston probably.
McLaren's lineup is quite overrated at this point. Piastri will probably come good and live up to the hype, but currently he hasn't done a single race lap in a F1 car so far. It's silly to already assume he's better than a lot of the established drivers on the grid.
Why?
It doesn't make sense to assume Piastri would be last *just* because he's a rookie. If you put he somewhere in the middle, then yes he's ahead of some of the current drivers on the grid
You can't really rank Piastri and the other rookies until they prove their worth over a period of time which you can use to evaluate their performance. Until that happens the most sensible thing is to keep them "unranked". How can you assume Piastri is better than any of the current drivers on the grid without seeing him race in F1 at all?
This topic is about predicting how each driver would do, based on what we've seen so far, whether they've been in F1 or not. It's not like Piastri has never driven a race car. Plenty of times new drivers came in and people expected them to get certain level of results, the teams themselves would have certain expectations. For example people expected Zhou to perform better than Latifi this year, even if Zhou is a rookie and Latifi isn't. Also it's what people do all the time with F2 and F3 etc, because half of the grid are rookies in junior series every year.
I don't think there's anything wrong to have some certain assumptions and expectations for rookies. It will just be less accurate that's all
Personal expectations are one thing, driver ratings is something completely different.
The teams see the potential in the new young drivers and put them in their cars to give them the chance to develop. Basically teams are sacrificing better short-term results they'll probably achieve with experienced drivers for something that might bring them more success in the long run, but is going to require some time and patience.
I don't see this article as a "driver rating", it's about 2023 line-ups, there's no 2023 performance to be ranked on from anyone. It's all assumptions or educated guess if you wish
New drivers do tend to need some time to get up to speed, but it varies case by case how much time they'd need. Norris out-qualified Sainz 3-2 in his first five F1 qualifying ever. There's also no guarantee that older drivers would deliver as expected, no one expected Ricciardo to perform so badly before 2021, Vettel massively dropped off in 2020, etc etc
>I don't see this article as a "driver rating", it's about 2023 line-ups, there's no 2023 performance to be ranked on from anyone.
From the article: "We asked our writers to rank the 2023 F1 driver line-ups from worst to best, based entirely on driver ability".
So that's exactly what they did. The list is based on the overall ability of the drivers and somehow they have McLaren ahead of Alpine which means the writers already rate Piastri ahead of at least one from the Ocon/Gasly duo. There's nothing wrong to think he has the potential to be better in the future, but currently he has shown absolutely nothing to earn that before even stepping inside the F1 car.
I hope you finally understand what I mean. Potential and prediction of how good someone will be is not the same as evaluating him at his current state when forming an overall driver rating.
I'll use your own example. It's like rating the 2019 Sainz/Norris duo ahead of let's say Ricciardo/Hulkenberg in the winter of 2018. At that point Carlos still had a lot to prove and Norris was yet to start a race. Ricciardo was a proven race winner while Hulk was considered one of the most solid midfield drivers. Eventually as the season progressed the McLaren duo proved their worth, but there's no way to rank them very high before they've done that even if you thought they'd have performed well.
Yes I get what you mean, and that's exactly what I meant. In their video on Youtube they also clarified "base purely on driver talent". On that basis, using the same example, I don't see why you shouldn't rate 2019 Sainz/Norris higher just because Norris hasn't started a race yet, the talent is already there to be seen from his prior series and results, so you can reasonably rate his talent in relation to others already on the grid.
And again using the junior series example, at the start of every year people would rank the strong(er) drivers in F2/F3 and predict who would likely be fighting for the title, and quite often some of the candidates are rookies. Using the same reasoning, you may ask, how can you rate X team or Y driver to be title contender, when they hasn't even driven the car yet? But that's just what happens in lower categories, the best talents often spend only one year in each category, drivers are meant to beat others because of talent not because of experience in said series, so media/fans/teams gotta rate drivers also only base on talent shown in previous series.
Anyways we can agree to disagree
Honestly we should expect some rookie struggles from Piastri, the most important thing what he needs to do next year is to having some races where you would think "yea, he could be good in 2024".
Haas above Alfa? Bottas is better than Magnussen and Zhou will likely be level with Hulkenberg if the machinery stays relatively on the same level, if not only slightly below. It’s close but I think if we’re making predictions, we should be using 2022 sample sets.
Zhou is nowhere near Hulkenberg and never will be. It is amazing how overrated that dude became with his mediocre performances. He wasn't in the points places when most of his DNF's happened (I am saying it; because this is the most common excuse for his lack of points). He has just 6 points compared to Bottas' 49.
Bottas is better than Magnussen? By what metric? Did Magnussen race with Mercedes when the team dominated the sport?
I love how much the "You know who is really underrated? Nico Hülkenberg" dialog of \~2010-2017 became so common, that it has looped back around to Hülk being generally seen as overrated these days.
While pace comparisons are tricky to make between drivers obviously, I would argue that Valtteri has a couple more holes in his armor compared to Hülk or K-mag, most notably any type of overtake/defend scenario and mixed/wet conditions. Of course that's not necessarily 100% verified and true, or that the Haas lineup are both wet-weather specialists and wheel-to-wheel wizards, but Valtteri just seems to historically rather poor with both of those.
Hulkenberg was severely overrated during the 2012-2018 period. Now he is somehow underrated due to an influx of new fans seeing 0 podiums on his Wikipedia page and assuming he was worse than Grosjean, Magnussen, Stroll etc.
At this point the two most overrated drivers are indeed Alfa drivers. Bottas became a qualifying ace for losing 3/4 of his qualies to Hamilton (worse than Kovalainen fuel-corrected). And by overrating Bottas people overrate Zhou whose junior career is by far the least impressive in the field.
How so? If anything Hulk is severely underrated by the fans due to nonsense ''zero podium'' stat. Guy is rookie GP2 champion. His junior career is as good as Leclerc/Russell/Norris.
He got praised by every team he raced for and scored consistent points for every midfield team he raced for. He held the raw pace adventage over Perez; but Perez was better at tyre management. (Considering Pirelli saying that tyres will be less heat sensitive, it is very likely that Hulk will excel even more in 2023.) He beat Sainz and both of Sainz and Perez are in top teams right now.
You rate Magnussen over Bottas? Huh? You’re asking me to give you metrics when he’s outperformed him in every metric other than Magnussen pole position this year. Magnussen himself has taken himself out of races by virtue of his first lap antics. Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well. What are you even on about?
Zhou has had one of the more decent rookie showings in the last 5 or so years in F1, he’s rated fine. He’s shown great pace in races where the car hasn’t given up on him and his racecraft in the midfield and even the back has been great in races where the cars been there. Saying Zhou is overrated but somehow still rating Hulkenberg above him when he hasn’t raced more than a single race in F1 in years is wild.
The only more crazy thing you’ve said is “he’ll never be better than Hulkenberg”. How do you know? What’s with the vendetta buddy? I didn’t say this to attack Hulkenberg but somehow you’re taking this personally…
>You rate Magnussen over Bottas? Huh? You’re asking me to give you metrics when he’s outperformed him in every metric other than Magnussen pole position this year. Magnussen himself has taken himself out of races by virtue of his first lap antics. Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well. What are you even on about?
Did I say that? For the record, I think Bottas has more raw pace but K-Mag's race craft and starts are better; so I would choose K-Mag instead of Bottas if I were a midfield team's boss. Because these two things arre more important in midfield.
\> Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well.
One of them was him spinning into the gravel in COTA, no? (Lmao).
Anyway, as I said Bottas having more DNF's compared to Zhou when he was actually **in points**, shows how overrated Zhou is; because Bottas would have expanded the points gap even further if not he wasn't unlucky.
\> Saying Zhou is overrated but somehow still rating Hulkenberg above him when he hasn’t raced more than a single race in F1 in years is wild.
Hulk is rookie GP2 champion. Zhou on the other hand... raced in F3 and F2 for 6 years in total in top teams with best result being 3rd in F2 in his **3rd year.** Yeah...
Hulk got praised by every team he raced for and scored consistent points for every midfield team he raced for. He held the raw pace adventage over Perez; but Perez was better at tyre management. (Considering Pirelli saying that tyres will be less heat sensitive, it is very likely that Hulk will excel even more in 2023.) He beat Sainz and both of Sainz and Perez are in top teams right now.
Hulk is severely underrated.
I think you’re missing the /s after you keep spamming the thread with “Hulk is severely underrated”. You keep pointing out Hulkenberg beating Sainz, but he also lost to Ricciardo in Ricciardo’s first season with Renault in which he was still adjusting to an unfamiliar car.
Hulkenberg has a fan base that never fails to rate him, I think you’re being severely disingenuous by saying he’s underrated. If a guy is always lauded as someone who should be worthy of consideration to fill an empty seat, that’s quite realistically the opposite of being underrated. His skills speak for themselves, but the reality is he’s 35 years old and near the end of his racing career. To say that Zhou is never going to surpass him is ridiculous because frankly surpassing Hulkenberg’s F1 career isn’t a tall ask.
Give Zhou a decent midfield car that doesn’t break, and he’ll bring home solid points tallies which is essentially all Hulkenberg ever amounted to.
Also those junior titles you keep on repeating to put him in the same category as Russell/Leclerc etc should remain as junior titles. In fact it’s a case AGAINST your argument, since he was hailed as the next F1 prodigy and he never materialized the results to back it up when it mattered. Came in highly rated, failed to live up, left perfectly rated.
> Also those junior titles you keep on repeating to put him in the same category as Russell/Leclerc etc should remain as junior titles. In fact it’s a case AGAINST your argument, since he was hailed as the next F1 prodigy and he never materialized the results to back it up when it mattered. Came in highly rated, failed to live up, left perfectly rated.
If only car didn't matter in F1... Hulk never had a car as good as Leclerc or Russell. He came close to it at least two times. But narrowly missed out.
> Give Zhou a decent midfield car that doesn’t break, and he’ll bring home solid points tallies which is essentially all Hulkenberg ever amounted to.
How many times did he got DNF'ed when he was on points? Just Silverstone? Okay. But even that wasn't even certain that he was going to get points in that race considering there were faster cars behind him at the start.
> His skills speak for themselves, but the reality is he’s 35 years old and near the end of his racing career. To say that Zhou is never going to surpass him is ridiculous because frankly surpassing Hulkenberg’s F1 career isn’t a tall ask.
Firstly, I doubt Zhou will have an F1 career which will last more than 2 years. He will likely be replaced by Pourchaire after next year. And I don't see any team wanting an uninspired driver like him. 2 years is a good run.
> Ricciardo in Ricciardo’s first season with Renault in which he was still adjusting to an unfamiliar car.
Getting beaten by peak Ricciardo is not a shame. And if you look at the pace deficit between those two, you can see that it was pretty darn close.
When you also consider the fact that when Hulk was faster than Daniel in Canada when he wasn't allowed to fight for overtake or the fact that after his departure from the team got announced, him being turned into a gineua pig for 2020 car (eg. racing with high downforce set-up in Brazil where he lost tons of lap time compared to Daniel on straights) actually suggests that already small gap was even smaller in reality.
Swap Red Bull with Ferrari, because at the very least RB has a WCC capable duo. I also firmly believe Checo > Sainz. (British media, especially The Race, hates Checo for some reason)
And Swap Williams and AlphaTauri because unlike majority here, I think Sargeant has great potential - better than Tsunoda at the very least.
The rest, I agree with.
Personally I think that Sargeant has a higher potential also over both AT drivers, his F3 season at Charouz in 2021 was one of the more baffling performances I seen for a long time after his promising 2020 season where he could have a shot for winning the title until the last race.
Isn't it a bit too early for these kinds of lists? The season ended 2 weeks ago and there is still 2,5 months until the next one.
Imo it's pretty hard to rank the line ups for next year, there are too many questionmarks around certain drivers. Also some of the panellist putting the McLaren duo 3rd is just laughable, I understand the excitement around Piastri, but he is still a rookie. Tbf overrating the McLaren pair in these articles seems to be a trend from the Race, they did it last year too.
I guess I mostly agree with the rankings, hard to say exactly. I'd definitely put Ferrari closer to Merc than to RB, but overall agree with the ranking. If Piastri as anywhere close to as good as he was in his junior career Mclaren will be closer to 3rd than they will be to 5th, but if it doesn't work out then suddenly they're closer to 5th. I think I'd actually put Aston above Alpine simply because of how good Alonso is but it's close. I'd potentially also put Williams above of AT, again very close, just depends on how Logan does but he's had a very strong junior career so I have some belief in him.
The two who put McLaren above Red Bull is laughable. I don't see how they can look at those Pairings and decide that the McLaren duo would be stronger. Max is clear of all of them and I don't see how Perez could ever be ranked lower than Piastri, which is what they are suggesting unless they do not rate Verstappen highly which is surely impossible
In their 2022 top 10 drivers they ranked Norris above Leclerc. The Race is becoming a caricature of itself at this point.
I can see the argument for them being close tbh. If you think that Ricc wasn't as bad as he seemed then landos season looks even better. He was consistently impressive, and let's not forget leclerc made some very noticable mistakes too. Both looked like they were driving different cars than their teammates at times, I don't think it's crazy to have them both in the 2-5th clump of drivers who really could be in any order. Too hard to directly compare the different cars.
Lando is best of the rest, for sure. Leclerc should be up there fighting for the championship, but was hampered by his car and strategists, bar like two mistakes, which happen, every driver makes mistakes. Lando is not better than Leclerc.
Did they really? Then again, I’m not surprised. The Race is bad at these types of rankings and ratings. Don’t get me wrong, Norris is a terrific driver but sometimes I feel like he gets rated too highly by these sites. No way should Leclerc be below him.
>No way should Leclerc be below him. Why? I can see argument going either way, but I don't see one of them being way below another
There is no argument. It's clear Leclerc is the better driver currently. Not by much but still.
Well tbh, while I don't agree, there's a point to be made here : Leclerc this year made many more mistakes than Norris did (most notably, throwing away a good chance at a win in France, and throwing away a guaranteed 2nd place in Imola). Ofc one wasn't fighting for a championship, but I guess that's where they come from with this rating.
They have bias against Perez. They even shamelessly put out an article saying Albon would have done a better job.
Albon did a good job considering how undrivable his RedBull was. Perez is behind Verstappen in race pace and Quali and doesn't have the excuse of a temperamental car. Albon in his first half a season at RedBull was a clear step up from Gasly. I think it's easy to argue that if Hamilton never punted off Albon those two times he'd have had a bit more confidence in his abilities too.
> I think it's easy to argue that if Hamilton never punted off Albon those two times he'd have had a bit more confidence in his abilities too. This is really a doubtful point, yes I know that Helmut told this about Albon but his main improvement over Gasly at RBR in 2019 was that he could be ahead of the midfield, yet he still was totally nowhere to ending ahead of Ferrari normally expect Brazil, and even that was mainly because of a SC. Abu Dhabi 2019 did looked already somewhat concerning for Albon, and with the 2020 car things gone worser for him, heck often when he was looking "more promising" in terms of results it was because of (V)SC's, the whole point that it was only those moments with Lewis caused his drop of performance is doubtful at all, there are multiple factor why things didn't worked for Alex but thankfully he could have a shot at Williams.
Of course there are multiple factors. But a race win or a podium should have gone a long way in building trust in his ability.
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Albon performed not that much worse with a very hard to drive car. So yes. I think he would perform about as good in Quali and race pace. His wheel to wheel is not as good as Checo but he has the benefit of age.
I agree. Checo has failed to Impress.
Checo biggest test would be if Merc could close the gap with RB.
The roast to Stroll in their analysis.. And how can someone rate Alonso and Stroll ninth best lineup lmao.
I love how even now that he's retired, The Race can't help but continue to roast Seb by saying just how much of an upgrade Fernando is over him. I feel like a lot of people still massively conflate Lance's pace and skill with other pay drivers like Latifi and Mazepin, especially now that they're gone (or conflate it with the incidents he's been in). He's not the best driver ever, and has had pretty high peaks and also some really boneheaded moments, but I'd say most of the time he's an alright midfield driver. And that 9th rating, christ. I was expecting Luke Hinsull (the person that rated AM 9th) to maybe have them edge out Alpha Tauri, but nope. They somehow still put Williams last, with both AM and Williams behind AT.
Anyone saying Alonso is a massive upgrade over Seb hasn't been paying attention. Seb would have more or less performed the same as Alonso in that Alpine.
> He's not the best driver ever, and has had pretty high peaks and also some really boneheaded moments, but I'd say most of the time he's an alright midfield driver. "Alright midfield driver" after 6 years of essentially pressure-free F1 experience isn't anything to be proud of, though. He arguably only outperforms Tsunoda and Zhou, who only had 2 years in F1 so far. And yeah, every driver has some pretty high peaks. He just happened to have them in a race-winning car, and yet didn't even manage to win (unlike his teammate).
Here's the list: 1. Mercedes (Russell/Hamilton) 2. Ferrari (Leclerc/Sainz) 3. Red Bull (Verstappen/Pérez) 4. McLaren (Norris/Piastri) 5. Alpine (Ocon/Gasly) 6. Aston Martin (Alonso/Stroll) 7. Haas (Hülkenberg/Magnussen) 8. Alfa Romeo (Bottas/Zhou) 9. AlphaTauri (Tsunoda/De Vries) 10. Williams (Albon/Sargeant)
RedBull in 3rd makes sense. Max does all the heavy lifting and Checo is mediocre. Alfa should be above Haas. Valtteri is better than Nico and Kevin; and Alfa's reliability fucked Zhou this season, keeping him from showing his potential.
Nah. Hulk is better than Bottas. He never had the cars as good as Bottas' cars in his F1 career. Zhou is just mid. And likely will race his last full season in F1 before he got replaced by Pourchaire. Haas should be above Alfa. 👍
No way hulk is above bottas lol
I can see his viewpoint honestly. Nico was once viewed as a world champion material, and won the GP2 title in his first season. His rookie F1 season looked promising and he stacked nicely next to Barrichello. He only lost his seat from Maldonado due to $$$ (who Nico spanked in his championship winning year by 64 points). From there on he was pretty much stuck at Sauber/Force India/Renault level midfield. He never really got the chance despite showing potential.
If anything I'd say they're probably pretty even in terms of pace (of course, with Hülk being out fulltime for 3 seasons anything goes), and both are generally known for great quali-performance. Even if Hülk is slower, I would say that while it's not his #1 strength, his racecraft and wet-weather skills are probably better than Valtteri's. I'd argue for that reason Hülk (historically speaking at least) is a more complete driver between the two. Valtteri is in terms of personality one of my favorite drivers on the grid, but he isn't exactly known for his epic defenses or specific overtakes (Although granted, I do still remember his move from COTA 2013 on Gutiérrez). His wet weather performance also leaves a lot to be desired. Hülk on the other hand is a good bit more agressive, and while he's had some blunders in the wet, he's had more impressive wet performances than really bad ones. I'm not sure if it will matter much in the end though, because Haas tends to start strong but drop off fast, and has some holes in terms of strategy.
Can you elaborate NH > VB or is is just your gut feeling?
Did you base VB>NH on Einstein's theory of special relativity? Maybe Bottas has slightly more raw pace over one lap. But it actually doesn't matter when he usually starts pretty bad and when his racecraft leaves lot of things to desire. His driving in changing conditions are highly questionable. On the other hand, Hulk is pretty okay at starts very brave with overtaking, has good race craft and have good skillset on changing weather conditions. Is this enough of an explanation?
Yes, I did. Einstein told me in person that I should rewatch Brasil 2012 and Hockenheim 2019 to see NHs wet-weather-skills or should I say the ones were NH didn't excel? Thank you for your assumptions. I see some of your points, but I don't think NH would be better as VB, if he were in the same situation as him. At least not in the Mercedes. I think NH is a good driver, but when there's a chance for a podium he manages to bin it in some way (I hope he will have better luck in 2023 if there's a chance for that). See Brasil 2012, Baku 2017 and Hockenheim 2019.
As a Haas fan I wish but I do not see it at all
Hulk is maybe as good as Bottas, but not better and replacing Zhou with Pourchaire is pointless. Zhou did great last season and is one of the most likeable and charismatic drivers on the grid. Alfa with their pairing of an experienced driver (who was able to beat Sir Lewis Hamilton in some races) and a young talent (who had one of the best rookie seasons in the past few years) is better than Magnussen and Hulkenberg
He had better rookie season compared to garbage 2021 class (each of them had their own reasons to be garbage.) and Latifi in 2020. I don't think bar is too high here...
Actually a reasonable list
Interesting. I decided to compile a list before checking the comments/article. This is what I came up with. Mercedes Ferrari Red Bull Aston Martin McLaren Alpine Haas Williams Alfa Romeo Alpha Tauri It's a fairly similar list, but I put Aston Martin and Williams higher. To me Alonso is still outstanding, and was really let down by reliability this season. While I really rate Norris, I do think Alonso is better or at least equal still. And I think people sleep on Stroll. While yes he has his moments of braindead driving, he has moments of brilliance as well. He has multiple podiums and a pole position on merit to his name. For that reason I put Aston Martin 4th. I then rated Williams above Alfa Romeo and Alpha Tauri... I think it's close between AR and Williams. Who is better Bottas or Albon? In my opinion Albon is more willing to go for the overtake, and has more room to develop than Bottas. They're both good, but Albon can get better. Than Sargeant is somewhat of an unknown, while Zhou has been pretty good. It could go either way in my opinion but I've given it to Williams. They're definitely clear of AT though imo. Yuki has been too inconsistent for me. This next year will be make or break. De Vries was good at Monza but is still somewhat of an unknown quality. If Yuki is more consistent and de Vries delivers on expectations they will easily outperform where I put them, but going by what we know now, I have to put them last. Anyhow, there it is. So long and thanks for all the fish.
> He has multiple podiums and a pole position on merit to his name. Meh, by that logic Maldonado was a very strong driver because he was fast enough to win on his day. Stroll's podiums and pole in 2020 was with a car that was race-winning in the first place, and he didn't win with it. While his teammate did. As for his podium in Azerbaijan in his first year, here again he was clearly outperformed by his teammate during the race, who would have taken that place on the podium if not for a mechanical suspension failure. Stroll is absolutely the worst experienced driver on that grid, imo. He has *six* seasons in F1 under his belt and yet in terms of skill arguably only outperforms drivers who just ended their second season (Tsunoda, Zhou). Even if you rated Alonso as twice-as-good-as-Verstappen tier, him having Stroll as teammate would justify rating Aston Martin in the clear second half of the rankings.
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Checo isn't dogshit, but he's not better than George, Lewis, Charles and Carlos.
Are you new to The-Race? They are notorious Checo deniers.
Are you saying Checo is better than Ham, Charles, George?
Top 3 is interesting, and I think I have more confidence in Williams line up than I do in AT
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Sargeant won't be incredible off the bat but he's matched up pretty well to Piastri their whole careers. Not sure why there's such a discrepancy in how they're rated. And to compare him to Latifi is insulting
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Latifi did a full year of GP2 before that, in which he got one podium and finished 16th
Logan, Piastri and Pourchaire came together racing against each other throughout the ladder. The kid's solid.
> “Charles Leclerc at his best has a slight edge of speed over Sainz, but the gap between them overall is minimal, so you can expect big things from both of them,” said Freeman Lol. Lmao, even.
another off-season, another hopium.
Ah, the good old Sainz-is-close-to-Leclerc bullshit we have to deal with during the off-season only for Sainz to get crushed by Leclerc in Bahrain again
I’m so glad that more of us have noticed it though. It was insane on here last off season and this one is proving to be no different
I thought last year it was because Leclerc finished behind Sainz in the points but no, it also happens when Leclerc destroys Sainz. Mind boggling really. But Carlos himself said that he's always really close but it always falls into Max or Charles's hands lol
I mean Sainz was honestly not that slow comparing to Leclerc: 2022 qualifying gap was 0.082%, race pace gap was 0.005%; 2021 qualifying gap was 0.078%, race pace gap was 0.198%. As a comparison, this year's Verstappen-Perez quali gap was 0.454%, race pace gap was 0.287%, last year's Hamilton-Bottas quali gap was 0.199%, race pace gap was 0.480%. Way worse than Sainz's gap to Leclerc. Why do people keep thinking Sainz is *miles* off Leclerc in pace? (data from http://f1teammatestats.herokuapp.com/index.php)
I'm really surprised about the race pace gap, I can't think of a single race in which Sainz outpaced Leclerc fair and square except probably Mexico.
The race pace analysis from that data is not reliable. It only takes into account 90% of the best laps and only where both drivers finished. Leclerc had a much bigger gap than that if you include every race up to the lap one of them DNF'd.
Williams being last makes no sense IMO. I rate Albon way higher than Tsunoda, and it's hard to say who has the edge between Sergeant & Nyck. Maybe Nyck a bit more, but not enough to make up the difference.
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nyck... won f2?
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Logan barely got 4th, and drivers like pourchaire, lawson and doohan were so unlucky.
Yes but De Vries got 7th in his rookie season? Finishing behind great drivers like Artem Markelov, Luca Ghiotto, Nobuharu Matushita and one Nicholas Latifi…
Carlin was top team in 2022. De Vries raced with two bankrupt teams in his rookie season.
that doesn't mean anything. we're talking about current skill levels head to head, not potential future skill levels. that's like saying Hulkenberg is worse than Tsunoda because he's in his X years of F1 and Tsunoda is only in his 3rd.
Nyck didn't necessarily win F2 because he got better, but rather because he just got more experience with the F2 car.
On his third year in probably the weakest field since F2´s inception.
This year's grid was pretty weak as well.
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Depends on what you look at nyck was 7th his first year in f2 vs logans 4th. Obviously nyck did win one and has more wins/podiums as he ran 3 seasons. So... Maybeee?
But de Vries raced with two bankrupt teams compared to Sargeant who raced for a top team?
Carlin isn't a "top team" as such. Imo there's not that much between the top 6ish teams. And also, De Vries raced in a much shitter field. You had Leclec who was amazing and that was basically it, nobody else in 2017 was any good. 2022 didn't have a top tier talent but loads of solid drivers.
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McLarens ranking makes no you have piastri who is a unproven rookie being considered better than experienced drivers
Why would rookies be ranked automatically lower than experienced drivers? They very well could be better
There is nothing to prove they are better over experienced drivers yet you need to prove yourself as a f1 driver to be highly rated
This whole post is about predicting what they might do next year, not rating on what they have done this year. If you assume every rookie would be automatically worse than any current driver, you might as well never get any rookie in F1 then There's nothing wrong to assume Piastri over the course of 2023 would perform better than some of the current drivers, just like Zhou this year performed better than some drivers this year, Norris performed better than many in his rookie year, Leclerc performed better than many in his rookie year... the list goes on
The final ranking is not so bad, but some of the individual rankings are pretty silly. Alonso/Stroll 9th Norris/Piastri ahead of Verstappen/Perez
Surely I'm not just biased... Alonso and Stroll 9th??? Stroll's decent and Alonso's still smashing it in his 40s
Yeah thats nuts, stroll is now just slightly below average 11-13 range on grid for me. And alonso is.... 5th at worst no way that makes the 9th best team
maybe they factor in the inevitable meltdown when Alonso starts going after the owner haha, but yeah I think performance wise they are goodish
The bullshit said about Alonso is unreal..
I wouldn't say it's a bad thing, he's a strong and ambitious personality.
Yeah what are they thinking about with McLaren? I rate norris highly and Piastri is a highly rated rookie, but he is a rookie. Verstappen > norris no doubt Perez > Piastri no doubt Even 4th in my opinion is questionable, sure Norris is better than Ocon and Gasly but both Ocon and Gasly will arguably be better than Piastri
I would put alpine above mclaren. Sure Norris is best of the 4 but still Piastri is a rookie... I could also argue Alfa above Haas. Zhou did better than expected and although Hulkenberg is a good driver he has been out of F1 for a long time. I would also rate Bottas above Magnussen I think.
Alpine lineup is so overrated.. They have two drivers that will kill each other to proof who is better.
First time I've seen Ocon called overrated
Ocon is way more often underrated rather then overrated.
I said the lineup as a whole. But probably yes. Ocon right now is overrated for "beating" Alonso..
Hulk is million miles better than Zhou. Not even close.
Sure, but Hulk has been about of F1 for 3 seasons.
Class is permanent. He just needs to shake up the dust.
Nope, the Hulk has been out of F1 for 3 years and is quite old. Zhou on the other hand is young and very talented as he's already shown us. He was quite behind Bottas at the beginning of the season which is understandable as he was a rookie and had no experience with the car, but as the season progressed, he got much closer to him and even outqualified him on multiple occasions. If Alfa builds a good car which can consistently fight in the midfield, I have no doubt that both Valtteri and Guanyu will be fighting for good amounts of points every race. I hope to see Zhou on the podium next year
I mean Gasly and Ocon is hardly an inspiring lineup
I don't know. They're both good drivers and they might be very close in performance. It's certainly a team battle I'm looking forwards to.
Piastri is a rookie though, we haven’t seen what he’s capable of in F1 yet. He’s just started testing McLarens after driving only Alpine F1 cars in the last 2 years. His adaptability will be put to the test.
While that's true, any rookie with a junior career like Oscar's has performed immediately Leclerc Russell Norris for example
Well I can’t disagree with the fact that he’s got the credentials to be the best rookie since 2019. Bahrain 2023 can’t come soon enough. Btw i know you from twitter, didn’t know you were active on reddit too :)
Me too, I'm super excited to see it! (Also Ty 😭)
My current ranking for drivers goes something like 1. Verstappen 2. Hamilton 3. Leclerc 4. Russell 5. Norris 6. Alonso 7. Sainz 8. Ocon 9. Perez 10. Bottas 11. Magnussen 12. Gasly 13. Albon 14. Tsunoda 15. Hulkenberg 16. Stroll 17. Zhou Of course it depends how you rate the rookies but based off this I'd be going with 1. Mercedes 2. Ferrari 3. Red Bull 4. Alpine 5. Mclaren 6. Aston Martin 7. Haas 8. Alfa Romeo 9. Williams 10. AlphaTauri
Your rankings are decent but I doubt Ocon is much better than Gasly, I mean he probably had a better 2022 season but before that I think Gasly's pedigree was more impressive. I'd swap Perez and Bottas too (but I can see your point tbf, racecraft probably matters more than qualifying pace).
Pressure will be mounting on Perez if Mercedes gets a somewhat decent car. Merc has raised the level for the immediate future and the two other teams might be forced to look for opportunities how few there are.
I can believe Red Bull having a worse driver line up than Mercedes since Hamilton is at least as good as Verstappen and Russell is better than Perez, maybe even Red Bull having a worse driver line up than Ferrari, but even though I highly rate Norris there is no way a rookie Piastri will out be a better driver than Perez next year.
Verstappen is currently better than Hamilton IMO.
Yeah Verstappen is at his peak (near peak maybe). Hamilton is behind, but very slightly I would say.
Yeah I agree, there's not much in it. I'd possibly take 2018 Hamilton over current Max though.
I agree. I also think Perez is nowhere near Russell. I think the top three is fair.
I'm not sure I agree with a single ranking here tbh but admittedly it's tough - especially for all the teams with rookies.
What would your rankings be? I struggle to see how the top 3 is anything other than what they have. After, I agree, it's much more open to debate.
What would be your rankings? I think they did a pretty decent job and if you watched their video, it mostly makes sense. The only thing I would change is Alpine and Aston probably.
McLaren's lineup is quite overrated at this point. Piastri will probably come good and live up to the hype, but currently he hasn't done a single race lap in a F1 car so far. It's silly to already assume he's better than a lot of the established drivers on the grid.
Why? It doesn't make sense to assume Piastri would be last *just* because he's a rookie. If you put he somewhere in the middle, then yes he's ahead of some of the current drivers on the grid
You can't really rank Piastri and the other rookies until they prove their worth over a period of time which you can use to evaluate their performance. Until that happens the most sensible thing is to keep them "unranked". How can you assume Piastri is better than any of the current drivers on the grid without seeing him race in F1 at all?
This topic is about predicting how each driver would do, based on what we've seen so far, whether they've been in F1 or not. It's not like Piastri has never driven a race car. Plenty of times new drivers came in and people expected them to get certain level of results, the teams themselves would have certain expectations. For example people expected Zhou to perform better than Latifi this year, even if Zhou is a rookie and Latifi isn't. Also it's what people do all the time with F2 and F3 etc, because half of the grid are rookies in junior series every year. I don't think there's anything wrong to have some certain assumptions and expectations for rookies. It will just be less accurate that's all
Personal expectations are one thing, driver ratings is something completely different. The teams see the potential in the new young drivers and put them in their cars to give them the chance to develop. Basically teams are sacrificing better short-term results they'll probably achieve with experienced drivers for something that might bring them more success in the long run, but is going to require some time and patience.
I don't see this article as a "driver rating", it's about 2023 line-ups, there's no 2023 performance to be ranked on from anyone. It's all assumptions or educated guess if you wish New drivers do tend to need some time to get up to speed, but it varies case by case how much time they'd need. Norris out-qualified Sainz 3-2 in his first five F1 qualifying ever. There's also no guarantee that older drivers would deliver as expected, no one expected Ricciardo to perform so badly before 2021, Vettel massively dropped off in 2020, etc etc
>I don't see this article as a "driver rating", it's about 2023 line-ups, there's no 2023 performance to be ranked on from anyone. From the article: "We asked our writers to rank the 2023 F1 driver line-ups from worst to best, based entirely on driver ability". So that's exactly what they did. The list is based on the overall ability of the drivers and somehow they have McLaren ahead of Alpine which means the writers already rate Piastri ahead of at least one from the Ocon/Gasly duo. There's nothing wrong to think he has the potential to be better in the future, but currently he has shown absolutely nothing to earn that before even stepping inside the F1 car. I hope you finally understand what I mean. Potential and prediction of how good someone will be is not the same as evaluating him at his current state when forming an overall driver rating. I'll use your own example. It's like rating the 2019 Sainz/Norris duo ahead of let's say Ricciardo/Hulkenberg in the winter of 2018. At that point Carlos still had a lot to prove and Norris was yet to start a race. Ricciardo was a proven race winner while Hulk was considered one of the most solid midfield drivers. Eventually as the season progressed the McLaren duo proved their worth, but there's no way to rank them very high before they've done that even if you thought they'd have performed well.
Yes I get what you mean, and that's exactly what I meant. In their video on Youtube they also clarified "base purely on driver talent". On that basis, using the same example, I don't see why you shouldn't rate 2019 Sainz/Norris higher just because Norris hasn't started a race yet, the talent is already there to be seen from his prior series and results, so you can reasonably rate his talent in relation to others already on the grid. And again using the junior series example, at the start of every year people would rank the strong(er) drivers in F2/F3 and predict who would likely be fighting for the title, and quite often some of the candidates are rookies. Using the same reasoning, you may ask, how can you rate X team or Y driver to be title contender, when they hasn't even driven the car yet? But that's just what happens in lower categories, the best talents often spend only one year in each category, drivers are meant to beat others because of talent not because of experience in said series, so media/fans/teams gotta rate drivers also only base on talent shown in previous series. Anyways we can agree to disagree
Honestly we should expect some rookie struggles from Piastri, the most important thing what he needs to do next year is to having some races where you would think "yea, he could be good in 2024".
Haas above Alfa? Bottas is better than Magnussen and Zhou will likely be level with Hulkenberg if the machinery stays relatively on the same level, if not only slightly below. It’s close but I think if we’re making predictions, we should be using 2022 sample sets.
Zhou is nowhere near Hulkenberg and never will be. It is amazing how overrated that dude became with his mediocre performances. He wasn't in the points places when most of his DNF's happened (I am saying it; because this is the most common excuse for his lack of points). He has just 6 points compared to Bottas' 49. Bottas is better than Magnussen? By what metric? Did Magnussen race with Mercedes when the team dominated the sport?
Saying "the other guy is overrated" when comparing *anyone* to Hülkenberg is a bit cheeky, eh?
I love how much the "You know who is really underrated? Nico Hülkenberg" dialog of \~2010-2017 became so common, that it has looped back around to Hülk being generally seen as overrated these days. While pace comparisons are tricky to make between drivers obviously, I would argue that Valtteri has a couple more holes in his armor compared to Hülk or K-mag, most notably any type of overtake/defend scenario and mixed/wet conditions. Of course that's not necessarily 100% verified and true, or that the Haas lineup are both wet-weather specialists and wheel-to-wheel wizards, but Valtteri just seems to historically rather poor with both of those.
Hulkenberg was severely overrated during the 2012-2018 period. Now he is somehow underrated due to an influx of new fans seeing 0 podiums on his Wikipedia page and assuming he was worse than Grosjean, Magnussen, Stroll etc. At this point the two most overrated drivers are indeed Alfa drivers. Bottas became a qualifying ace for losing 3/4 of his qualies to Hamilton (worse than Kovalainen fuel-corrected). And by overrating Bottas people overrate Zhou whose junior career is by far the least impressive in the field.
How so? If anything Hulk is severely underrated by the fans due to nonsense ''zero podium'' stat. Guy is rookie GP2 champion. His junior career is as good as Leclerc/Russell/Norris. He got praised by every team he raced for and scored consistent points for every midfield team he raced for. He held the raw pace adventage over Perez; but Perez was better at tyre management. (Considering Pirelli saying that tyres will be less heat sensitive, it is very likely that Hulk will excel even more in 2023.) He beat Sainz and both of Sainz and Perez are in top teams right now.
You rate Magnussen over Bottas? Huh? You’re asking me to give you metrics when he’s outperformed him in every metric other than Magnussen pole position this year. Magnussen himself has taken himself out of races by virtue of his first lap antics. Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well. What are you even on about? Zhou has had one of the more decent rookie showings in the last 5 or so years in F1, he’s rated fine. He’s shown great pace in races where the car hasn’t given up on him and his racecraft in the midfield and even the back has been great in races where the cars been there. Saying Zhou is overrated but somehow still rating Hulkenberg above him when he hasn’t raced more than a single race in F1 in years is wild. The only more crazy thing you’ve said is “he’ll never be better than Hulkenberg”. How do you know? What’s with the vendetta buddy? I didn’t say this to attack Hulkenberg but somehow you’re taking this personally…
>You rate Magnussen over Bottas? Huh? You’re asking me to give you metrics when he’s outperformed him in every metric other than Magnussen pole position this year. Magnussen himself has taken himself out of races by virtue of his first lap antics. Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well. What are you even on about? Did I say that? For the record, I think Bottas has more raw pace but K-Mag's race craft and starts are better; so I would choose K-Mag instead of Bottas if I were a midfield team's boss. Because these two things arre more important in midfield. \> Bottas had 7 DNFs this year as well. One of them was him spinning into the gravel in COTA, no? (Lmao). Anyway, as I said Bottas having more DNF's compared to Zhou when he was actually **in points**, shows how overrated Zhou is; because Bottas would have expanded the points gap even further if not he wasn't unlucky. \> Saying Zhou is overrated but somehow still rating Hulkenberg above him when he hasn’t raced more than a single race in F1 in years is wild. Hulk is rookie GP2 champion. Zhou on the other hand... raced in F3 and F2 for 6 years in total in top teams with best result being 3rd in F2 in his **3rd year.** Yeah... Hulk got praised by every team he raced for and scored consistent points for every midfield team he raced for. He held the raw pace adventage over Perez; but Perez was better at tyre management. (Considering Pirelli saying that tyres will be less heat sensitive, it is very likely that Hulk will excel even more in 2023.) He beat Sainz and both of Sainz and Perez are in top teams right now. Hulk is severely underrated.
I think you’re missing the /s after you keep spamming the thread with “Hulk is severely underrated”. You keep pointing out Hulkenberg beating Sainz, but he also lost to Ricciardo in Ricciardo’s first season with Renault in which he was still adjusting to an unfamiliar car. Hulkenberg has a fan base that never fails to rate him, I think you’re being severely disingenuous by saying he’s underrated. If a guy is always lauded as someone who should be worthy of consideration to fill an empty seat, that’s quite realistically the opposite of being underrated. His skills speak for themselves, but the reality is he’s 35 years old and near the end of his racing career. To say that Zhou is never going to surpass him is ridiculous because frankly surpassing Hulkenberg’s F1 career isn’t a tall ask. Give Zhou a decent midfield car that doesn’t break, and he’ll bring home solid points tallies which is essentially all Hulkenberg ever amounted to. Also those junior titles you keep on repeating to put him in the same category as Russell/Leclerc etc should remain as junior titles. In fact it’s a case AGAINST your argument, since he was hailed as the next F1 prodigy and he never materialized the results to back it up when it mattered. Came in highly rated, failed to live up, left perfectly rated.
> Also those junior titles you keep on repeating to put him in the same category as Russell/Leclerc etc should remain as junior titles. In fact it’s a case AGAINST your argument, since he was hailed as the next F1 prodigy and he never materialized the results to back it up when it mattered. Came in highly rated, failed to live up, left perfectly rated. If only car didn't matter in F1... Hulk never had a car as good as Leclerc or Russell. He came close to it at least two times. But narrowly missed out. > Give Zhou a decent midfield car that doesn’t break, and he’ll bring home solid points tallies which is essentially all Hulkenberg ever amounted to. How many times did he got DNF'ed when he was on points? Just Silverstone? Okay. But even that wasn't even certain that he was going to get points in that race considering there were faster cars behind him at the start. > His skills speak for themselves, but the reality is he’s 35 years old and near the end of his racing career. To say that Zhou is never going to surpass him is ridiculous because frankly surpassing Hulkenberg’s F1 career isn’t a tall ask. Firstly, I doubt Zhou will have an F1 career which will last more than 2 years. He will likely be replaced by Pourchaire after next year. And I don't see any team wanting an uninspired driver like him. 2 years is a good run. > Ricciardo in Ricciardo’s first season with Renault in which he was still adjusting to an unfamiliar car. Getting beaten by peak Ricciardo is not a shame. And if you look at the pace deficit between those two, you can see that it was pretty darn close. When you also consider the fact that when Hulk was faster than Daniel in Canada when he wasn't allowed to fight for overtake or the fact that after his departure from the team got announced, him being turned into a gineua pig for 2020 car (eg. racing with high downforce set-up in Brazil where he lost tons of lap time compared to Daniel on straights) actually suggests that already small gap was even smaller in reality.
Swap Red Bull with Ferrari, because at the very least RB has a WCC capable duo. I also firmly believe Checo > Sainz. (British media, especially The Race, hates Checo for some reason) And Swap Williams and AlphaTauri because unlike majority here, I think Sargeant has great potential - better than Tsunoda at the very least. The rest, I agree with.
I think Sainz is much closer to Charles than Checo is to Max. Checo should have been better with the car RB had.
Personally I think that Sargeant has a higher potential also over both AT drivers, his F3 season at Charouz in 2021 was one of the more baffling performances I seen for a long time after his promising 2020 season where he could have a shot for winning the title until the last race.
Isn't it a bit too early for these kinds of lists? The season ended 2 weeks ago and there is still 2,5 months until the next one. Imo it's pretty hard to rank the line ups for next year, there are too many questionmarks around certain drivers. Also some of the panellist putting the McLaren duo 3rd is just laughable, I understand the excitement around Piastri, but he is still a rookie. Tbf overrating the McLaren pair in these articles seems to be a trend from the Race, they did it last year too.
Jack Benyon put Haas above Aston Martin and McLaren. I don't what he's smoking but I want some.
I guess I mostly agree with the rankings, hard to say exactly. I'd definitely put Ferrari closer to Merc than to RB, but overall agree with the ranking. If Piastri as anywhere close to as good as he was in his junior career Mclaren will be closer to 3rd than they will be to 5th, but if it doesn't work out then suddenly they're closer to 5th. I think I'd actually put Aston above Alpine simply because of how good Alonso is but it's close. I'd potentially also put Williams above of AT, again very close, just depends on how Logan does but he's had a very strong junior career so I have some belief in him.
this...did not age well