Motorsport Week’s F1 2023 Top 10 Driver Rankings

The curtain has come down on the 2023 Formula 1 season, providing the opportunity to reflect on a year that was utterly dominated by the sight of Max Verstappen standing alone on the top step of the podium.

While it may be of little surprise who heads our list for the year, who else impressed alongside the World Champion across the 22 rounds spanning from Bahrain to Abu Dhabi?

Using the average score from our ratings produced following every event, here are the Motorsport Week top 10 F1 driver rankings at the end of yet another campaign.

10. Pierre Gasly

Gasly had established himself as one of the most consistent midfield runners since his demotion from Red Bull midway through 2019, but there was still scepticism regarding how he would fare outside of the comfort zone of the Austrian camp’s motorsport stable with which he entered F1.

Those lingering question marks, however, would be answered in 2023 after Alpine handpicked Gasly to partner Esteban Ocon once it had lost both Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri last summer in one swoop.

Unsurprisingly, Ocon had the edge in the nascent stages and scored a podium in Monaco, but Gasly responded admirably to claim third on a drying track during the Sprint at Spa-Francorchamps before the break.

The ex-AlphaTauri driver then used that as a springboard to offer some respite amid a turbulent period for the Alpine team away from the track. Gasly braved evolving weather conditions at the Dutch Grand Prix to clinch a podium before also securing strong points hauls in Singapore, Austin and Brazil to pip his team-mate in the standings.

9. George Russell

Russell is adamant that his pace took a leap forward in his second year driving for the senior Mercedes outfit. But he ultimately failed to scale the heights of his debut season, leaving him puzzled by the inconsistency that saw him trail team-mate Lewis Hamilton by five places and 59 points.

Having thrown away a podium in Monaco with a costly excursion down an escape road, Russell rebounded from a shock Q2 exit to land his first podium of the year in Spain. But that would transpire to be his only visit to the rostrum until the final round, as Russell was made to rue several spurned opportunities throughout the year, which he estimated to have cost him “over 60 points”.

The Briton clattered the wall in Canada when running in an assured fourth, planted his Mercedes car into the barrier on the final lap in Singapore from third place, and also lost a probable podium after tangling with Verstappen in Las Vegas last month. 

Although Russell was mistake-prone at times, the ex-Williams racer could count himself unfortunate. An ill-timed Safety Car thwarted him when he was leading in Australia before his engine then burst into flames, while a front-row start in Zandvoort was thrown away after his team read the conditions wrong when a downpour arrived. 

8. Oscar Piastri

The combination of possessing one of the most decorated records in the junior categories and being the subject of an intense legal battle between two teams heightened the expectation and pressure on Piastri ahead of his inaugural F1 season.

But despite having been sidelined for an entire year since winning the Formula 2 title, the rookie took to F1 seamlessly, outperforming highly rated team-mate Lando Norris as early as the second round in Jeddah. He then amassed his first points next time out on home soil in Melbourne.

The Australian capitalised on McLaren’s remarkable mid-season transformation from backmarker to regular front-runner to deliver second place in the Sprint race in Belgium. While he would have to wait until September to bag his maiden F1 podium in Japan, the Australian followed that up with an outstanding weekend in Qatar to add a second place to his Sprint pole and victory.

Although Piastri requires a marked improvement to sustain his searing one-lap speed in race trim – as reflected by his seismic 108-point deficit to Norris – the 22-year-old more than merited a place inside the top 10 after producing one of the sport’s strongest debut seasons in recent memory.

7. Carlos Sainz

Sainz may have claimed the sole non-Red Bull victory of the entire year, but his season was too much of a mixed bag to warrant climbing the order on our season ranking. 

Despite admitting he had been comfortable with Ferrari’s troubled 2023 car from the moment he sampled it in testing, Sainz failed to finish inside the top three during the first half of the season that contained questionable Turn 1 clashes with Fernando Alonso in Australia and Piastri in Belgium.

But having been allowed to pursue a set-up direction he had lobbied for, the Spaniard redeemed himself in Monza and Singapore by taking back-to-back pole positions, converting the latter into a superbly controlled victory under immense pressure.

However, Sainz was unable to build on that momentum, failing to beat his team-mate across the remaining eight rounds. The two-time F1 winner ended the season on a torrid note, getting eliminated in Q1 and lacking the pace to score in Abu Dhabi. That nightmare outing cost Ferrari second place in the Constructors’ Championship and saw him drop from fourth to seventh in the standings.

6. Alex Albon

Albon’s redemption arc resumed in 2023 through an exceptional second year with Williams that dispelled the negative connotations still associated with his short-lived Red Bull stint. The Anglo-Thai driver scored all but one of the Grove squad’s 28 points as it registered its best championship result in six years with a seventh-place finish.

Amid Williams’ inconsistency in race trim and reliance on straight-line speed, Albon produced replica displays of determination in Canada and Italy to resist the advances of a group of quicker cars to clinch seventh on both occasions, two of seven points finishes he achieved across the entire campaign.

The only real blemish on Albon’s record came in Australia when he threw away a promising starting berth with a crash. However, Albon continues to bolster his reputation as a treasured team leader for the rebuilding Williams side, which will need to keep making progress up the grid to avoid its star driver being poached away by a rival. 

5. Lando Norris

The cries for Norris to depart McLaren for pastures new had never been louder than at the beginning of the past season amid its battle to even escape Q1 eliminations with an underdeveloped version of its MCL60.

However, the Woking camp’s tumultuous opening swiftly became a distant memory following a turnaround of unprecedented proportions courtesy of a substantial upgrade package in the summer. From the Austrian Grand Prix onwards, McLaren transpired to be a certified fixture among the pack behind Red Bull, enabling Norris to scoop a career-best seven podiums in 2023.

But while rookie team-mate Piastri prevailed in the Qatar Sprint to land a breakthrough win, Norris’ wait for a maiden F1 victory will stretch into his sixth season in the top flight next term. Despite the dominance of Red Bull, Norris had ample opportunities to take the challenge to Verstappen, including in Qatar when he recovered from 10th to third.

However, the Briton had squandered the opportunity to secure track position over Verstappen with pole position in Losail and also bemoaned his one-lap efforts in the United States, Mexico and Abu Dhabi events.

That will be one area that he will be seeking to address heading into next season, but Norris was practically inch-perfect in race conditions and spearheaded McLaren’s charge in his newfound senior position.

4. Charles Leclerc

Having returned to winning ways in 2022, Leclerc’s endeavour to launch a sustained title challenge was thwarted from the outset by an unpredictable SF-23 car that couldn’t trouble Red Bull in races. That appeared to hang over him in the early exchanges of the year as Ferrari’s 2023 challenger failed to comply with the Monegasque racer’s inputs.

While there were still flashes of maverick excellence with a double pole position in Azerbaijan that led to a third-place finish, there was also the low of Miami when he crashed across successive days. Issues in mixed conditions also contributed to lacklustre performances on Saturdays in Canada and Austria in the opening months.

His team-mate’s renaissance after the summer break then threatened to see Leclerc’s season end on a whimper. However, he rallied superbly once Ferrari adopted a floor upgrade in Japan that improved his comfort inside the cockpit, providing the platform for him to land three pole positions and three podiums during the closing six rounds.

Leclerc’s eventual six-point margin over his Ferrari team-mate wasn’t reflective of his advantage, with the 26-year-old being hamstrung by several bouts of bad luck that prevented him from potentially even splitting the two Red Bull drivers in the standings.

An engine failure from third at the first round in Bahrain, which resulted in a grid drop from the front row at the next round in Saudi Arabia, set the tone for the difficulties Leclerc would endure. Late on, another second place in qualifying in Brazil was undone by an electronic issue that triggered an unfortunate crash on the formation lap.

3. Lewis Hamilton

While the two Mercedes drivers were evenly matched in qualifying, Hamilton blew Russell away emphatically in the races to reaffirm his position as the top dog within the team. Hamilton thrived from the moment that Mercedes abandoned its ‘zeropod’ concept and introduced a revised car with more conventional bodywork in Monaco.

Although the seven-time champion endured a second successive winless F1 season, his pole position lap in Hungary showcased he’s still capable of accomplishing magical feats with the right machinery at his disposal.

However, those exploits in qualifying proved to be an exception for Hamilton this season amid the Briton’s troubles with the team’s volatile W14 challenger. Hamilton, the record holder for poles in F1, was absent from Q3 five times, including the final two rounds.

Hamilton’s race craft was also dubious at points in the year. He cost himself a potential win in Qatar when his bid to swoop around the outside of both Verstappen and Russell at Turn 1 saw the two Mercedes drivers awkwardly collide. Meanwhile, Hamilton also got clumsily caught up with Piastri when lining up a straightforward move at Monza.

Nonetheless, Hamilton’s reliability saw Mercedes fend off Ferrari for second in the championship. His determined drives to second in Austin – prior to disqualification – and Mexico, in particular, highlighted how a competitive situation is all that’s needed to extract the best from Hamilton, one of the few drivers capable of stopping Verstappen.

2. Fernando Alonso

The sight of Alonso battling it out at the front of an F1 field was one that had been sorely missed for almost a decade, but the wily Spaniard was back to showcasing his cutting-edge brilliance at the sharp end of the grid once again upon Aston Martin’s unexpected resurgence at the start of 2023. 

Alonso eradicated any doubts surrounding his winter switch from Alpine by amassing six podiums in the first eight races, leaving him only behind the Red Bull pairing. The pick of the bunch came at the outset in Bahrain, when the 42-year-old overcame ex-rival Hamilton with a cunning manoeuvre on his way to third place, providing the basis for a memorable debut season dressed in green.

Aston Martin’s competitiveness would wane, though, and he only notched a further two top-three finishes in the last 14 rounds. But Alonso’s relentless consistency ensured he eventually sealed fourth in the standings, ending the year with one final bang at the penultimate round in Brazil as he came out on top against Perez in a thrilling tussle for third place with a calculated last-lap pass.

1. Max Verstappen

There really was no other option. As he has been for the last couple of years, Verstappen was in a league of his own, head and shoulders above the competition. Regardless of the car advantage at his disposal throughout the season, Verstappen maximised the potential of the RB19 to devastating effect, condemning team-mate Perez to a crushing intra-team battering. 

The Dutchman achieved an unprecedented 86% win rate courtesy of 19 victories across the 22 rounds, including a new record-breaking benchmark of 10 consecutively between the Miami and Italian Grands Prix. In fact, if it wasn’t for Red Bull heading down the wrong set-up direction in Singapore, Verstappen would have likely entered 2024 unbeaten across each of the last 18 races!

On the few occasions he was tested, the 26-year-old rose to the challenge, most notably in Monaco when he delivered a mesmerizing final sector to pip Alonso to a crucial pole.

Even if the competition somehow manages to overturn Red Bull’s sizeable superiority over the winter break, any driver will be hard-pressed to beat this current version of Verstappen: an impenetrable force behind the wheel that exudes complete belief in his ability to prevail above absolutely anything.