After essentially TWO silly seasons in 2022, we now know the 20 drivers who will be racing in 2023, and where they will be seated. So, we asked everyone in the EverythingF1 Team to rank the quality of the driver lineups; applied the F1 points system to each ranking, and got ourselves an Official EF1 Driver Ranking for 2023.
Quick disclaimer before we start – the votes were purely personal preference. Some voted with their hearts based on who they like and dislike on the grid; others voted more diplomatically with their heads based on driver ability, results and potential. This is our ranking – we encourage you to share yours with us in the comments.
Now then, let’s go in reverse order to keep some intrigue.
10th: Williams – Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant – 35 Points
This honestly wasn’t too much of a surprise to any of us. Williams had a very poor season in 2022 after so much promise and hope. They have money now thanks to Dorilton’s investment and they came out of the blocks in testing with a fascinating side-pod concept which was the most similar to Mercedes’ zero-side pod concept, but it really was a red herring.
Alex Albon had a decent season all things considering, scoring points and putting pay-driver teammate Nicholas Latifi to the sword so substantially it was decided his billions weren’t worth his lack of points-scoring ability.
And so for 2023, Albon will be partnered with rookie and F2 star Logan Sergeant. The young American comes into the sport full of promise and talent – but he is completely unproven at this level and finished only 4th in the 2022 F2 season with 2 wins. There’s promise there, but this is rightly voted the weakest driver lineup for 2023.
9th: Haas – Kevin Magnussen & Nico Hulkenberg – 41 Points
The return of Kevin Magnussen to F1 last year to replace the controversy-mired Mazepin was welcomed by all in the sport, and the Dane delivered almost immediately, scoring points on his debut and going on to out score teammate Schumacher by 13 points – quite a lot when you’re fighting for scraps all season.
Was Schumacher harshly treated? Maybe. Should he have been given another season? There’s an argument for yes. But Gunther Steiner wanted a change and thought serial points-scorer and serial podium failure Nico Hulkenberg was a better short-term option to jump-start the team into the upper midfield again.
Time will tell if this gamble pays off but the signing of 35 year old Hulkenberg, who had been out of the sport for 3 seasons, clearly hasn’t inspired the EF1 team who collectively agreed that literally any of the talent in F2 would have offered a better (and cheaper) option for Haas – thus their lowly 9th place ranking on this list.
8th: Alfa Romeo – Valtteri Bottas & Guanyu Zhou – 62 Points
I’ll be the first to admit i thought this was to be the weakest pairing of 2022. Zhou had been in F2 for 4 years and scarcely ever made a serious impact; and Bottas, while a multiple race winner, had proved time and time again that even in the very best F1 car ever made, he always struggled to make ground when stuck in the midfield.
Thankfully, I was proved delightfully wrong and both drivers impressed throughout the 2022 season even while their car’s ability petered out dramatically early on.
Alfa’s ranking at 8th, very close behind the other Alpha team can nicely suggest that the rest of the grid is just that much more intrinsically talented; rather than that this is a poor driver lineup. Expect good things from Alfa in 2023.
7th: Alpha Tauri – Yuki Tsunoda & Nyck DeVries – 62 Points
Cards on the table, I ranked this as the worst pairing on the grid. But this being a democracy, the rest of the team disagreed, and so we have Alpha Tauri in 7th place with a rookie and a driver who’s proven very little in his first 2 seasons.
Tsunoda has been comprehensively outpaced by Pierre Gasly for 2 seasons and while yes that’s very tough competition to come up against, it’s quite commonly accepted that a lot of that is down to his own mistakes and inconsistencies, rather than any lack of talent – which the young Japanese driver has in bucketloads, make no mistake. 2023 will be a do-or-die season for Yuki, though, and the pressure of team-leader will either spur him on to new heights, or end his career – there will be no middle ground.
Nyck DeVries is a proven champion in other series, but for whatever reason was never taken seriously as an F1 option until now. He has won F2, and FormulaE Championships in the past 4 years; and yet throughout his career he has been dropped by McLaren, and Audi, and seen as nothing more than a reserve option for Mercedes, despite winning the FE championship with the silver arrows. Yes, Nyck impressed very well on his F1 debut, scoring points in a Williams and embarrassing Latifi to no end; but he is 27 and completely unproven over the course of a whole season in F1. Alpha Tauri are also coming off a very poor year and developing from a platform of a bad car for 2023.
Still, the team have voted and clearly there is a love of both drivers and a faith in their ingrained natural talent which sees them sit 7th on this ranking.
6th: Aston Martin – Fernando Alonso & Lance Stroll – 75 Points
Let’s all be honest for a minute, had this been anyone other than Fernando, Aston would have been much lower on this list! Even with Seb last year they ranked lower. Fernando Alonso on his own, even in his 40s, is worth more than almost every other driver on the grid, such is his relentless ability to wring the absolute neck out of a car.
Alonso’s switch to Aston Martin is a potentially shining light on their plans for the next few seasons after massive investment in new facilities and factories, but they’ll need to improve some of their processes and strategies on track to match.
A recent article suggested that if Aston EVER want to be taken seriously as podium, win or title contenders, they need to leave Nepotism in the past and drop Lance Stroll. A perfectly adequate lower-midfield F1 driver he might be, and infinitely more talented than the likes of Mazepin and Latifi; but a Championship-contending 2nd driver he most certainly is not. Were he the team leader with almost any other driver alongside him, I reckon Aston would have been last on this list; not 6th.
5th: Alpine – Esteban Ocon & Pierre Gasly – 108 Points
Any team that loses Fernando Alonso from their books will be worse off for it, but Alpine to their credit, after fumbling the ball so spectacularly embarrassingly with Piastri, pulled off a bit of a master stroke in replacing the Spanish World Champion with Pierre Gasly. A superbly talented driver with endless marketability, especially in France, Pierre was clearly desperate for an out from Helmut Marko’s shadow, and has the potential to add to his solo race win in the right car.
Alongside him, in Esteban Ocon, they have another extPremely popular French driver, creating a French super team such that we’ve never really seen before. Ocon has some detractors – primarily Max Verstappen fans – but anyone who actually pays attention knows he’s a lightning quick driver who’s only the 2nd driver in history to beat Fernando Alonso as a teammate (the other being Jenson Button), and shares Gasly’s untapped potential as a multiple race winner in the right circumstances.
This is a very strong team lineup, and I personally ranked them ahead of a certain Championship winning pairing for this season. This pairing will be very tough to unseat from their incumbent 4th in the Championship this season.
4th: McLaren – Lando Norris & Oscar Piastri – 156 Points
Now as anyone who listens to the EverythingF1 Podcast knows, we are not-so-secret McLaren fans here, but this ranking is much more than just papaya-tinted glasses. Lando Norris is widely accepted as one of the top 5 drivers on the grid, a talent to potentially rival George Russell and Charles Leclerc, he just needs the right car. Lando was the only driver outside of the top 3 teams to stand on the podium in 2022, and almost single handedly carried McLaren to 5th in the Championship, keeping them in the fight for 4th right to the end of the season.
Oscar Piastri comes into the team with all the weight and expectation of a serious and highly rated talent. He is in company with Charles Leclerc & George Russell as the only 3 drivers to win F3 and F2 Championships, back-to-back, as rookies. The fact that he had to spend a year on the sidelines as reigning F2 Champion, while “pay drivers” like Zhou get the step up to F1, is seen by many as a scathing indictment of the structure to help drivers get from F2 to F1, but he’s here now and boy are we excited to see him turn an F1 wheel in anger.
I did vote this as my number 1, purely on weight of expectation; but shared vote and cooler heads won out and rightly ranked this lineup 4th for this season.
3rd: Ferrari – Charles Leclerc & Carlos Sainz – 205 Points
This was so marginal. You’ll see why below but Ferrari lost out on 2nd place by just 1 point. Car reliability and idiotic Ferrari strategists aside, Charles Leclerc & Carlos Sainz proved to be arguably Ferrari’s best pairing since Raikkonen & Massa as they both outperformed their skeptics through 2022. Leclerc scored an incredible 9 pole positions, showing that he has the aggressive 1-lap pace to beat Max Verstappen on Saturdays; while Sainz proved a lot of doubters wrong by achieving his first pole AND victory with a truly phenomenal display of control and speed in Silverstone last season.
As a driver lineup with the capacity to both score wins and podiums repeatedly – should the car work – I think only the 1st place team are better placed to outperform Ferrari in 2023. Their detracting points are both driver’s lack of backbone when it comes to telling engineers and strategists to shove their stupid ideas, when the drivers know they know better. If we see some more of that aggression from both of them in 2023, we may finally see Ferrari back on top of the world.
2nd: Red Bull – Max Verstappen & Sergio Perez – 206 Points
See, I said it was close. And rightly so. Is Perez a better “second driver” than Carlos Sainz? Arguably no. The fact is Red Bull would have won the Constructor’s last year if they only ran 1 car – such was Max’s dominance.
It seems that’s actually been the deciding factor in this ranking: Mr Double World Champion himself. Much like Fernando Alonso further down, Max Verstappen accounts for the vast majority of why Red Bull get this ranking. He’s worth 2 drivers on his own. There’s an argument to be made that if they had someone else in the 2nd seat they would, on paper, be the “best driver lineup” but as it is, second sounds perfectly correct for the reigning World Champions.
Where they may be shown up this year is if Ferrari & Mercedes really kick on. Both of those teams have more balanced and equal talent in both cars, with “2nd drivers” more able to steal podiums and high-points off Red Bull than Perez is from them. Time will tell, but don’t get too trigger happy with backing them to retain the Constructor’s title just yet.
1st: Mercedes – George Russell & Lewis Hamilton – 259 Points
It really had to be them didn’t it? Bias aside, from a purely objective point of view this is comfortably the best lineup on the 2023 grid. Both in terms of natural talent and potential, and recent results and form.
First thing’s first, Lewis Hamilton is statistically the most successful F1 driver in history. That doesn’t go away because of a less-than-perfect season. And let’s not forget Lewis did spend a large chunk of the 2022 season testing new parts and setups to get Mercedes moving in the right direction, which regularly affected his results throughout the year. If his team really don’t make mistakes, we’ll see a re-energised Lewis in 2023.
On the other hand, there’s Mr Saturday George Russell who was one of the stars of the 2022 season. Testing new parts and screwing with setups notwithstanding, George still managed to finish in the Top 5 in all but 3 races in 2022! An absolutely spectacular show of consistency which not even Champion Verstappen can boast. It was all capped off in Brazil when Russell finally gave us a glimpse of the Champion-in-waiting. He stole the show from surprise pole-man Verstappen in the sprint race, and backed it up in emphatic fashion by holding off his 7-time Champion teammate to take the actual race win on Sunday too – the first of his career and no doubt first of many, MANY more.
If Mercedes get it right in 2023, I’ll be sticking my fiver on George, not Lewis, to win the Championship.
I said it. I’ll quote myself in November if I’m right.
Anyway, that’s our official ranking of the 2023 driver lineup. What’s yours? Tell us in the comments below.