The summer break means it’s time to look back over the first half of the 2023 season and see how the 21 drivers who have competed in the opening 12 rounds have fared.
These rankings are largely based on RaceFans’ race weekend driver ratings for each round of the season so far, which assess driver performance across Friday, Saturday and Sunday. However, there are other factors that will be considered when ranking each driver’s form across all of those rounds.
Over five parts this week, we’ll rank the drivers from the least impressive performer to the most impressive. Today’s first part covers the drivers that have been ranked the lowest out of their peers.
Not ranked: Daniel Ricciardo – AlphaTauri
Daniel Ricciardo
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 13 | 19 |
| GP finish | 13 | 16 |
| Points | 0 | |
Much like how you don’t expect to have your six-month review on your third week into the job, it’s not fair to rank Daniel Ricciardo just three weeks into his return.
Having competed in only the most recent two rounds in Hungary and Belgium since making his headline-grabbing return to the grid, Ricciardo hasn’t participated in enough race weekends for a fair ranking. However, that’s not to say his performances over those two events can’t be assessed.
Considering he jumped straight into an unfamiliar car at short notice after going 35 weekends without competing in any kind of motorsport, Ricciardo can and should be pleased with his performance so far. He reached Q2 at the first attempt at the Hungaroring, unlike his team mate Yuki Tsunoda, and despite damaging his car in the first corner melee, he finished 15 seconds ahead of Tsunoda in 13th place.
His Belgian Grand Prix weekend was not quite as impressive as he missed the cut in Q1 after losing his best lap time for track limits, but his top ten finish in the sprint race was something Nyck de Vries never managed once in his time in the car. Ricciardo’s second half of the season will be fascinating to watch.
20: Nyck de Vries – AlphaTauri
Nyck de Vries
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 12 | 20 |
| GP finish | 12 | 18 (x2) |
| Points | 0 | |
There are no certainties in Formula 1. But with that said, it seems a rather safe bet that de Vries will not be gaining any places in RaceFans’s 2023 driver rankings hereon.
The third rookie on the grid at the start of the year, de Vries had a pedigree unlike his two younger peers. As well as a Formula 2 title, De Vries had even won a world championship in Formula E two years ago as well as extensive experience in endurance racing. But perhaps it was the weight of expectation on him due to his CV that his F1 career would ultimately crumble as he became the first full-time F1 racer to lose his seat mid-season since Jolyon Palmer in 2017.
Were his ten rounds really that poor they warranted him being booted out of his seat? That depends on your perspective. But it’s unquestionable that de Vries did not enjoy a ‘good’ first half of the season, even if his deficit to team mate Yuki Tsunoda was not as big as fellow rookie Logan Sargeant’s was to his team mate.
De Vries endured probably the worst weekend of the season so far in Baku. He crashed in Q1, was slowest in the first segment of qualifying for the sprint race, clashed with his team mate in the sprint race and then crashed out of the grand prix with a silly error. Then at the next round in Miami, he out-qualified Tsunoda but ruined his race at turn one by bumping into Lando Norris. He clashed twice with Kevin Magnussen in Canada and Austria, looking desperate and sloppy in both encounters.
While things never got that bad over the remaining rounds he competed in, de Vries also never put together what could be described as a ‘good’ or impressive weekend. He was regularly the slower of the two AlphaTauri drivers and never had a positive moment that would make anyone in the paddock sit up and take notice. While he could have found better form in the second half of the season, he’ll never get that opportunity.
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19: Logan Sargeant – Williams
Logan Sargeant
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 14 (x2) | 20 (x4) |
| GP finish | 11 | 20 (x2) |
| Points | 0 | |
It may seem a little harsh for rookie Sargeant to be so close to the bottom of this list, but it perhaps says more about the overall quality of the 2023 field than it does about F1’s first full-time American driver in over 15 years.
Sargeant is the only driver on the grid with no F1 points to his name. While it’s not exactly fair to expect regular points finishes from anyone in a Williams, the FW45 is also a much stronger car than its recent predecessors. That is evident from the fact Sargeant’s team mate, Alexander Albon, has scored 11 points from three top ten finishes over the opening half of the season.
Sargeant’s F1 career began with a solid debut in Bahrain. He missed out on Q2 at the first attempt, matching the time of Lando Norris but being eliminated in 16th place. In the race, he picked up three places with an aggressive opening lap and held pace with Albon to finish a very respectable 12th. But that was the probably as good as it got for the 22-year-old, who otherwise has underperformed over race weekends more often than not.
In Jeddah, he should have reached Q2 for the first time, but a silly mistake running off-track on the run to the line on his fastest lap put paid to that. The next round in Melbourne, he missed all of second practice after suffering electrical problems. But that didn’t excuse being so far behind Albon on Saturday and then clumsily driving into de Vries at the final restart, which he should have been penalised for.
Then there were many more mistakes, such as crashing out of sprint qualifying in Baku which meant he could not start the race. Monaco was a baptism of fire for his first time driving an F1 car in the wet, but multiple errors cost him almost a minute in the race, and he was caught speeding in the pit lane. Crashing out of qualifying in Barcelona and spinning late during the race at Hungaroring were further errors that showed he has work to do to tidy up his act.
But the biggest issue affecting Sargeant is how he seems unable to match the pace of his team mate. For a driver who claimed qualifying would be his “bread and butter”, he has failed to reach Q3 once all year, whereas Albon has done so four times. Thankfully, he has the second half of the season to turn things around and make his case to stay on the grid in 2024.
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18: Lance Stroll – Aston Martin
Lance Stroll
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 5 (x2) | 18 |
| GP finish | 4 | 14 |
| Points | 47 | |
One of the most interesting questions heading into the 2023 season was, how well will Lance Stroll fair against a 42-year-old Fernando Alonso alongside him? Based on the sample of 12 rounds of the season so far, the answer appears to be ‘not very well’.
Head-to-head against his team mate, Stroll is thrashed probably harder than any other driver except perhaps Sargeant. But Sargeant is a rookie in one of the slower cars in the field, while Stroll is arguably approaching veteran status now in his seventh season in the world championship. Most striking of all is the fact that while his team mate has taken podiums in half of the races this season, Stroll has only finished as high as fourth once. Of his team’s 196 points, Stroll has contributed 47 so far – just under a quarter.
As well as being consistently slower than his much older team mate, Stroll has also been inexcusably error-prone at times. His race in Monaco was sloppy, hitting Magnussen and sliding off three times in three corners on intermediate tyres to be the only driver to crash out of the race in the wet. In Silverstone, he earned a penalty when he clattered into Pierre Gasly in the later laps when battling for a point while his team mate was seventh.
He’s also developed a habit of passing rivals outside of track limits; first Gasly at Silverstone at Stowe, then Valtteri Bottas during the opening lap of Hungary. He somehow managed to avoid the attention of the stewards both times.
In summary, he has largely underachieved given the quality of his car in the early rounds. The fact he sits behind Norris in the championship despite McLaren starting the year as one of the slowest teams when Aston Martin were the second quickest says it all.
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17: Sergio Perez – Red Bull
Sergio Perez
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 1 (x2) | 20 (x2) |
| GP finish | 1 (x2) | 16 |
| Points | 189 | |
As ludicrous as it may seem at first glance that the driver sitting second in the championship with two race wins under his belt can be ranked as low as 17th at the mid-season stage, it’s a damning reflection on just how much Sergio Perez has underachieved with one of the most dominant cars in F1 history at his disposal.
With a car so clearly ahead of every one of its rivals like the RB19 has been, Perez should have arrived to every race so far targeting either victory or second place. Yet while his team mate Max Verstappen has achieved exactly that, Perez has only finished in the top two five times in 12 grands prix.
The start to Perez’s season was easily the strongest of his three as a Red Bull driver. He followed Verstappen home in Bahrain and then won in Jeddah – although only after Verstappen was hit by a driveshaft failure in qualifying and losing the lead from pole position to Alonso at the start. At least his victory in Baku required him to hold off his team mate for the majority of the race, although he did gain the lead thanks a fortunate Safety Car appearance just before his pit stop.
But then there were far, far more downs than ups. Starting in Melbourne, he was eliminated in Q1 after a “technical issue” but recovered decently enough to finish fifth. Then in Miami, despite the benefit of pole position with Verstappen starting ninth and no Safety Cars during the race, Perez was hunted down and overtaken by his team mate to finish an underwhelming second place.
After being soundly beaten in Miami, Perez’s form collapsed. In Monaco, he effectively ended his weekend on Saturday by crashing at Sainte Devote in Q1 and his attempt at a comeback was messy to say the least. He failed to reach Q2 in Barcelona because of an error at turn five, then he missed the final phase of qualifying in Canada in mixed conditions. He failed to reach Q3 for a fourth consecutive event in Austria after having three lap times deleted for track limits abuse, then his streak extended to five rounds at Silverstone after a late session restart on a drying track. Across those five rounds, Perez not only scored 85 fewer points than his team mate, he was even outscored by Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.
If anything, Perez has been flattered by his car being so dominant. Had Red Bull not won every race and been without genuine competition for the championship, then Perez’s subpar performance would only stand out that much more. In his third year with the team, he has no excuses and must ensure he picks up his performance in the second half of the season.
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RaceFans’ mid-season driver rankings will continue tomorrow.
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