F1 Driver Ratings: Australia 2019

Valtteri Bottas had the race of his life to win the season opener in Melbourne by over 20 seconds from teammate Lewis Hamilton. After going winless through the whole of 2018, it was exactly what the 29-year-old needed.

Hamilton managed to hold off a strong Max Verstappen who managed to overtake Sebastian Vettel to take his first podium around the Albert Park circuit.

Just like last year, the F1 Driver Ratings Series is entirely based on my own opinion of the race weekend. I take into account qualifying and the Grand Prix (plus free practice if a driver does something which hampers their weekend). Of course, more emphasis is put on Sunday but I think its important to look at Saturday and Friday as that can have a major effect on a driver’s result and performance during the race. Please do disagree with my scores!

The order you see below is the finishing order of the race.

2019 Australian Grand Prix – Albert Park

Valtteri Bottas: 9/10

Lewis Hamilton: 8/10

Max Verstappen: 8.5/10

Sebastian Vettel: 8/10

Charles Leclerc: 7/10

Kevin Magnussen: 9/10

Nico Hulkenberg: 8/10

Kimi Raikkonen: 7.5/10

Lance Stroll: 7/10

Daniil Kvyat: 7/10

Pierre Gasly: 4.5/10

Lando Norris: 7/10

Sergio Perez: 7/10

Alexander Albon: 6.5/10

Antonio Giovinazzi: 5.5/10

George Russell: 7.5/10

Robert Kubica: 5.5/10

RETIRED

Romain Grosjean: 7/10

Daniel Ricciardo: 6/10

Carlos Sainz: 5/10

No surprise to see the race winner, Valtteri Bottas, take the highest rating from Australia as he got an amazing start and then pumped in fastest lap after fastest lap to build a very good lead and showed great aggression and determination to take the extra point for fastest lap of the race when he so easily could have just held back and played things safe. He found a new level within himself on Sunday.

Nico Hulkenberg gets the joint highest rating as he was very strong in the race and was able to match Kevin Magnussen just ahead of him, despite the Haas being a slightly better car in my opinion. It is going to be very hard to read the midfield this year so do bare in mind that it is very hard to tell which car is the strongest in the midfield and how that will affect the driver ratings.

Pierre Galsy takes the lowest ratings from Melbourne. Not getting out of Q1 was not entirely his fault but had he set a similar banker lap to his teammate, Max Verstappen, he would have got through. Also, whilst it is mostly the engineers who decide if you should go out for another run or not, the driver must take a little bit of the blame too.

Then in the race, I expected Gasly to move forward much more than he did. Albert Park is a tough place to overtake at but not scoring points in a Red Bull is a bit of a disaster really. Not being able to get past the sister Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat whilst on brand new soft tyres is not great either (even if he did have a small issue with the “overtake” button). Gasly will need time to settle in but the F1 world judges you very quickly so he must get comfortable sooner or later.