F1 Driver Ratings: USA 2018

An amazing US Grand Prix saw Kimi Raikkonen claim his first win since the Australian GP in 2013 – that was 5 years, 7 months and 4 days ago. A popular win and well deserved.

Max Verstappen drove a mighty race going from 18th to 2nd with no safety cars to help him. He continues to impress and his pace was stunning. This is why fans are so excited about the 21-year-old.

A third place for Lewis Hamilton was not enough for him to win the championship and he will have to wait until the Mexican Grand Prix this weekend to become a 5-time world champion. He didn’t have enough pace to overtake Verstappen and Raikkonen towards the end of the race so had to settle for the third step of the podium whilst Sebastian Vettel could only manage 4th after another mistake.

As per usual, the order you see is the finishing order of the race.

2018 United States Grand Prix – Circuit of the Americas

Kimi Raikkonen: 9.5/10

Max Verstappen: 10/10

Lewis Hamilton: 8.5/10

Sebastian Vettel: 4/10

Valtteri Bottas: 5.5/10

Nico Hulkenberg: 9/10

Carlos Sainz: 8.5/10

Esteban Ocon: 8/10

Kevin Magnussen: 7/10

Sergio Perez: 7/10

Brendon Hartley: 7/10

Marcus Ericsson: 7.5/10

Stoffel Vandoorne: 6/10

Pierre Gasly: 5/10

Sergey Sirotkin: 7/10

Lance Stroll: 5/10

Charles Leclerc: 7/10

Daniel Ricciardo: 8/10

Romain Grosjean: 6/10

Fernando Alonso: 6.5/10

One driver gets the perfect score this week and that’s Max Verstappen. He started 18th after the car broke after he ran over one of the yellow “sausage” kerbs which broke the car’s rear suspension. I don’t think this was his fault as other cars were able to go over those yellow kerbs with no problem and in my opinion it was more of a car problem than a driver error.

Then, he drove a magnificent race, similar to his race in Russia. He managed to avoid all of the first lap carnage and quickly found himself in the top 5. Amazingly he drove over half the race on the super soft tyres when others did the same but on the “harder” soft tyre. He also matched Raikkonen and was probably a tad quicker despite the Red Bull not being the best car. Finally, we got a snippet of Hamilton vs. Verstappen with Verstappen coming out on top as he placed his car in the right position to keep Hamilton behind and showed that he can handle the pressure when in between two champions. Arguably, the drive of the year.

Sebastian Vettel finds himself with the lowest score (4) for the second race running. It started off terribly on Friday as he received a three grid place penalty for not slowing down sufficiently when a red flag came out in FP1. Nobody else on track failed to not slow down enough so surely Vettel with all of his experience should have known that he needed to slow right down. Plus, he’s aware that other drivers this year (Esteban Ocon in Japan and Daniel Ricciardo in Australia) were victims of the same crime.

Vettel had a good start and was already ahead of Ricciardo at the end of the back straight but he went deep and allowed Ricciardo to do the “cutback” as they went to turn 13. That’s where it initially went wrong because if he didn’t do that, the contact at turn 13 wouldn’t have happened. Ricciardo left more than enough room but Vettel understeered into him as he carried too much speed into the corner (just like Japan), they touched wheels and around went Vettel again – just like Japan and Monza. He lit up the tyres in frustration but cost himself another chance of a win.

I criticised Verstappen earlier in the season and Vettel has now made a similar amount of errors to deserve the same treatment. It does sound harsh but if I was a Vettel fan I would be massively frustrated. I’m annoyed that he hasn’t been able to take the championship fight to Hamilton and his reputation is slowly but surely getting diminished as he continues to make error after error.