Who are the top drivers of the 2022 F1 season – The team bosses take part in voting and have their say
As 2022 comes to an end, F1 bosses have voted for their top driver of last season. All ten team bosses were asked to submit their list of the top 10 drivers of the year and their individual rankings were kept a secret. The team bosses were asked to award scores based on the current F1 points system – 25 for the top driver down to one for the 10th. The scores were then combined to create the overall ranking.
Based on the scores awarded by the bosses, Max Verstappen topped the overall leaderboard with 207 points. Charles Leclerc with 144 and George Russell with 127 completed the top three. Seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton found himself in the fourth spot with 100 points, just ahead of Sergio Perez (91) and Lando Norris (81). Carlos Sainz with 68 points occupied seventh place followed by Fernando Alonso (67) and Valtteri Bottas (29). Sebastian Vettel rounded off the top ten with 24 points.
Verstappen topping the rankings doesn’t come across as a surprise. The F1 2022 season was completely dominated by the Red Bull driver, winning his second consecutive F1 World championship. He notched a record 15 grand prix victories in 2022 and also the most Driver of the Day awards. The Dutchman won the driver of the day award five times in 2022, courtesy of early-season successes in Imola and Miami and later in Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The votes by team bosses do not exactly reflect the drivers’ championship leaderboard though. Verstappen and Leclerc occupy the top two positions in both places but third-placed Sergio Perez finds himself down in fifth place in the rankings created based on the votes by the bosses. Similarly, Esteban Ocon finished eighth in the drivers’ championship but doesn’t find a place in the top 10 of the bosses’ rankings. The rest of the field is quite similar barring minor exchange of places.
Fans react to the votes by the F1 team bosses
Let us take a look at some of the reactions from fans on Twitter.
“Alonso behind Sainz, Perez, Russell & Hamilton. No wonder half the team principals lost their job”, trolled a fan.
Verstappen was the best that’s a fact. I’d put Lando second. Then leclerc. Then the merc boys (those two eitehr way round) alonso sainz, Ocon, Perez and sebby, wrote another fan.
“Agree with most of the ranking but every year you release this list I wish you would also show how each TP has voted”, read a tweet.
“Yikes, Lando back to being underrated pretty quickly! Really can’t see a justification for putting him any lower than 3rd for 2022. Fast car bias”, tweeted another fan.
Another fan wrote: “Well I am sorry, but this is the only one that counts, all the other lists are just to justify the low performance of English drivers.”
How are the teams shaping up ahead of the 2023 F1 season?
The new season of Formula One is less than three months away and teams already seem to have finalised their drivers’ line up for 2023. The 2023 F1 grid will see a number of new faces while we will certainly miss four-time World Champion, Sebastian Vettel, who decided to retire at the end of 2022 season. Let us take a look at the teams and drivers who are set to be a part of the 2023 F1 World Championship.
There will be three debutants in the F1 grid next season – Nyck de Vries (Alpha Tauri), Oscar Piastri (McLaren) and Logan Sargeant (Williams). We will also see the full-time return of Nico Hulkenberg for the first time since 2019, who has replaced Mick Schumacher at Haas. Meanwhile, Aston Martin has roped in two-time World Champion, Fernando Alonso to fill the spot vacated by the retiring Sebastian Vettel.
McLaren has brought in Oscar Piastri after Alonso’s departure from the team. Yuki Tsunoda has moved on to Alpha Tauri while Alpine have signed Esteban Ocon to partner Gasly in the Japanese driver’s place. Nicholas Latifi, Mick Schumacher and Daniel Ricciardo are unfortunately missing out and won’t be a full-time part of the F1 grid next season.
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