Is a first-time grand prix victory enough for Kimi Antonelli to top Edd Straw's Formula 1 driver rankings from the Chinese Grand Prix?
Below you'll find Edd's verdict on all 22 drivers from best to worst.
How do the rankings work? The 22 drivers will be ranked in order of performance from best to worst on each grand prix weekend. This will be based on the full range of criteria, ranging from pace and racecraft to consistency and whether they made key mistakes. How close each driver got to delivering on the maximum performance potential of the car will be an essential consideration.
It’s important to note both that this reflects performance across the entire weekend, cognisant of the fact that qualifying is effectively ‘lap 0’ of the race and key to laying the foundations to the race, and that it is not a ranking of the all-round qualities of each driver. It’s simply about how they performed on a given weekend. Therefore, the ranking will fluctuate significantly from weekend to weekend.
And with each of the 11 cars fundamentally having different performance potential and ‘luck’ (ie factors outside of a driver’s control) contributing to the way the weekend plays out, this ranking will also differ significantly from the overall results.
Sprint: 3rd Started: 3rd Finished: 3rd
Lewis Hamilton continues to be more in tune with these cars than he was with those of the previous generation and led the way for Ferrari in both qualifying sessions and, on his way to a first podium for the team, in the grand prix.
It was only in the sprint race that Charles Leclerc got the upper hand in battle. Between them, he and Leclerc produced the most dramatic wheel-to-wheel action of the weekend.
He also made the most of the strength of the Ferrari off the line to jump into the lead of both races, causing headaches for Russell and showing that his racecraft is still as sharp as ever by asserting himself in the intra-Ferrari battle well before the end of the race.
Verdict: The stronger Ferrari driver overall.
Sprint: 1st Started: 2nd Finished: 2nd
George Russell did exactly what you would expect him to do up until Q3 on Saturday, winning the sprint from pole position even though it took him five laps to assert himself over the fast-starting Hamilton.
Grinding to a halt on his Q3 outlap, then crawling back to the pits knocked him off course, restricting him to a single qualifying lap with the tyre temperatures and battery level not in the right place by way of “damage limitation”.
Falling behind midfielders Colapinto and Ocon when he stopped under the safety car was a hindrance, as was the fact Mercedes struggled to fire the hard rubber, but he didn’t make the best of the restart and ended up behind both Ferraris. By the time he’d cleared them, he was 7.7s behind Antonelli and never looked like closing to within attacking range.
Verdict: Restart losses are a minor blemish on his weekend.
Sprint: 2nd Started: 4th Finished: 4th
It’s clear that Leclerc hasn’t got on top of some of the quirks of these cars quite as well as Hamilton, particularly in qualifying where his on-the-edge style has proved counter-productive at times.
Despite that, he was by no means slow and was close to Hamilton’s level, even though he was marginally the weaker Ferrari driver.
The sprint race was the exception to that trend, prevailing in a dramatic battle with his team-mate.
Verdict: Second-best Ferrari driver.
Sprint: 11th Started: 7th Finished: 6th
Far happier with the car from the start of the weekend, thanks to a combination of Shanghai not exposing the Alpine’s high-speed understeer problem and the step in understanding since Melbourne.
Pierre Gasly put the Alpine at the head of the midfield in both qualifying sessions, although the sprint got away from him and he was shuffled back thanks to tyre struggles and gambling on staying out under the safety car.
He held fifth early on in the grand prix, but a moment exiting the last corner at the restart appeared to contribute to a delay in maximum deployment and allowed Bearman to jump ahead.
This also meant Gasly ended up locked in battle with Verstappen, with the Red Bull driver securing sixth before retiring and handing Gasly back sixth.
Verdict: Race imperfections cost him slightly.
Sprint: 9th Started: 8th Finished: DNF
This marks the start of the third group of drivers in the ranking, those who overall performed well but with question marks hanging over them or limitations that made it harder for them to excel.
Verstappen was never happy with a car he described as having no grip, suffering variously from understeer and oversteer, so found himself battling in the midfield throughout.
While the primary problem was the car, Verstappen wasn’t driving at his absolute best, as proved by the trip through the gravel in SQ2.
However, despite bad starts both in the sprint and the grand prix he recovered ground, albeit only to ninth on Saturday.
On Sunday, starting on softs made life difficult but he climbed to sixth place in the laps after the restart, where he looked destined to finish, before an ERS cooling problem forced him to retire. However, he had the edge over Hadjar on pace.
Verdict: Limited by the car, but with untidy moments.
Sprint: DNF Started: 19th Finished: 13th
Valtteri Bottas had the cleaner run of the Cadillac drivers in China in terms of the car, although even he had difficulties as a deployment problem outside of his control ruined his chances of challenging the Aston Martins in sprint qualifying.
However, there were no such problems on Saturday, so he picked off Stroll, and might even have been able to threaten Alonso with perfect execution.
The grand prix went smoothly after surviving the clash with Sergio Perez on lap one. In a more competitive car, this level of performance would have been more eye-catching.
Verdict: Got the most out of the Cadillac.
Sprint: 6th Started: 5th Finished: DNS
While there was little to choose between the McLaren team-mates, Oscar Piastri was a couple of places behind Norris in both sprint qualifying and the sprint race, the separation being largely the consequence of being eight-hundredths behind in Saturday’s session.
Piastri’s sprint race was a little unfortunate, as he was on course to beat Antonelli once the Mercedes driver’s penalty was added before the safety car. He also had to give back the position he gained when Antonelli ran very wide exiting the final corner for the restart before the line.
Like Norris, Piastri was thereabouts in terms of his performance level, given what the McLaren was capable of.
Failing to start the race through no fault of their own reduced the opportunity to grasp a higher ranking.
Verdict: By a tiny margin, the second-best McLaren driver.
Sprint: 16th Started: 22nd (pits) Finished: DNS
We now move into a two-driver tier of those who had very little opportunity to impress, given problems. The car was never right, with repeated changes of suspension components and settings and twice breaking parc before the races, proving Williams never got to the root cause of the trouble.
That makes any fair comparison with Sainz impossible, given the car probably didn’t have the same performance potential and the imperfections in Albon’s driving will be at least partly attributable to that.
Albon didn’t even get to start the race owing to a hydraulic problem independent of his other troubles. While these problems made it impossible for him to attain a decent ranking, largely through no fault of his own, he finds himself above only the group of drivers who made significant errors or actively underwhelmed.
Verdict: A futile weekend.
Sprint: DNF Started: 15th Finished: 12th
Arvid Lindblad marks the start of the group of drivers who were all respectable but made significant errors.
Of all of them, Lindblad is the most unfortunate given he had a grand total of one flying lap among the six he completed in FP1 before grinding to a halt on his first experience of the Shanghai International Circuit.
Within that context, being three-and-a-half tenths off Lawson in sprint qualifying was more than respectable.
The sprint went badly with a spin before a mid-race retirement, but in qualifying proper he was right with Lawson - although that gap might have been a little larger had they been able to complete their final Q2 laps without yellow flags in the way.
Lindblad started on hards and held points early on, but the timing of the safety car worked against him and meant a big deficit to his team-mate in the final results.
Verdict: Plenty of good here, but sprint spin not ideal.
Sprint: 19th Started: 21st Finished: 15th
The timesheets don’t show it, but his underlying pace was fundamentally similar to Bottas’s on the driving side. It’s just that he endured a litany of problems.
On Friday, a fuel pump problem struck in FP1 and kept him out of sprint qualifying and meant an inevitable run to last battling front-left graining in Saturday’s race.
Qualifying was stymied by a deployment problem on his only run outside of Perez’s control, meaning the 1.5s deficit is irrelevant when evaluating his performance.
What hurts Perez’s ranking is the injudicious lunge on Bottas at Turn 3 that put both Cadillacs at risk. As he said “that was all on me, I saw the gap, I went for it, but Valtteri didn’t have anywhere to go”.
His final race result was also compromised by periods where deployment problems cost him significant time, costing him more than 20 seconds.
Verdict: Quick, but troubled, and Bottas clash was needless.
Sprint: 10th Started: 13th Finished: 14th
Corner-entry instability and brake lock-ups emerging from the characteristics created by the new regulations, limited his qualifying pace.
Unlike in Melbourne, where he appeared to have the edge on Bearman until Q2, he was a little slower and the one-and-a-half-tenth gap in sprint qualifying seemed about representative given Q2 was compromised by yellow flags.
He finished a solid 10th in the sprint, behind Max Verstappen, but was disadvantaged in the grand prix by the safety car after starting on hards. He was on course to climb back into the points after he stopped, but ruined his race with what he apologetically admitted was a rash move on Colapinto.
Verdict: Race blunder tanks his ranking.