The top 10 F1 drivers of 2013

10th Valtteri Bottas

Bottas had terrible tools with which to work in his rookie year, yet he quietly just got on and maximised what he had, waiting for the opportunity of something better to present itself. When that something came - a wet qualifying session at Montreal - he was stunning.

To those who have worked closely with him, his third fastest time in Canada came as no surprise. "He reminds me a lot of Mika Hakkinen," says one who used to work with the double champion. "He has that same intensity, the self-belief and the talent. He is going to be huge."

Once Williams despaired of ever making its Coanda exhaust work, the FW35 became at least something he could work with. At Austin he got the car through Q2 with the fourth fastest time, and only a bit of over-commitment towards the end of his Q3 lap prevented a similarly high grid slot. That was well beyond the car's natural level.

For all Pastor Maldonado's inconsistency, he is no slouch and has won a grand prix. Bottas in his rookie season, in a difficult car, comfortably shaded him. Stay tuned.

9th Jenson Button

Jenson drove some quietly classy races in the mediocre MP4-28. Nurburgring, Brazil, China, Monaco and Hungary were all absolute top-drawer performances that flattered the car.

But he also had that run of very untypical incidents in the latter part of the year and there were several times when his familiar refrain of "the balance has changed" indicated that he'd lost that very narrow sweet spot he needs if he's to do his best stuff.

This could be particularly damaging in a car that was always on the cusp of making it through to Q3 or not. There were also times when a rougher, more scruff-of-the-neck approach might have been needed to get the last couple of tenths from the car, such were its inadequacies.

It's extremely difficult for a driver that has enjoyed the sort of success Jenson has to automatically perform at his peak when given a lemon to drive. But there's no reason to believe that his great days cannot be repeated if given a worthy car.

8th Mark Webber

These cars and tyres were not configured for Mark Webber. He would have been an irresistible force in the active-ride days or in a full-on tyre war in a top car. Through fast corners, where his commitment and sensitivity are rewarded, he remains supreme.

Unfortunately this generation of car pays out the big numbers on slow, exhaust-blown corners and he simply cannot do that as well as Vettel. He was also, at 37-years-old, perhaps a couple of tenths and a bit of desire down on the young gun that used to transcend the Jaguar, sometimes by an outrageous amount.

But in Brazil he bowed out of F1 having kept Vettel in sight and set the fastest lap of the race. Malaysia this year should have been his; he'd done all the hard work in the tricky changeover phase and got ahead of his team-mate. He should've been protected at that point, as Seb would have been. Suzuka might have been his too but for getting the slightly less favourable call on strategy. He can leave with head held high.

7th Kimi Raikkonen

"That was maybe the easiest race I've ever won," said Kimi after victory in the Melbourne season-opener. Even though there were none to follow it up as Red Bull and the others each got their acts together, Raikkonen continued to be a major force.

Because the Lotus wasn't at its best in qualifying, frequently Kimi would have to glide towards the front using the car's superior tyre usage. He couldn't be blamed for this - it was a trait of the car - but inevitably it didn't place Raikkonen in the sort of spellbinding role he used to sometimes play in his McLaren days. Does he still have the last edge of raw pace? We need to wait until next year to find that out.

He retained a beautifully pure style, nudging away at the front tyres' limits, adapting by the lap to any changes. But into the second half of the season, with the tougher 2012 construction of tyres, he was usually trailing Romain Grosjean.

This isn't the first time this has happened: in the first half of 2012, before Romain's accidents began to mount, the Franco-Swiss had been establishing himself as the quicker driver - to the extent that the team even began to favour him with development parts. It was only as Grosjean hit his sticky patch that Raikkonen once more became the team's focus.

Was the second half of 2013 simply a continuation of the first half of 2012? In which case, Kimi's greatest days are probably behind him. But even his ordinary days are better than most drivers' best.

6th Romain Grosjean

Romain was arguably the star of the season's second half, searingly fast, totally fearless and yet largely free from the sort of errors that had blighted his F1 career up to this point.

On the 2012 tyre constructions, he and his Lotus were the nearest thing Sebastian Vettel had to a rival between August and November. He stretched Seb at the Nurburgring and Suzuka and kept him in sight at Austin, generally leaving the great Kimi Raikkonen trailing.

It hadn't looked like that in the first half of the year, when he was usually a couple of tenths adrift of Kimi and not looking like the startlingly quick driver he had been for much of 2012, before his accidents made him the centre of attention.

If anything, there still seemed to be a hangover of his subdued form when he was racing under threat of being dropped if he crashed again. Then came Monaco; he was fantastically fast there, but was also hitting everything in sight. After crashing twice on the exit of Ste Devote, it really did look as if this guy couldn't be both quick and error-free.

But the rebuilding started from there. By Silverstone (two races later), he was on Kimi's pace and after the change of tyre spec he was suddenly two or three tenths faster. At the Nurburgring, a fabulous opening stint allowed him to run at the front while making his option tyres last longer than anyone else's.

This brought him out neck and neck with Vettel and for the next phase of the race he made Seb fight very hard to stay ahead; this was the F1 driver Grosjean had always looked like he could become. This was the Grosjean we enjoyed for the rest of the year.

5th Nico Rosberg

Rosberg was too smart and too talented for Lewis Hamilton to be able to walk in and take over at Mercedes. Yes, there were days when Lewis was clearly quicker. But there were just as many when Nico held the upper hand. These tended to be at the more technically demanding venues where Rosberg's sharp-minded strengths came into play.

As Hamilton adapted to the car and its systems during the first half of the season Rosberg was usually quicker, as three consecutive poles showed. His victory at Monaco was a triumphant melding of flair and discipline. In a car always prone to overworking its rear tyres, he used his pole to clinical effect in winning at the slowest possible speed.

The combination of a car hard on the tyre and very delicate rubber meant keeping the Mercedes in the sweet spot was a challenging task, and occasionally Nico failed in this. Sometimes, if his weekend started off bad, it stayed bad. Whether this was a trait of the car or him is difficult to know.

The 2013 season was unusual in its absence of outright wet races and for Rosberg this was a pity, for in the rain at both Melbourne and Interlagos he book-ended his season with some awe-inspiring wet-weather driving, completely eclipsing Hamilton. Had those races been as wet as the practic sessions, it looked as though he would have had the legs of anyone, Red Bulls included.

4th Nico Hulkenberg

For the first half of the season, in a Sauber with a serious lack of rear-end grip, Hulkenberg was doing a terrific, if unnoticed job. He was getting a tune from a car with
a badly mismatched set of traits that meant there was no set-up that would allow it to both handle well and look after its tyres. Often he was only just missing getting into Q3, whole chunks faster than the car deserved.

But then came the C32's upgrade. Suddenly, armed with a car that was now a lower-order Q3 qualifier on merit, he squeezed more from it, qualifying third at Monza, fifth in Abu Dhabi, and fourth in Austin.

This was not the car's natural level and it invariably sunk back a couple of places as tyre duration imposed reality upon the situation. But in defending the places his over-achieving had got him in qualifying he was truly impressive; at Korea he withstood the onslaught of first Lewis Hamilton then Fernando Alonso without ever once over-committing, without ever being tempted to defend the wrong bit of track, knowing always where he needed to be quick to stay out of reach.

With the mentality of a winner, his cajoling sometimes didn't find an appreciative audience in the conservative Sauber team, and the relationship wasn't eased by the team's occasional struggle with cash flow. He's done enough now at Williams, Force India and Sauber to make his case to be in a top team.

3rd Lewis Hamilton

By the end of last year Lewis had despaired of ever stopping the Sebastian Vettel/Red Bull juggernaut and creating an era of his own. He'd have loved nothing more than to have climbed into a Red Bull alongside Seb - and his management did try on at least two occasions to get him in there before finally accepting that it wasn't going to happen. So he was probably going to stick it out at McLaren, despite the very tempting offer from Mercedes.

But then events over the weekend of Singapore 2012 sent him to the three-pointed star. He went there with no great expectations, more resignation over how things had panned out behind the scenes at McLaren.

Yet he got a pleasant surprise. The new W04 was quick - seriously so. It was a bit hard on its tyres, but was clearly a much more competitive machine than the one Michael Schumacher had driven in 2012. Hamilton began to enjoy his new home and in between getting used to very different systems and, in particular, the braking feel, he was soon setting poles and leading races.

At the Hungaroring - always a happy hunting ground for him - it took just one slip up in qualifying from Vettel and Lewis was on pole again. Around there, that was a great foundation for a flawless victory the following day.

But he wasn't consistently at his brilliant best. For one, this era of tyre preservation has dulled the effectiveness of his searing speed. For another, his fantastic feel for the brakes was being numbed by the pedal feedback of the Merc. On days when the circuit layout meant neither of those things were an issue, he was fantastic.

2nd Fernando Alonso

Alonso did what he can be relied upon to do: drag every last ounce of potential from a nearly-there car. Time without number on a weekend, when the Ferrari seemed not to be a factor, there he'd be.

There might be a safety car and there he'd be, fourth in the queue, his earlier deficit to the leader wiped and right back in the hunt - and you just knew he'd be making full use of the opportunity. The Nurburgring was one such example.

On those days when it was a good race day car he'd somehow make its poor qualifying pace irrelevant in the opening seconds. At Barcelona, that run around the outside of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen at Turn 3 was ballsy but beautifully executed, and became the foundation for his victory there.

If he could get the car into the first three or four rows, he was invariably going to figure. But on those days when the Ferrari had fallen seriously off the pace, there was the occasional and entirely understandable lack of interest. He's been suffering days like this for a long time now, and that frustration did get the better of him as he realised mid-season that yet another year was going to slip by without a title.

His reaction to that state of affairs damaged his relationship with Ferrari, perhaps fatally, and played its part in further damaging his prospects. If the team no longer runs with Alonso in the centre of it all, things could get very difficult on those days when Raikkonen is faster.

1st Sebastian Vettel

It's what he did with the best car that marked him out. The ongoing evolution of the Red Bull with its utilisation of exhaust-blowing and cylinder-cut allowed the ever-adaptive Vettel to find new areas of advantage. Outstanding among his traits is his ease with corner-entry instability. That has been apparent for several seasons; what was even more impressive this year was how repeatable he'd made this skill.

"You'll see him after Friday practice working out where the biggest area of advantage for him to work on is," says Christian Horner. "This will vary from track to track, year to year, and you will see him understanding what he needs to do, where the most lap time is, then by Saturday he's ready to just go out and do it. It's quite remarkable."

The routine of winning became just a dance for him in the second part of 2013; variations around a theme. He could do it by keeping just out of reach, eking out the tyres against performance (Austin); he could do it in a flat-out scrap, stretching the elastic coming up to the pitstops (against Romain Grosjean at the Nurburgring); by disappearing off into the distance (Singapore); by coming up from the back as though the other cars weren't even there (India), all depending on what the car and tyres gave him on a particular day.

There is so much spare capacity within his brain, so much natural gift behind the wheel, that his way of driving in any given moment, or the way of running his race on any given afternoon, is always under control. The sheer joy of it plays its part too - keeps the energy and motivation up.

The inability to lose when there is a winning opportunity, that savagery beneath the smiles, was on display at Malaysia. Yes, he went against team orders, but what shouldn't be forgotten is that Webber was trying to back him into Hamilton before the gloves came off - just as at Turkey in 2010.

He wears his gift so lightly out of the car that it's a surprise when he shows he's as ruthless as any other top champion when necessary. But he hardly ever needs to be.