Autosport's final F1 2018 driver ratings

Autosport rates every driver's performance over each grand prix weekend with a score out of 10. It's not an easy task, and often generates plenty of discussion and controversy.

The ratings are based on an analysis of performance, both against expectations and relative to team-mates, taking into account all aspects of each driver's weekend based on the available data.

This includes what we hear from the driver and team members and, where possible, trackside observations.

For those rare truly outstanding performances, drivers were given a maximum score - with only 28 awarded during the year.

Inevitably, the ratings are only a snapshot and cannot take into account information and insight that comes to light after they are compiled on Sunday night and early Monday morning after each race.

But over the season they do offer a useful indicator of a driver's overall performance level. At the end of each year, we average out the scores to create this ranking.

Autosport's Top 10 Formula 1 drivers is not based on this ranking and takes into account many other factors that can only be assessed outside of an average of each individual weekend's performance.

But it's still another informative way to look back at each driver's season.

20 Brendon Hartley - 6.35

It feels unfair to put Hartley at the bottom of the pile. He wasn't slow, he didn't perform badly, but what he did too often struggle to do was string together complete weekends.

There were certainly times when that was for reasons outside of his control. But there always seemed to be something conspiring against him.

The Silverstone suspension failure that ruined his weekend (pictured) is a classic example of a weekend where he was stymied by outside factors, and actually earned him the only N/A points score of the season because it simply wasn't fair to even try to evaluate him.

Perhaps the most common complaint with Hartley was that there was too often an error on a key qualifying lap that left him on the wrong side of a cutoff and exaggerated the gap to Gasly. His fundamental pace was better than most thought it was, and on average the dry qualifying deficit to Gasly was only around 0.1s.

Austin, where he raced well, was Hartley's highest rating (8/10), but the fact he didn't get better ratings usually reflected the fact he didn't string things together enough.

Overall, he did bring a lot to the team and didn't disgrace himself in what will surely be his only full F1 season. After all, his average rating was only 2.41 lower than the #1 in this list.

19 Stoffel Vandoorne - 6.43

No driver had a tougher task than Vandoorne during 2018, and while he complained at the end of the season that his best performances went unnoticed. The three strong races he cited - Bahrain (8), Mexico (9) and Brazil (8) - netted him high ratings.

In fact, along with Hungary (8), they were his best of the season. It's also true that there were times when the car spec wasn't quite the same as Fernando Alonso's.

Where Vandoorne really struggled was in hanging on to an unstable car to match the qualifying performances of his team-mate. Once that happened he was condemned to start down the order.

There were exceptions, and in Canada he was only a few thousandths off Alonso, but a 21-0 qualifying defeat indicates he never really got on top of the car on an all-out lap.

This was a season in which Vandoorne's situation made it impossible for him to shine, but when it comes to his ratings, the bottom line was that he had a team-mate who proved week after week that he wasn't able to get the most out of the car.

18 Sergey Sirotkin - 6.58

Like team-mate Lance Stroll, it was difficult to evaluate Sirotkin's performance level. But it was clear that he was generally very effective in qualifying, even if there were a few occasions when his aggressive approach led to errors.

Belgium, Italy and Monaco (all eight) were his highest ratings, although in retrospect there were a few other weekends where he probably deserved a slightly higher mark, including Hungary where he was awarded a six.

But in the Williams, the difference between a superb performance and an average performance was extremely difficult to gauge from the outside. What was clear was that, like Stroll, there weren't enough high points and too often the two Williams drivers cancelled themselves out overall.

That suggests a season where both did a decent enough job, but struggled to rise above the other. But Sirtokin still acquitted himself well, and it would be fascinating to see how he performs if he ever gets a second F1 shot.

17 Lance Stroll - 6.66

Rating the performance of the Williams drivers in 2018 was extremely difficult for two reasons. Firstly, it paired Stroll, who was an erratic performer in '17 and therefore not the ideal benchmark, with a rookie.

Secondly, the Williams was a bad car and even when one or both drivers overachieved in qualifying, they usually ended up going backwards in the race. Very often, both drivers finished pretty close to each other.

There were some obvious high points for Stroll, notably his Azerbaijan and Italy points, and where he really had the advantage over Sirotkin was that he more effectively nailed both of those chances.

But overall, it was a very difficult situation to make a big impression. What perhaps Stroll lacked compared to Sirotkin was such a strong body of work in qualifying, not to mention the fact that his many outstanding first lap performances inevitably prefaced a slide back down the order.

16 Marcus Ericsson - 6.67

Ericsson had two big problems during 2018. Firstly, he was paired with a stellar rookie in Charles Leclerc. Secondly, for much of the season he could not qualify well.

While he was able to compensate for that on occasion with some very accomplished race drives on alternate strategies - his run to ninth in Bahrain is the classic example - by and large it made life very difficult for him.

Later in the season, Ericsson did start to crop up in Q3 with Leclerc, and showed that he has good underlying pace, but overall his was a perfectly decent season overshadowed by a team-mate who drove superbly.

His season did start well, with an eight in Australia and then a nine in Bahrain, but only on two more occasions did he hit those heights.

Harsh? Possibly, but also reflecting the fact that too often he couldn't string together complete weekends despite his underlying pace being better than many people think.

15 Romain Grosjean - 7.1

For the first 10 races of the season, Grosjean averaged 6.3 out of 10. For the final 11, he was up at 7.6.

And it should be noted that first part of the season, strong performances in Australia (9), Canada (9) and Austria (10) dragged that average up, with back-to-back threes after big errors in Azerbaijan and Spain reflecting what he'd thrown away.

Once the Haas was updated in Canada, making the car, in Grosjean's opinion, less oversteery, things started to improve. By his own admission, the turning point was Hockenheim where Grosjean sorted out his head, remembered why he enjoyed driving and started to perform consistently well.

While he was exceptional in qualifying - overall, he reached Q3 16 times - there were also some great race performances in adversity. At Suzuka (9), he somehow finished the race in the points despite a very loose left-rear corner, while at Interlagos (8) he dragged remarkable lap times out a car with significant damage.

Those are two examples of races meriting a higher rating than he earned given the information about them that subsequently emerged.

14 Kevin Magnussen - 7.33

Magnussen averaged eight over the first 10 races of the season, with a couple of perfect 10s for his performances in Australia and Spain. But as Haas team-mate Romain Grosjean started to drag more pace out of the car, Magnussen's performances were recast as good but often not brilliant.

That's not to say he was bad in the second half of the season, during which he rattled along at a slightly disappointing average of 6.7, just that he couldn't quite find the same level of qualifying pace as Grosjean in a car that had moved away from the slight understeer balance he favours.

The conclusion to be drawn is that when things are going well for Grosjean, Magnussen can't deliver that same level.

13 Kimi Raikkonen - 7.38

Seventeen out of Raikkonen's 21 races were either sevens or eights. It was that kind of year for Raikkonen, pocketing plenty of good results but only rarely getting to the ultimate potential of the car across both qualifying and the race.

Austin was the exception, where his perfect race drive earned him a 10. He's a good example of a driver whose overall value is actually slightly underplayed by an average of ratings.

This is why he was ranked 10th in our overall top 10 drivers list, as although there were only two races worthy of more than eight (Monza, a nine, was the other) it added up to a hatful of points and third in the championship.

Perhaps it's not a surprise to see this kind of thing from a veteran like Raikkonen, who put his experience to good use and was rarely anything worse than good, even if excellence usually eluded him.

12 Sergio Perez - 7.48

It says a lot about the overall quality of the F1 field that a driver like Perez finds himself only 12th in the rankings.

Once again, he was a very reliable midfield performer, and in Azerbaijan nailed a superb performance to nab his traditional unexpected podium. But his 10 for that weekend was only backed up by four ratings of nine.

That there was a sea of eights - still a high mark reflecting a classy performance - is evidence of a driver who is always in the mix and does a good job but struggles to put together the kinds of superb weekends some of his rivals do more regularly.

The fact Ocon outqualified him the vast majority of the time, even if the average gap between the two was small, underlines this.

Singapore was his nadir, where he hit team-mate Ocon and then became embroiled in a needlessly angry scrap with Sergey Sirotkin, picking up a score of four that further dragged down his average.

11 Valtteri Bottas - 7.52
(Two maximum scores, three nines)

Bottas is another driver looking at a big gap to his team-mate - 10 places behind and on average 1.24 behind Lewis Hamilton.

But his ratings also reflect a season of two halves, as in the first 11 races his average score was eight, but this drops to seven in the remaining 10 GPs despite bagging a perfect 10 for his Russian Grand Prix should-have-won performance.

But that Sochi showing sticks out like a sore thumb during a second half of the season of ratings of 6-7.

Perhaps that's harsh given the level Hamilton was performing at, but it was clear Bottas was generally unable to access the same level of performance.

And often he also struggled to match his team-mate's tyre management. Eleventh seems harsh for a driver who could have won at least two, and, being generous, as many as five, races.

But the bottom line is Bottas too often didn't put the Mercedes in as strong a position as his team-mate proved was possible.

10 Daniel Ricciardo - 7.52
(Two maximum scores, four nines)

No driver's season was more heavily compromised by unreliability and grid penalties, which often made Ricciardo one of the toughest drivers to evaluate on any given weekend.

That said, there was a stretch of races mid-season when he strung together ratings of six and seven and there were hints that he wasn't able to deliver the level of performance we expect from him.

But ranged against that were very strong starts and finishes to the season. The average score across the first six and last six races of the season combined was 8.25, enough to put him second overall in this list.

His position eight places behind Max Verstappen might appear damning, and its partly given because he couldn't match his Red Bull team-mate's pace, but he's still within 0.5.

Given how closely matched so many drivers are matched on ratings, it shows Ricciardo was still performing at a high level. In particular, his pair of 10s for victories in China and Monaco is a reminder of his class.

9 Nico Hulkenberg - 7.52
(three maximum scores)

Hulkenberg ended tied on average rating points with two other drivers, but is ranked ahead of them on countback thanks to his three maximum scores (China, Britain, United States).

The fact Hulkenberg had more maximum scores by anyone other than Hamilton and Verstappen says a lot, as does the fact he had half-a-dozen ratings of six or lower.

His consistency wasn't perfect, and there were costly mistakes in Azerbaijan and Belgium. But overall, when Hulkenberg had a good weekend he was outstanding, achieving that level with greater regularity than team-mate Carlos Sainz and the others immediately around him in this list.

That, combined with winning the unofficial 'Class B' championship, meant that he was ranked sixth in our overall top 10 despite slipping to ninth on average ratings.

But his high points counterbalanced the negatives of the difficult weekends.

8 Carlos Sainz Jr - 7.62

Sainz actually shades Renault team-mate Hulkenberg in the rankings, but lost out in our overall top 10 partly because of struggling more often in qualifying and partly because he didn't deliver as many high points as Hulkenberg.

But what the ratings do show is that, while Sainz managed just one maximum score - in France, where he slipped from sixth to eighth late on after an MGU-K failure, he did consistently deliver performances at the high end of the ratings with a combined total of 11 scores of eight or nine.

This reflects a difficult season for Sainz, who took a long time to get on top of the car and sometimes struggled with rear instability in qualifying.

This made it difficult for him to deliver the very strongest weekend performances, but despite that his underlying level of performance remained good.

It also allowed him to turn in superb race performances after qualifying difficulties, as he did in Japan and Abu Dhabi.

7 Esteban Ocon - 7.62

Ocon is one of those drivers whose performances were easy to overlook during 2018, mainly because people noticed the bad moments - hitting Verstappen at Interlagos and crashing after colliding with Raikkonen at Azerbaijan - more than the lower-profile strong body of work.

Monaco was his high point, where he earned a maximum score for winning 'Class B' despite the Force India not being the fastest midfielder that weekend.

His average was dragged down by a low rating for what happened at Interlagos (4), as although Ocon was entitled to unlap himself he overstepped the mark with what he did once his initial attack into the corner was repulsed by Verstappen.

Overall, Ocon scored fewer points than team-mate Perez, who wasn't far behind on average ratings, but he did have the edge on speed over the season and was marginally the more impressive Force India driver.

6 Pierre Gasly - 7.67

Gasly's high points during the season are rightly venerated, in particular his stunning fourth place in Bahrain and also his sixth in Hungary.

Those were his two maximum scores, as although people point to his Monaco seventh place as another high-point, he really should have qualified higher and then been able to beat old rival Esteban Ocon in the race.

But what also stands out is that he had relatively few low scores, reflecting his ability to get the best out of the car even when it was tricky. It was perhaps a more consistent season in terms of driving than the fluctuating form of Toro Rosso allows to shine through. This tallies with what you see from Gasly trackside.

One of the more attacking drivers from the off in free practice, he's never afraid to hang out the rear and despite that seems to avoid making big errors.

That's very encouraging heading into his first season in the big time with the main Red Bull team in 2019.

5 Fernando Alonso - 7.71

Had the season ended after 15 races, Alonso's rating would have been good enough to put him second. His fall to fifth reflects the fact that he was starting to lose interest on the late weekends where the McLaren was particularly uncompetitive.

This was mainly because of some belligerent moments, such as the three rapid-fire examples of cutting the track in Abu Dhabi, and gunning the throttle after being pushed off the track at the Suzuka chicane and earning a penalty for gaining an unfair advantage.

But overall, what Alonso did was grab a difficult and unstable car by the scruff of the neck and drag the best out of it.

The fact he managed to get results few, perhaps even none, of his rivals could match when things went well, means he was ranked higher in our overall top 10 than he is on the average ratings.

4 Sebastian Vettel - 7.76

Vettel's overall ranking might seem high given the way his season unraveled, but instead they underline how strong his campaign was before things went wrong.

Over the final eight races, his average performance would have put him only 15th in this list, but his outstanding performances early in the season, combined with the very tight spread from second down to 15th, carry him to fourth.

Bahrain was the high point, Vettel's sole perfect 10, although there were a plethora of nines that underlined how good he was. But what really cost Vettel was his mistakes.

Most damaging were his two lowest ratings for France and Japan (both five), where he respectively hit Bottas and Verstappen.

But even his great low point, Germany, still yielded a rating of six because, while his error in the wet led to him crashing out, it was a small blunder with a big impact and he had got the race won had it not rained.

3 Charles Leclerc - 7.86

F1's star rookie had to turn in a superb season to earn his promotion to Ferrari, and his lofty position in this list reflects how well he did.

Interestingly, it didn't start well, with his ratings of seven and two sixs in the first three race weekends reflecting a difficult start.

While rookie drivers are given grace, Leclerc, by his own admission, had some problems to work through. What was remarkable was that he went from averaging 6.33 over those races to averaging 9.33 in the next six.

This underlines something Leclerc was very good at during 2018 - learning. He had to change his approach to the way he treated the tyres and qualifying set-up, and condensed learning that requires a whole season for so many rookies into just a few weeks.

There were a few difficult weekends after that - Germany, Japan and Hungary were low points - but by and large he was a strong performer. But there were only two perfect 10s in a season where he often cost himself a grid position by not quite nailing his Q3 lap.

2 Max Verstappen - 8.00

Verstappen averaged 5.83 after six races thanks to a string of mishaps, with only his third place in the Spanish GP helping his average up to that level.

Over the remaining 15 races, he actually averages 8.86 - better than Hamilton's overall rank.

The beauty of the average ratings is that not only do they ensure the whole season is taken into account, but they also ensure bad performances do not become disproportionately weighted.

When Verstappen was ranked second in our overall F1 top 10, there was criticism that his early-season errors were forgotten. What these ratings show is that, far from being forgotten, they ensured Verstappen wasn't able to be a contender for top spot.

In many ways, his campaign tracks the performance level of Hamilton, with a particularly strong run in the second half of the season, although overall he only delivered three perfect 10s to Hamilton's five.

1 Lewis Hamilton - 8.76

That Hamilton managed to average so close to nine out of 10, with his lowest weekend ratings marks of seven both in China and Canada, is testament to his consistently strong season.

But perhaps most remarkable is that his 0.76 advantage over second place represents the same margin that covers 2nd down to 14th!

Yes, Hamilton had a Mercedes under him, which was, on average, the fastest car of 2018. But other than the two weekends mentioned above, when he struggled but still came away with solid results, he usually got the best out of it.

His ratings, particularly in the second half of the year - with the three maximums in a run of four races from Italy to Japan - are testament to this being one of the most convincing championship campaigns ever produced despite often stiff opposition from Ferrari. Top class.