How Perez's 2023 qualifying struggles led to an Autosport driver ratings U-turn

Let's start off with both a little secret and also something of correcting the record from the 2023 Formula 1 season. The alternative headline for this column was: ‘An apology to Nico Hulkenberg’.

The sentiment here is that the Haas racer was the one to suffer most in our driver ratings change for 2023, where only each driver’s race performance was assessed for a mark out of 10. That’s a rather hyperbolic way of describing the situation, of course, but ultimately when it came to our regular rankings piece following each F1 weekend last year, Hulkenberg’s consistent qualifying heroics were ignored – all amid the Haas squad’s struggles with in-race tyre wear.

Having concentrated so much on trying to fix that for 2024 with so much long-stint running in Bahrain pre-season testing last week that it topped the mileage charts, Haas is quietly confident it has made something of a breakthrough on its tyre-chewing ways.

PLUS: Ranked - The F1 teams on 2024 pre-season testing form

But a change we’re making at Autosport means even if the VF-24 turns out to be no better in race trim than the VF-23, when Hulkenberg inevitably wrestles it to a high qualifying position, in our 2024 assessment criteria he’ll find the reward that was missing last year.

In short, we’re going back to our old, tried-and-tested method of creating a rating from every session of each F1 weekend. In most cases, this means a driver will be scored on how they perform in a combination of the sessions that matter most – qualifying and the race.

The problems Haas suffered with tyre wear in 2023 meant Hulkenberg rarely had a chance to shine in races, which were reflected in his scoring under Autosport's revised driver ratings

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

But, should a driver pick up a penalty or eliminate themselves from the later sessions in a crash (think Norris dropping back three places on the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix grid for a qualifying red flag offence or Lance Stroll’s accident in qualifying for the 2023 Singapore GP), this will once again be factored in to their overall score. Here's how these are now defined:

Scoring System

‘Drivers are rated for their performance through the whole weekend, with the focus on qualifying and the race.’

10. Exceptional performance, maximising the result or car performance and, either through overturning a major obstacle or dominance over rivals, excelling.

9. Outstanding performance, but without quite reaching the heights required for a maximum score.

8. Very good performance with no major errors and a final result that, relative to circumstances, reflected the car’s pace.

7. Good performance, perhaps one that’s a little inconsistent in some aspects or without extracting the maximum from the car but still yields a reasonable result.

6. Solid performance but without getting the most out of the car or nailing it when it really mattered.

5. Patchy performance, not necessarily off the pace but failing to string together the weekend well and coming away short of a good result.

4. Disappointing performance, failing to get close to the maximum of the car and/or making mistakes at key moments.

3. Poor performance, either through struggling to get the most out of the car or, through some massive error, falling short.

2. Very poor performance, with mediocre pace and mistakes adding up to a wasted weekend.

1. Terrible. A performance with no redeeming features.

0. A rare case, but if a driver crashes on the way to the grid without car failure at play (think Verstappen at the 2020 Hungarian GP) and cannot take part in the race, they must get this score. The same for stalling at the lights and not getting going, although this in effect a non-factor in modern F1.

N/A. DNS due to car failure in the garage, on formation laps or on the grid. We reserve the right to use this in circumstances where a driver has been injured in a crash.

Hulkenberg's merits in qualifying will be taken into consideration under the revised 2024 driver ratings

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Of late, I’m no stranger to publicly apologising for calling something wrong about a particular F1 driver (no word yet if Lando Norris personally accepted the gist of my pre-Christmas mea culpa, but it did appear to go down well elsewhere within McLaren), but it was our 2023 system that did for Hulkenberg’s average rating last year.

But another driver was actually the catalyst for our switch back to our previous method. This is Red Bull racer, and 2023 drivers’ championship runner-up, Sergio Perez.

On so many occasions last year, Perez wasted golden chances to succeed with what will go down as one of F1’s best ever cars. Think back to that five-race run of missing Q3 during the early summer races.

PLUS: Why it's a Red Bull vs Ferrari battle in F1 2024 testing's long run times

Perez’s average Autosport race-only rating from last year was 6 (and for comparison his team-mate Max Verstappen ended up with an 8.9 average score from his march to his third world title). That put Perez 12th in the overall order of such averages – behind Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and with irregular 2023 AlphaTauri runners Daniel Ricciardo, Liam Lawson and Nyck de Vries discounted.

But, had we been using the ratings method we’re returning to, Perez’s scores likely would have ended up lower. Those good examples of battling back from, say, qualifying disappointments in Austria and Las Vegas would not have entirely saved his scores. In those examples from 2023, Perez ended up with a 9 and 8 rating respectively.

It might appear like we’re piling onto Perez on the eve of a new championship, when the slate is wiped clean. That’s a fine opinion to hold. But, based on what we saw in testing last week, Red Bull is set to start the season again unopposed up front. And so that in turn increases pressure on Perez to provide an intra-team test to Verstappen for everyone’s entertainment.

It’s why the 2014-16 part of Mercedes’ modern F1 domination era was altogether more compelling than what went down last year and also all those times Lewis Hamilton then easily outclassed Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton vs Nico Rosberg was box office viewing. And, given what we know about the punchy, in-your-face attitude of the Red Bull squad, it would surely relish such a fight between Verstappen and Perez in the RB20s too.

The new system would have made Perez's 2023 campaign appear even worse

Photo by: Erik Junius

That might imperil a constructors’ title battle if another squad does somehow turn out to be a shock 2024 contender. Yet Red Bull already lost one championship – in 2021 – to the reverse issue: Perez not being close enough to Verstappen’s level.

But, applying our new/old ratings logic to the wider field and moving past our Perez pedantry, overall in 2024 Autosport readers (who, for what it’s worth rated Perez an average of 5.8 over 2023) can expect to see scores actually go up by returning to our previous method. By adding qualifying and the rest back in, there is simply more opportunity for these superb drivers to shine.

For all of the viciousness of the current hot-take culture social media’s rise has brought us to, here at Autosport we’re always talking about different shades of gold when it comes to F1 drivers. I can predict, however, that the discerning reader will be able to pluck out specific differences in the highest ratings produced by myself or my colleague, Autosport F1 writer, Jake Boxall-Legge.

By adding qualifying and the rest back in, there is simply more opportunity for these superb drivers to shine

Just based on our ongoing ribbing about this task, I can suggest I will hand out higher scores on average, while JBL will bring a certain charming curmudgeonliness to proceedings. We disagree, for example, on how often the 10 mark should be awarded.

JBL believes what I consider to be implausible – that such a rank should only be handed out for performances along the lines of Juan Manuel Fangio winning the 1957 German GP. I think there’s no point having such a mark if it’s really never going to be awarded in what, please let’s remember, is a subjective and for the most part fun exercise.

But before I’ve got to start penning yet another apology, what I’m getting at is that on average, those scores will even out as our differing styles of awarding driver ratings comes in. Last year, the thrust of our race-only ratings tweak was about reflecting the changing way Autosport’s content is viewed and for simplicity's sake to boot. But it arguably led to misleading scores that didn't reflect the overall picture.

By last summer we already felt a change back was required. So, here it is, now go ahead and disagree with all of it.

Who will the big movers be under the revised rankings system?

Photo by: Erik Junius