The reasons why three F1 drivers missed out on Autosport's 2023 top 10 rankings

Here's a peek behind the curtain: there might not be complete and unanimous agreement between the wonderful people at Autosport towers when it comes to our usual end-of-season host of rankings. That's the fun of it and, when you leaf through our Top 50 reveal on Thursday, invariably there will be placings that you may disagree with. We can't wait to read your own variations on the format.

The case in point is that, when Alex Kalinauckas and I came up with the top 10 list for last week's issue, there was a murmur of curiosity from one or two about the decision to rank Nico Hulkenberg's season in the upper half of the field. We accepted that Hulkenberg's inclusion might have been a left-field pick but, when you consider the other options, it makes a little bit more sense to have him there rather than those who missed out.

Those that didn't make it that featured on the F1 long list were Alpine pair Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, and AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda. From this writer's point of view, Tsunoda's late-season surge behind the wheel of a much-enhanced AT04 was perhaps the most compelling motivation to chisel the Haas driver out of the top 10, as he stepped up his game considerably when Daniel Ricciardo entered the fold. Ocon and Gasly also had good seasons, both managing a podium each across the 22-race schedule. So why didn't these three make the cut?

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Delineating between Ocon and Gasly's seasons is a difficult task. On pure stats alone, Gasly held the qualifying advantage with a 14-8 lead, but the two were pretty much tied on races - if you count retirements, it was 11-all; if you discard races where either driver retired, Ocon leads 10-6.

But in that latter case, the more vertically gifted driver bore the brunt of the reliability issues. And then there's the points: Gasly had 62 to Ocon's 58, and thus they remained remarkably close throughout the year. Results don't really paint the full picture, however, but in this instance they're a good marker of the close proximity on track that the two Normandy-born drivers shared.

The perception of what Alpine has is one driver who is a more accomplished qualifier in Gasly, and another who is stronger on a Sunday afternoon in Ocon. The value remains in the races, but points scored is not the sole barometer of where a driver stacks up. Besides, both drivers enjoyed their best results when attuned to conditions that would apparently suit their team-mate. Ocon, for example, took third in Monaco after nailing qualifying; Gasly captured his own third-place through an adept drive on race day on a damp Zandvoort afternoon. In reality, after drilling down into the numbers, the two are virtually inseparable across both 'disciplines'.

Photo by: Mark Sutton

Alpine had very little to separate its two drivers all season

As per last week's feature on Sergio Perez, we've taken the average deltas between them at the flag for races that both drivers finished - counting the previous lap if one was lapped and deleting any post-race penalties. Here, the gap between them is slender: Ocon held an average 0.415s advantage over Gasly over a grand prix.

For qualifying, we've calculated the gap between them in the last session that both drivers contested; for example, if both progress to Q2, but only one makes it into Q3, then we take the gap in Q2. After deleting anomalies - and for this, sprint qualifying has not been counted, it emerges that Gasly indeed has an advantage. But it's a cigarette-paper between them; Gasly is just 0.008s ahead on a single lap.

It's impossible to separate them. The numbers say that both drivers should be graded together - and given that both have made significant errors over 2023: Gasly arguably contributing most to the intra-team Melbourne clash and Ocon racking up the penalties in Bahrain and Austria as if they were on a Black Friday sale, it's hard to make the case for either.

When Alpine made the decision to disregard the contrasting personalities between the two Frenchmen and pair them up, the two have attempted to bury the hatchet and work together on building momentum within a short-on-confidence Renault-owned squad. Under the spotlight, however, the hatchet still glints between the light soil atop it; their occasional conflict borders on the internecine.

Hulkenberg did his level best to transcend a very limited car - one that he freely admitted that he was forced to effectively take himself out of racing other cars to simply get through the race

Tsunoda, on the other hand, was a more compelling option. Once AlphaTauri had managed to transform the AT04 into a legitimate points contender, the Japanese racer managed to thrust the team into the fight for seventh in the constructors' championship. His last-lap stand against Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi was incredibly well-judged, and produced a defensive drive that put the onus on the Briton to make the move - one that the seven-time champion ultimately botched at Turn 9. This built on Tsunoda's strong qualifying efforts on Saturday, where he captured sixth on the grid.

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He'd also impressed in Brazil after finishing sixth in the sprint, adding to his points haul from the weekend with ninth in the grand prix, and his run to eighth in Austin (10th at the flag) was augmented by his last-ditch fastest lap thanks to a switch to soft tyres at the end. But these end-of-year highlights were also indicative of his year overall, as they were separated by less-than-stellar weekends in Mexico and Las Vegas. He was outclassed by a resurgent Ricciardo in the Mexico City race, and was furious after being eliminated in Q1 during the Vegas round. The race recovery showed him in a better light, before his gearbox expired.

Then there was the early season. Tsunoda easily had the edge over Nyck de Vries, managing two points to the Dutchman's zero in their 10 races as team-mates, but there were still races that the more experienced driver went missing: he was beaten by de Vries in Monaco, and his solid run to ninth in Spain was completely undone by a penalty served for his over-aggressive move on Zhou Guanyu. Moments of brilliance were not tempered by discipline and, taking a holistic view of the year, this let Tsunoda down.

As explained in the top 10 rankings, Hulkenberg did his level best to transcend a very limited car - one that he freely admitted that he was forced to effectively take himself out of racing other cars to simply get through the race. Sometimes, the quality at the back of the grid is veiled, so it feels only right that the thankless drives do get rewarded.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Tsunoda's late season surge didn't do enough to crack Autosport's top 10 F1 drivers of 2023