ONLY THE BEST: WHO ARE F1’S SUPERSTARS?
What makes the very best drivers in Formula 1 stand out among what is already a highly elite bunch? Let’s take a closer look at those with the special blend of skill, judgment, feel and attitude that sets only a select few apart from the rest
It’s a question that generates endless debates among Formula 1 fans, but also one that the teams have to grapple with in a very real way. And in a sense, they settle it.
For the teams are the ones with skin in the game, who have to put their money where their mouths are, and the ones with the most money speak loudest.
The three biggest teams in F1 have identified the drivers they believe to be the best available, the ones in which they have invested not only their hopes for the future, but also their budgets. Those three drivers are Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
And then there is Fernando Alonso, whose reputation and record after a remarkable career not only earns him a place on this list, but also a seat with the Renault-alpine team this season, despite the fact he has been off the grid for two years and will turn 40 in July.
How did these four drivers each gain such status, and what makes them so special?
A driver has to earn their place in this exalted group by the sheer, consistent excellence of their performances – and the effect they have on others with the exact same machinery at their disposal.
As Mercedes technical director James Allison says of Lewis Hamilton: “You have to look at what a driver’s track record is relative to his team-mate, and Lewis I don’t think leaves many questions in that regard. He beats his team-mates.”
In a nutshell, that is why two drivers who have previously been in this category are not quite anymore: Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo.
Vettel’s case is the most intriguing. This is a man who is third on the all-time winners’ list, behind only Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, and whose four titles put him fourth equal with Alain Prost in the ranking of championships won.
Having swept all before him with Red Bull through 201013, Vettel apparently had the world at his feet, even though some saw how closely Alonso ran him in inferior Ferraris and wondered about Vettel’s actual level. Alonso, for one, does not rate Vettel in the same class as himself, or Hamilton.
Vettel’s subsequent career has harmed his reputation. First, he was beaten by Ricciardo when the Australian joined Red Bull in 2014. Then, at Ferrari, Vettel was less superior to Kimi Räikkönen when they were Ferrari team-mates compared with Alonso’s 2014 campaign alongside the 2007 world champion.
And then there were the series of pressure mistakes Vettel made in the heat of title battles against Hamilton in 2017 and 2018. Those unconvincing seasons led to Ferrari bringing in
Leclerc to benchmark Vettel in 2019, whereupon the younger man, just as with Ricciardo before, came out on top.
Ferrari had seen enough. Management was now convinced Leclerc was the man in whom to invest the Scuderia’s future and Vettel, surplus to requirements, was informed before the delayed 2020 season started that his contract would not be renewed. Ferrari believes Vettel’s performances relative to Leclerc in 2020 served to further justify that decision.
As a result, while at his best he remains formidable, Vettel’s career as a member of the crème de la crème, in the eyes of the F1 teams, is effectively over, regardless either of his move to Aston Martin for this year, or his overall career statistics.
Ricciardo’s case is different. Having dispensed with Vettel, Daniel enjoyed a few seasons in which his daring overtaking moves, flashy victories and obvious qualifying speed made teams consider him part of the elite. But Ricciardo voluntarily stepped away from Red Bull at the end of 2018, and in doing so removed himself from a seat at one of the leading outfits in Formula 1. He made that choice during a season in which Verstappen finally and decisively gained the upper hand.
In 2016, their first season together, Ricciardo beat Verstappen both in their qualifying head-to-head and in the championship. Verstappen joined after spending the first four races of that season with Toro Rosso, but so strong was the Australian that year that Alonso, no less, was moved to call him the best driver in the championship.
The following year, Ricciardo won the points fight, but Verstappen took the qualifying head-to-head 11-9. By 2018, Verstappen was the superior driver, over one lap and in races.
Once Verstappen established superiority, it consummated a love affair that had been developing between the Dutchman and Red Bull for some time, and Ricciardo, now feeling the gooseberry in the relationship, decided to leave.
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“You have to look at what a driver’s track record is relative to his team-mate, and Lewis I don’t think leaves many questions in that regard. He beats his team-mates JAMES ALLISON
But how he ended up at Renault in 2019, and subsequently at Mclaren for 2021, rather than another of the big three teams, tells another aspect of the story.
In 2018, there was a Mercedes seat open – but the team did not pursue him, preferring to keep Valtteri Bottas as the foil for Hamilton. Likewise, in 2020, when Ferrari decided to dispense with Vettel, it looked to Carlos Sainz rather than Ricciardo as a partner for Leclerc.
In both cases, perhaps Ricciardo suffered for being a bit too good for the team in question to want to put him alongside its chosen ace – but not so good, in the eyes of the bosses, that they felt he was a potentially better choice.
Like Vettel, then, Ricciardo’s time among the uber-elite seems to have passed, at least for now. Both remain world-class drivers but not – at least in the eyes of the teams that count – ones that operate at the absolute rarefied level.
Not everyone will agree with those decisions, but decisions they are. So, the question is, what is it about those four drivers – Alonso, Hamilton, Leclerc and Verstappen – that means the teams regard them as the best of the best?
Ask anyone who has worked with Hamilton or Alonso what makes them so special and the first thing they will mention is speed and talent, and then expand on their other strengths: consistency, adaptability, work ethic, and so on.
“Ultimately,” says former Mclaren and Mercedes technical director Paddy Lowe, “it’s just all about your car control.
If I drive a racing car, the thing that freaks me out is losing the back end and I can’t catch it quick enough. That’s the basic control task – catching the moment.
“Responding to that in the fastest way allows you to go faster in the moment but also allows you to set the car up to be nearer the limit, so it is inherently quicker. Quicker drivers can run with a car that is far worse balanced, but they still keep it on the black bit and keep going quick. Fernando is a great example of that. Lewis is a terrific example of that.”
The corollary of this is that the elite can cope with differing car characteristics and still be fast, rather than performing at their absolute peak only when the car behaves in the way they want. And that is a fundamental part of what differentiates the absolute best from the rest of the grid. This is a scenario that could be seen playing out at both Red Bull and Ferrari in 2020.
Because Vettel likes to get the car rotating earlier than most other drivers, he needs a balance with a consistent, predictable rear end. Give him that, and he is devastatingly fast – hence his strength in the Red Bulls of the early 2010s, with their exhaust
“Quicker drivers can run with a car that is far worse balanced, but still keep it on the black bit and keep going quick “PADDY LOWE
blown diffusers and high levels of downforce.
But he is far less comfortable when the rear is not stable. As a source close to him says: “When the car is not balanced, especially the rear, and he can’t feel it, his processing is lost. It’s like a computer programme that misses a zero or a one.”
The 2020 Ferrari was not only uncompetitive; it was unpredictable, and its rear was very far from planted. In such circumstances, what Ferrari believed was already a significant gap to Leclerc only grew. The average qualifying gap between the two more than tripled in 2020, from around a tenth of a second in 2019 to more than three tenths this season, and Leclerc’s advantage in the head-to-head rose from 12-9 to 13-4.
Vettel, being less comfortable with the loose rear of the car, tended to lose out by fractions at each corner. Over a lap, that more often than not added up to a significant margin.
Team boss Mattia Binotto explained it like this: “At first we should say that Charles is very fast and when you are comparing yourself to such a fast driver it is never easy, even if you are a four-time world champion. Seb is struggling with braking stability. He’s not too confident with the car. I think it’s a matter of feeling the grip, of extracting the potential.”
That sounds similar to Vettel’s difficulties during his final season at Red Bull, where in 2020 Alex Albon’s struggles were similar. Red Bull started the year with a rear instability problem caused by an aerodynamic flaw. Both drivers struggled with this, and spins were relatively frequent.
As the year went on, Red Bull managed to tame this characteristic, even if the fundamental issue remained.
But once it was under control to a degree Verstappen was comfortable with, the Dutchman, who prefers cars with positive turn-in, was telling the team that to go quicker he needed more front grip.
Albon found himself in a position where he still preferred to focus on stabilising the rear, to give him confidence on turn-in. But, as the junior and slower member of the team, his views were in conflict with Verstappen’s. And in that scenario, the team is only going to go one way…
At Mercedes, this plays out in less obvious ways.
In 2020, Bottas was closer to Hamilton on pure pace than Vettel was to Leclerc, but the gap was still substantial: a tad over two and a quarter tenths of a second. But at Mercedes the car was quick enough for Bottas to still qualify regularly on the front row, while Ferrari was in the midfield pack, hence Leclerc’s average grid position of 8.2 compared to Vettel’s 12.2.
It’s the races where the differences created by Hamilton’s talent are truly magnified, and not only because he finished ahead of Bottas far more often than not.
Take the second Silverstone race, for example, where Mercedes ran into tyre trouble, but Hamilton was able to keep his in better shape than Bottas and do one pitstop fewer. Or at the Nürburgring, where despite Hamilton being behind Bottas in the first stint, it was the Finn who ran into graining problems, came under pressure from Hamilton, locked a front tyre and lost the lead.
Or Portimão, where for once heat management of the Pirellis was not the problem on the smooth track surface – getting the tyres up to the right temperature in the right way was the key. And Hamilton, having lost two positions on the first lap, caught and passed Bottas, and won by more than 25 seconds.
Or Monza, where Bottas remained stuck at the back end of the top six after a poor first lap, but Hamilton, after serving a penalty for stopping while the pitlane was closed, carved through from the back to seventh.
“That’s Lewis, man,” says former F1 driver Pedro de la Rosa. “It doesn’t matter what you throw at him, he will drive fast. Like in Monza. He’s penalised. He drives from the back. He starts 32 seconds behind the leader and he finishes 17 seconds [behind], overtaking people. Ten more laps, and he overtakes Bottas. How is that possible? Because he is adaptable.”
Having worked closely with both Hamilton and Alonso, de la Rosa is able to analyse what differentiates them from the rest.
“Lewis and Fernando are on a different level from the others,” he says. “Trust me when I say they are really special drivers. You don’t encounter talent of this magnitude every day; it happens every five or 10 years. When you encounter a Fernando, a Lewis – a Max as well – this is high voltage.
“What makes them special is how much speed they can run into the apex and still have decent exit speed. They can balance out the car with speed and brakes. If the car is understeering, or oversteering, they will sort this out with their feeling. They don’t know why they are doing it. They just know it’s faster.”
This is also why Hamilton, Alonso and Verstappen are so much more effective than Bottas when trying to overtake, and look much more aggressive and threatening when they are chasing another car. Their enhanced feel means they can get closer to the car in front, compensating for the lost downforce with their control under braking.
Verstappen showed similar qualities in being the only driver able to put the Mercedes under pressure in 2020. And while Leclerc has been in F1 for only three seasons, he is already demonstrating a similar skillset.
Take the ability on show in his remarkable dogfight with Verstappen at Silverstone in 2019; or making a onestop strategy work with a low-downforce set-up in high temperatures that chewed the tyres on the Mercedes at the 70th
“What makes them special is how much speed they can run into the apex and still have decent exit speed PEDRO DE LA ROSA
Anniversary GP at the same track this year; or the breathtaking qualifying lap that put the Ferrari fourth on the grid at Portimão, when Vettel was 15th and gripless. And then there was Leclerc’s remarkable under-the-radar drive in Turkey.
Leclerc was 35.7 seconds behind Vettel on lap 15 after Vettel made an electrifying start to vault to fourth on the first lap while Leclerc was stuck in 14th. Ten laps later, Leclerc had closed that to 20 seconds. Leclerc gained more time in the pits, to reduce the gap to just over seven seconds by the end of lap 34. Six laps later, Leclerc was in front, stretching a five-second lead over the next seven laps.
Vettel fought back in the closing laps, and overtook when Leclerc outbraked himself into the final chicane trying to wrestle second place away from Sergio Pérez, so Leclerc fell to fourth. Congratulated by the team on a great recovery drive, Leclerc rejected the compliments and focused only on the late error, saying he’d done a “shit” job.
In doing so, he demonstrated another quality of truly great drivers – to never be satisfied. Whether it’s Hamilton learning from what he perceives as his weaknesses to come back stronger again. Or Verstappen working out that his crashes in the early races of 2018 were because he was trying too hard, then moving into another gear once he’d analysed what had gone wrong. Or Alonso’s desire to constantly improve.
Perhaps contrary to popular perception of Alonso, Mclaren performance director Andrea Stella says “being humble, of acknowledging the gap to perfection, this is a strong characteristic of Fernando’s. So, through the years, he has worked on these weaker characteristics. To gain this final step, it is a combination of first of all you need to be humble and you need to think: ‘That’s not enough. I need to improve.’ And the second thing is, ‘How do I do that?’”
Alonso is returning to a Renault team rebranded Alpine and bullish about its prospects for this year and, particularly, 2022. “When he sees Daniel doing that in the car [finishing on the podium], I’m very sure he knows in himself he can do better than that,” says sporting director Alan Permane. “That’s his benchmark. That’s the minimum he’s going to do in it, what Daniel’s doing in it.”
That’s the high standards these special drivers set. Even a season that would be regarded as outstanding for any other driver is the very least expected of them – and by themselves.
Andrew Benson is BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer
“Being humble, of acknowledging the gap to perfection, this is a strong characteristic of Fernando’s ANDREA STELLA