The F1 may be done and dusted, and so with nothing to do until Netflix release the latest soap opera version of the 2022 season, we unveil our official 2022 F1 Driver of the Year Rankings and 2022 F1 Season Stats.
Throughout the year we have assigned our ratings points each race, based on race results, qualifying, free practice, fastest laps, and more. While our ultimate 2022 F1 Driver of the Year is a pretty obvious answer, behind that the order is mixed up a bit more, with more focus on overachieving with the car and beating the team mate.
On top of the overall driver of the year results, we have a driver by driver break down of the key stats to their season, plus a bunch of overall stats from the 2022 F1 season that was.
2022 F1 Driver of the Year Rankings
So Max Verstappen is the clear winner, with Charles Leclerc the only other driver over 1000 of our driver of the year points. According to our points system, a perfect race would earn a driver 100 points, so Max Verstappen’s 1486 is a decent effort, although he actually scored 1506 points last season, so there you go. The big difference is second place, with Lewis Hamilton scoring 1328 in 2021.
Down the other end of the points system, Nicholas Latifi was the worst performer of the full time drivers for the 2022 season, with his total of 68 points from 22 races not even double that of his one-time team mate Nyck de Vries. Although the Dutchman may have need just one more race to beat Latifi.
The below shows our drivers ranking throughout the 2022 F1 season. Charles Leclerc took advantage of Ferrari’s early season pace and Red Bull unreliability to lead for quite a while before Max Verstappen cleared him at Round 8 and never looked back on the back of a stronger Red Bull and some dud strategy from Ferrari. We have the cut of our Driver ranking points from Round Eight below which is quite interesting in the battle for second.
Third was a hard fought battle throughout, with the final spot on our podium going to George Russell, who did well in his first competitive drive, handling Lewis Hamilton for most of the 2022 F1 Season, and was sixth according to our rating just four races from the end of the season. A win helps.
Behind the top six, the rest of the field stayed pretty static, with a chronically underwhelming Daniel Ricciardo and trouble magnet Lance Stroll swapping positions.
2022 F1 Driver of the Year Rankings – Driver by Driver
Want to see a driver by driver bunch of stats and a few points of interest thrown in?
No? Well too bad, here it is anyway.
Max Verstappen was the best driver of 2022 by some distance. Possibly one of the greatest seasons of all time. Sure the Red Bull was quick, but it was no Mercedes of recent seasons or 1988 McLaren type domination (they won 15/16 races) with the car sometimes seconds a lap quicker.
Max was only off the podium three times when he didn’t retire, he was first or second 16 times in 22 races. Only he and Carlos Sainz qualified in all 22 races in Q3.
Verstappen was beaten to the most pole positions in 2023 by eight to nine, but he only failed to convert one pole position of the eight to a race win, and that non win was still second. Leclerc meanwhile converted his first two pole positions into race wins and none after that.
Our ranking points points to the race at Imola being Max’s best with a perfect core of 100. He did take pole, win, set fastest lap. Singapore was his worst starting 8th and finishing 7th, while his team mate won from 2nd on the grid.
Charles Leclerc took more pole positions in 2022 than Max Verstappen (9 v 8) which highlights Leclerc’s and his team’s speed but also how Ferrari got so many race days wrong – he only converted those nine poles into two wins. Leclerc also qualified in the top three as many times as Max Verstappen in 2022.
As per 2021 Charles Leclerc was magic on the streets, and his average grid position for street tracks was 1.2. Leclerc out-qualified Carlos Sainz by 15-7 in 2022, whcih was up from the 13-9 score of 2021.
Leclerc’s best race according to our ranking points was Australia where Leclerc took pole, won the race, Max Verstappen retired, his team mate qualified 9th and crashed out in the race. So yeah, not a bad one. Canada is rated his worst and coincieds with his worst qualifying of the season (15th).
George Russell got his first win of his F1 career, and deserved no less after a very good season. It was pretty tight in qualifying between himself and Lewis Hamilton with their average grid position for the season within 0.04 and the difference to pole position just over 0.10%.
Russell did a fine job in comparison to his predecessor Valtteri Bottas who was beaten 16-6 in qualifying and 15-4 in races, Russell meanwhile won the race H2H 12-9 and was beaten in qualifying by 13-9, which was an improvement on Bottas.
No driver finished third more this season, with six.
Unsurprisingly, George Russell’s best race was his first win in Brazil and his worst race of the season saw him involved in the spectacular crash of Guanyu Zhou at Silverstone.
No driver out-qualified their team mate more than Lando Norris did in 2022. He did it 20 times out of 22 and did it every race from round 10 onwards. But somehow Lando Norris didn’t seem quite as impressive in 2022 than he did in 2021, although he was still great for large parts.
His average qualifying position for 2022 did drop from 6.55 to 8.05 and average race finishing position did drop back one place. Norris also missed out on Q3 six times in 2022 compared to once in 2021.
His race of the year was at Imola and was the only podium of the season, so an early peak. His worst race was in Canada where he was out-qualified by his team mate for the second time of the season, and finished 15th.
No one qualified third more than Carlos Sainz this season with eight of his 22 qualifying sessions ending in third. He was one of of only two drivers to make Q3 for every race – the other was Max Verstappen.
Carlos Sainz was not a driver with luck on the first lap of races this season, being the driver with the worst net position loss in 2022. He wasn’t helped with some ordinary pieces of driving from others turfing him out of promising positions. But those big events aside, he only gained a position on the first lap on three occasions this season.
No surprise that Carlos’ biggest race for ranking points was his first win at Silverstone. His worst could have had a few contenders, but his early exit in Australia after qualifying ninth and his team mate was on pole probably was a decent winner of the low point.
Two wins for Sergio Perez showed some progress in 2022, the Mexican enjoying the street tracks, with both of his wins coming at Monaco and Singapore.
Progress too against Max Verstappen in the Head to Head as Sergio Perez’s score for 2022 was 4-3 for beating Max in qualifying and races, up from two and one in 2021. Talking of qualifying, no one qualified 4th more times than Perez’s seven.
Our rankings points gives Perez’s best race of the season to his Singapore win, which is fair enough as it was a good drive, and one time where he did a number on Max Verstappen. Canada was his worst race a retirement on lap 7 after qualifying 13th on the grid.
An underwhelming season for Lewis Hamilton as he finished a season for the first time without a win.
He finished well behind his team mate according to our ranking points, despite out-qualifying him by 13-9. And he was closer to pole position and had a better average grid position than George Russell. But as the Mercedes bounced its way through the first half of the season, Russell rode out the bumps better in the races and got the more consistent race results.
At least he managed to not run into Max Verstappen this season like 2021, although it helps when you’re several seconds behind.
France was his best race with a second place finish from fourth on the grid and the second fastest lap of the race. Slim pickings, but that was 2022 for you. Or, more so, for him. His worst was at Imola where he either finished or qualified in both race or sprint race in 13th/14th. Unlucky for some. Or, more so, him.
If our driver of the year ranking wasn’t based purely on stats we’d have Fernando Alonso much higher up the list. Sure the Alpine was the fourth fastest car, but the mechanical gremlins stopped him from scoring a lot more points in 2023, or like in Australia was set for a top three start when something broke on his car and he slid into a wall. It was that kind of season, and then Alpine’s driver contract shenanigans with him Oscar Piastri was the final straw and he’s heading for Aston Martin in 2023.
14 point scoring drives from Alonso in 2023, with five official retirements shows an up and down season, and sadly no podium. Alonso edged Ocon in qualifying H2H with a 12-10 final score, but was on season average two places higher up the grid. Same when you consider the finishing positions from every qualifying session, not just eventual grid slot.
We look forward to seeing what he can do at Aston Martin, and if it isn’t more brilliance and outperforming the car, let it be a complete spectacular fallout with Lance Stroll.
Esteban Ocon has had a fair bit to say about his team mate Fernando Alonso in the off season, but according to our ranking points, we have Alonso a fair bit ahead, and that’s without the car failures for Alonso.
Truth be told, it was a tight battle in 2022, but you always felt that the big breakthrough moment was going to go Fernando Alonso’s way, but ultimately most of the breaking moments went with the Spaniard.
Ocon had the same number of Q3 appearances in 2022 as 2021 (11), but his off days saw four Q1 exits in 2022 compared to three in 2021. Alonso improved the qualifying H2H by one in 2022 and the race H2H was the same.
Japan was Ocon’s finest according to our points, and hard to argue with a fourth place from fifth grid slot. A DNF from 15th on the grid in Britain was worthy of his worst race.
We called Valtteri Bottas “Nottas” a lot in 2021, and sometimes deservedly so, but his move away from the pressure cooker of Mercedes and having Lewis Hamilton as your team mate worked well for Bottas in 2022, and he put in some decent weekend for Alfa Romeo aka Sauber.
Bottas made it into Q3 eight times in 2022, which is a good return considering the 2021 Alfa Romeo drivers managed three between them in 2021.
After six rounds Valtteri Bottas was fifth in our Driver of the Season, by Round Nine he was still just ten of our ranking points shy of Lando Norris. By the end of the season he was six places behind.
He peaked early, with his best race according to our points in Round One in Bahrain. He started sixth and finished sixth which was a decent effort for an Alfa. His worst? Belgium where he qualified last and DNF’d.
Bottas continues to be an under achiever on the first lap, with his 2022 net first lap result being -29 positions with a gain on the first lap just four times. Although this is an improvement on his 2021 Mercedes season where the net first lap was -41 and he gained on just two laps.
It wasn’t a bad season from Pierre Gasly, but it felt in every way that 2022 was not as good as 2021. The numbers say as much too.
In 2021 his average grid position was 6.8 but this season it was 12.5. In 2021 he made it into Q3 18 times with the other efforts ending in Q2. His 2022 qualifying season saw seven sessions ending in Q1 and eight in Q2. Gasly was behind only the Red Bulls and Mercedes on street tracks last season for qualifying. In 2022 he was ninth. And seenth last for clasic circuits (like Spa, Monza, Interlagos)
Gasly out-qualified Tsunoda 21-1 in 2021 but this season that reduced to 13-9. Maybe that was improvement in his team mate or Gasly growing bored of Alpha Tauri. Probably the latter as he’s off to Alpine where if Gasly can find his 2021 form again and Alpine continue their form curve, he could be an outsider for race wins in 2023.
A surprise choice to replace Nikita Mazespin at Haas, but did a very good job at late notice in the first race in Bahrain, which was his peak in terms of G Ranking points. And he was solid throughout the season with nearly as many Q1 qualifying trips as Q3. He out-qualified Mick Schumacher 16-6.
But ultimately his first pole position is the big story from the season, the first place on the grid giving him enough G Ranking points to climb above a few other drivers. He effectively killed off the first part of Mick Schumaher’s career while he was at it, but we think Michael jnr will get another shot some day.
Last season in F1 for Sebastian Vettel was a bit of a mixed bag, with some glimpses of his previous best, and some completely anonymous races. And missed two races at the start of the season too.
In terms of the qualifying lap % from pole, Vettel was the equal further ahead of his team mate in 2022 with his season average 0.7% close to pole. This is despite 10 Q1 exits in the 2022 season. He most common finishing position for the season was 8th (4 times).
Looking more like the post F1 hippy he was slowly becoming, he’ll be missed a many in 2023. Especially at Aston Martin with the arrival of the demanding Fernando Alonso.
A good return season for Alex Albon in 2022, pushing the Williams higher up the field than it would have with any other ordinary driver, which of course was his intra team yardstick in 2022.
A single Q3 appearance matched his team mate Latifi, but that’s as close as the Canadian got. Albon got the better of Latifi 19 times of their 21 races together in 2022, where he qualified on average three places higher and was 0.7% closer to pole.
Albon’s best ranking score for the season coincided with his best qualifying of the year, but his 10th race finish wasn’t the best result of the year, but combined was good enough for our ranking points.
After finishing seven of his first eight races qualifying in Q1, from Round Nine onward he only failed to make it out of Q1 consecutively once.
Albon faces a rookie team mate in 2023, who will be inexperienced but liekly faster than Latifi.
In terms of % distance from pole position, Lance Stroll was worse than Nicholas Latifi at Williams, and his 0.71% difference between he and Sebastian Vettel the equal worst.
Stroll drive a couple of good races, but you often felt an accident of controversial moment wasn’t far away, and it usually wasn’t.
But bad qualifying led to Storll’s one good stat for the season – he was the driver who gained the most first lap positions in 2022. By the end of the season Stroll had gained 34 positions on the first lap, and had 17 of 22 races where he made positive progress.
Keeps his drive at Aston Martin for now due to the fact that his father owns the team, and we can’t wait for the 2023 fireworks with Alonso.
Just when you thought 2021 was bad, along came 2022. At least he got the victory in Italy last season to give him something to be happy about. We would go as far to say that Ricciardo was the most disappointing driver in 2022. Sure he wasn’t worse than Latifi, but much, much more is expected of the Australian. Or used to be.
Ricciardo beat his team mate just six times in 44 occasions of race and qualifying in 2022, which made him the most out-performed drive on the grid.
He at least is being replaced with another Australian for fans in that country to cheer for, so little adjustment is required. Same for Ricciardo who returns to Rd Bull as a reserve driver. We suppose being paid still by McLaren will ease the pain.
Coincidentally following Daniel Ricciardo is another driver who lost his seat for 2023, and will probably him follow the career path into reserve driver-ing
Mick Schumacher had a few prangs in 2022, one in Saudi Arabia saw him miss the race. By the end of the season Haas had preferred to guarantee the solid if slightly mediocre results of Nico Hulkenberg to spending another year waiting for progress on Mick Schumacher. Maybe expectations were raised unfairly when Kevin Magnussen started the season so strong.
Mick Schumacher had improved along with his Haas team in 2022, going from an average grid slot of 18.5 to 14.5. And he made Q1 four times this season, while in 2021 he made Q2 only twice.
And Mick Schumacher actually out-performed Kevin Magnussen in the races. Not enough to keep him in a seat next season, but a good stat to have.
Guanyu Zhou wasn’t nearly as bad the pay driver we all expected for be in 2022.
He outqualified Valtteri Bottas a respectable eight times in 2022. In comparison Yuki Tsunoda – a second year driver – outqualified his race-winning team mate only nine times and only managed to out-qualify his team mate once in his rookie season in 2021.
Only eight times has a driver qualified in the same position seven times or more in 2022, while most of them were at the sharp end of the grid, or dead last like Latifi, Guanyu Zhou’s effort to qualify seven times for 14th place made the list.
Zhou was close in race trim when considering fastest lap. His average position for fastest lap in 2022 was 12.24, just 0.01 behind his team mate’s 12.23.
Hard to make out what kind of season Yuki Tsunoda had. He wasn’t fired by Red Bull during or at the end of the season, so that’s a positive. But even the stats make his season hard to judge. His average qualifying position for 2022 went backwards by a place.
And he made Q3 on nine occasions in 2021, yet only managed five thus season.
But he has a new team mate next year in Nyck De Vries, who did a good enough job in one race for Williams for Red Bull bosses to hire from outside their program for 2023. So mediocrity in any form won’t be tolerated.
2022 was Nicholas Latifi’s last season in F1 and will good cause as he was mostly making up the numbers.
But he had two moments for the season. Qualifying in the top 10 in Britain was a highlight, and his drive into points in Japan was well deserved, as he navigated the wet race very well.
Those moments aside, Latifi was mostly terrible in 2022. He exited at Q1 all but once, securing a back row qualifying position 16 times in 22 races and last 10 of those.
2022 F1 Season Stats
Not enough stats for you so far? Well have a final serving of all our stats from the 2022 which accompanied our race reviews and ratings
H2H
So Lando Norris wins the H2H battle for 2022 by a point to Max Verstappen and another to Alex Albon. One point being awarded for beating a team mate in qualifying and the race. Norris and Albon had it easier with team mates that were out of sorts in 2022 or just slow. Max Verstappen also did what you expect a number one would do with a team built around them.
QUALIFYING
1ST LAP
2022 F1 Season Grand Prix Reviews
To round off the marathon of F1 content for the 2022 season, here are the links to every race review we supplied for the year.
Each race review features a Laps That Mattered style review, with loads of stats, cynicism, style and attitude. We have even included our Race Ratings to tell you which races you should check out.
R1 Bahrain Grand Prix 26/30
R2 Saudi Arabia Grand Prix 21/30
R3 Australian Grand Prix 16/30
R4 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix 17/30
R5 Miami Grand Prix 19/30
R6 Spanish Grand Prix 17/30
R7 Monaco Grand Prix 24/30
R8 Azerbaijan Grand Prix 22/30
R9 Canadian Grand Prix 21/30
R10 British Grand Prix 26.5/30
R11 Austrian Grand Prix 24/30
R12 French Grand Prix 17/30
R13 Hungarian Grand Prix 23/30
R14 Belgian Grand Prix 17/30
R15 Dutch Grand Prix 21/30
R16 Italian Grand Prix 11/30
R17 Singapore Grand Prix 15/30
R18 Japanese Grand Prix 22/30
R19 US Grand Prix 23/30
R20 Mexican Grand Prix 9/30
R21 Brazilian Grand Prix 22/30
R22 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 15/30
