Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2019 United States GP

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©Ferrari

Sebastian Vettel (Retired, Lap 8): 7.5/10
It's certainly been a season of highs and lows for Sebastian Vettel. Having appeared to rediscover his mojo since the summer break, the Ferrari driver plunged into another major low on Sunday albeit through little fault of his own. Right from the start he was clearly struggling with understeer, dropping from a hard-won front row spot all the way to seventh place before finally managing to stop the rot. But shortly afterwards his race came to a decisive end when the rear suspension of the SF90 collapsed on lap 8, leaving the wonky Ferrari desperately looking for somewhere to park. As a result of these trials and tribulations, it's not really possible to rate Vettel's race outing and we have to arrive at our rating based on how he did in the earlier sessions. In truth this wasn't the greatest of weekends for Ferrari as a whole, whose top line speed seemed a little off its recent peak. Even so, Vettel was right in the mix all the way through to Saturday afternoon's qualifying in which he probably had the speed to clinch pole position if track conditions hadn't started to change right at the end of Q3. Such potential made what happened in the race all the more disappointing and frustrating.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.