Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2022 Hungarian GP

Valtteri Bottas (Power issues, Lap 65): 6/10
For the second week in a row, Valtteri Bottas was able to take Friday morning off in Hungary as he gave up his seat to Alfa Romeo's reserve driver Robert Kubica. To his credit he was immediately up to speed in second practice where he was tenth quickest, and despite FP3 being largely a washout for everyone he was able to follow though and make it into final round of qualifying on Saturday, commendably close to the pace of the two Alpine cars just ahead. Unfortunately pretty much everything went awry in the race itself, with Bottas losing five places on the opening lap with a very poor start. The team had already committed to a one-stop strategy with a switch from mediums to hard tyres on lap 26, but that proved to be ill-judged. Although he was back up to P8 before his pit stop, he dropped to 14th afterwards. Second stops for other drivers boosted him back to tenth but with ten laps to go he succumbed to Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, and then shortly afterwards the Alfa's reliability issues surfaced again and he pulled over at turn 11 to become the only retiree of the race, triggering a late Virtual Safety Car as the rain started to fall. Valtteri looked more than ready to go on his summer holidays by this point.

Yuki Tsunoda (P19): 5/10
There was a brief spell earlier in the season where Yuki Tsunoda looked as though he had managed to pull it all together after a torrid rookie campaign in 2021. But after that brief spell of hope it's been one step forward, five steps back for the Japanese driver who once again is looking out of his depth, not helped by an AlphaTauri that only gets less competitive by the week. He ended Friday in the penultimate spot on the timesheets sandwiched between the two Williams drivers, and while he found more pace in qualifying (beating both Sebastian Vettel and his own team mate Pierre Gasly) it still wasn't good enough to survive the first cut at the end of Q1. He escaped largely unscathed from the first lap jostling only to get stuck between the two Aston Martins until Vettel passed him on lap 10. He was the first driver to make a scheduled pit stop on lap 13, and pitted a second time on lap 33 which dropped him to the back for what proved to be almost the whole of the rest of the race, with the AT03 exhibiting no grip whatsoever. "We need to go away and look at all the data to understand why the upgrades we have are not paying off in the way we thought they would."

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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.

Recent Posts

Verstappen puts Bathurst 1000 Supercar event on bucket list

Max Verstappen’s racing curiosity has never been confined to Formula 1 – and now, one…

1 hour ago

Vowles warns 2026 weight limit will catch F1 teams out

When F1’s radically redesigned 2026 cars finally roll out in Barcelona at the end of…

15 hours ago

Why Verstappen isn’t expecting much running at F1’s first test

Max Verstappen has never been one to sugar-coat reality – and as Formula 1 braces…

17 hours ago

Revolut’s CMO slams Ferrari: ‘How can you put blue on a red car?’

Ferrari have survived decades of criticism about strategy calls, driver politics and pit stops that…

18 hours ago

Mercedes 2026 advantage in doubt after concerning claim

While the paddock has been whispering for months that Mercedes might be holding the winning…

20 hours ago

Our salute on this day to Big Dan

Dan Gurney passed away on this day in 2018, and here at F1i we'll never…

21 hours ago