Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2023 Canadian GP

40

Logan Sargeant (Oil leak, Lap 7): 5.5/10
Poor Logan Sargeant got the raw end of the deal this weekend. All of Williams brand new upgrades were fitted to Alex Albon's car, leaving Sargeant effectively acting as the benchmark against which the team could compare and contrast whether the new parts were doing what they had been hoping for. The good news is that they did, and Sargeant will get his turn to play with the new toys in due course, which is something for the American rookie to look forward to. But for now he looked like he was driving the family saloon hand-me-down, an image only reinforced when it sprang an oil leak just eight laps into the race. It forced him to park by the side of the road while Albon sailed on to conspicuous points success. It means that Sargeant remains one of only two drivers (along with AlphaTauri rookie Nyck de Vries) yet to score any points this season. That will need to change, if the new upgrade package is everything everyone says it is.

George Russell (Brake issue, lap 54): 7.5/10
George Russell gets a huge ratings demerit for crashing on lap 12, just when it looked as though he was on course for some big points in Canada. The fact that he still gets a relatively high score is testament to how strong the rest of his weekend was: finishing Friday practice second quickest behind his Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton might have been down to lucky timing with the conditions, but nor was it a fluke as the pair lining up on the second row of the grid for Sunday's race demonstrated. Even after his accident, Russell somehow managed to get the wounded W14 back to pit lane, where - and we still can't quite believe this - it was deemed able to rejoin the race, albeit at the back of a long DRS train of slower cars. That he managed to work his way back up from there all the way to eighth place is simply astounding. He eventually retired with a brake issue that the team insisted wasn't directly related to damage from the original accident, but it had been a rather brilliant drive. Except for that one second moment of recklessness at turn 9, of course.

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.