Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2023 Abu Dhabi GP

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Kevin Magnussen (P20): 4.5/10
A sad end to the 2023 season for Kevin Magnussen, who predictably missed the first cut in qualifying and then dropped two places at the start of the race before being the first driver to pit on lap 5 despite starting on a perfectly fresh set of mediums. Quite what the plan was, we're not sure, but the Dane duly spent much of the rest of the race firmly at the back. Magnussen himself said the team had failed to match the developments of the other teams around them: too often, Haas seem ready to write off a season at the earliest opportunity promising a better tomorrow which never arrives. Having tried a newbie line-up in 2021 and going for experience in 2023, nothing is working. Perhaps Guenther Steiner has to look at other reasons for the team's continued failure to thrive.

Valtteri Bottas (P19): 5.5/10
Alfa Romeo is another team that seemed to have its eyes on simply getting to the end of the season and moving on as quickly as possible. In this case, the exit of the Italian marque from F1 (the team will revert to its Sauber brand for 2024-25 before Audi takes over) is surely a big reason for the team stalling. Valtteri Bottas has tried his best but his last points were scored in Qatar: this week he showed decent pace with fourth in both of Friday's practice session but then the speed evaporated on Saturday and he missed the first cut in qualifying. "I don't know what we missed," he admitted. He had a solid first stint in the race which saw him peak in P7, and enjoyed a scrap with Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo as the evening wore on, but a one-stop strategy was asking too much and he sank to P16 even before his pit stop.

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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.