Hamilton voted 2017 top driver by F1 team bosses

Team principals have acclaimed Lewis Hamilton as the sport's greatest driver for the fourth year in succession.

A traditional year-end poll of all ten team bosses conducted by Motorsport.com put the Mercedes driver well ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen. The Dutch driver, who turned 20 this year, was runner-up for the second season in succession.

Each team principal was asked to select their top ten drivers of the season. The order was then converted into Formula 1's points system to generate the final rankings.

Hamilton came up with 233 points out of a maximum score of 250, putting him 90 points ahead of Verstappen.

Sebastian Vettel's strong title challenge this season meant the Ferrari driver was in third. He was up two places on 2016, and just two points behind Verstappen.

Daniel Ricciardo is in fourth place, the same as last year. Force India's Esteban Ocon is the highest new entry in fifth place. By contrast his team mate Sergio Perez drops out of the top ten entirely.

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Fernando Alonso holds on to sixth place despite a rotten year for McLaren. Kimi Raikkonen stays in seventh place but has to share the spot with Carlos Sainz.

Sainz' new team mate at Renault, Nico Hulkenberg, returns to the top ten in ninth place after missing out last year.

There's a big shock for Valtteri Bottas, who slides one place and only just stays in the top ten despite his promotion to Mercedes.

The Finn would have hoped for better after picking up his first four career pole positions and three race wins in 2017.

He finished the season in third place in the championship, but that apparently didn't impress the team bosses. They gave him a total of only 39 points.

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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.