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MIGUEL SANZ / JAVIER PAZOS
Updated
As if from Ballon d’Or and ‘The Best’ It will be treated, between Rodrigo and Vinicius Jr.the team bosses and the drivers have contradicted what was expressed by the championship ‘specialists’ to award the best driver of the year award to the world champion, Max Verstappen. It looks like a drawer, but it wasn’t..
The Formula 1 had published his championship ranking on the 11th, the one that he tweaked race by race with the name of Power Rankings, and where, although it may seem surprising, Max was not the best of the season of his fourth title. In a tight finish Lando Norris surpassed him, despite not being at his level in the key moments of the World Cup.
Since 2018, a team of five F1 experts evaluates each driver after each race and ranks them according to their performance during the weekend, without taking into account the machinery. And in the final sum, Max was not leading.
Some very disparate votes
- TEAM LEADS
1. Max Verstappen (250 points), 2. Lando Norris (178 points), 3. Charles Leclerc (121 points), 4. Oscar Piastri (113 points), 5. Carlos Sainz (110 points), 6. George Russell ( 86 points), 7. Lewis Hamilton (54 points), 8. Nico Hülkenberg (39 points), 9. Fernando Alonso (27 points), 10. Pierre Gasly (21 points).
FORMULA 1 PILOTS
1. Verstappen (same position as in 2023), 2. Norris (up 2 places), 3. Leclerc (up 2 places), 4. Russell (new), 5. Piastri (up 3 places), 6. Sainz (same than in 2023), 7. Gasly (up 2 places), 8. Hulkenberg (new), 9. Alonso (down 6 places) and 10. Hamilton (down 8 places).POWER RANKING
1. Norris (8.2 points on average), 2. Verstappen (8.1), 3. Leclerc (7.8), 4. Piastri and Sainz (7.6), 6. Russell (7.5), 7. Hulkenberg (7.1), 8. Hamilton and Gasly (7.0), 10. Tsunoda (6.7).
To make matters worse, Nor did Alonso, ninth in the championship, surpass the ‘top 10’ of this particular unofficial classification of the championship, in which Sainz was fourth, tied with Piastri.
Fernando took the vote as a jokein his permanent defense then that both Max and he, not being British, are always outside the main circle of preferences in many areas of the championship, not the least of which is that of the stewards. “Sometimes I see it in the media. But… it’s useless. I don’t even know what position I am in, I see the top-10 and I’m not there. When I am ninth in the drivers’ championship, sometimes with the seventh or eighth car. Lando and Max are tied on points… when you see that you stop paying attention,” Fernando said then. Verstappen doesn’t even have an opinion anymore.
Fernando, congratulating Max on his fourth title.DAZN
The fact is that yesterday the Red Bull He did receive recognition first from the team leaders. As if it were a Grand Prix, the managers grant the same distribution of points to the competitors and as always, everyone has participated: Andrea Stella from McLaren, Christian Horner from Red Bull, Mike Krack from Aston Martin, Laurent Mekies RB, Oli Oakes of Alpine, Frédéric Vasseur of Ferrari, James Vowles of Williams, Toto Wolff of Mercedes, Ayao Komatsu of Haas and Alessandro Alunni Bravi of Sauber. And they were resounding, it had never happened that all ten agreed on giving the maximum score to the same pilot like this year.
The pilots, same speech. Among the 17 (only Hamilton and the two from Red Bull were missing to vote), They also promoted Max again as the best, with Norris and Leclerc just behind, Sainz repeats sixth place and Fernando falls from last year’s tremendous third to ninth… surpassing a Hamilton who falls behind him while among the team leaders was ahead. Curious.
