Now – summer break🌞 #MSC47 #HaasF1 /nhv5UcVQDSĮach of the three 2021 rookies has had a difficult start to life in Formula 1, but of them, Schumacher has been the most impressive. Would’ve loved some points this weekend, but really enjoyed the experience. On the whole, Bottas’ first 11 rounds haven’t been a disaster, but haven’t been great either considering he drives a Mercedes, and it is almost certainly not good enough to secure his future with the team. He also retired in Hungary after making a big mistake at the start, taking out a few others too. The lows have been very low indeed though, with the Finn struggling to even get inside the top 10 in Imola and Baku, crashing out of the former after coming together with George Russell while being overtaken by the Williams man. On his day, he has shown that he’s still good enough to battle with the best, out-qualifying Hamilton three times with some stunning laps and putting in a few decent Sunday drives too, standing on the podium six times, four more than Red Bull counterpart Perez. To try and keep his seat for 2022, Bottas would have been aiming to finally take the fight to Lewis Hamilton this season, but instead, it’s largely been more of the same. It hasn’t been a bad season by any means, and he has finished in the top 10 more often than Vettel, but he’s 12 points behind and is second-best on Saturdays, which isn’t quite good enough if he wants to prove he’s World Champion material as he has claimed. He’s also now losing the qualifying head-to-head 7-4.
#F1 2021 ranking drivers
The race in Budapest was one of Stroll’s low points of the year too as he took himself and a few other drivers out at the first corner. Post-Imola, the Canadian has been overtaken by the German in terms of points, and the gap would be huge if the latter wasn’t disqualified in Hungary.
#F1 2021 ranking driver
That wasn’t the case at the start of the year, when he was clearly the strongest Aston Martin driver and looking better than ever, comfortably out-qualifying and out-racing Sebastian Vettel in the first two races, but that has rarely happened since.
In terms of how he has performed compared to the other driver in the same car as him, Stroll has undoubtedly made some progress this year, but is still ultimately losing his intra-team battle. If he had been with Red Bull for longer, he’d probably be a little lower down this list, but given it’s his first year in a car that is notoriously difficult to drive, he’s performed relatively well thus far. However, the Mexican has also made a few costly mistakes that have ended up ruining his race weekends, has struggled in qualifying on multiple occasions and isn’t yet near enough the level of Verstappen on a consistent basis. On one hand, he does already have one race win to his name which is immensely impressive, has only crossed the line outside of the top six twice when he has finished a race and has often been much closer to Max Verstappen than the Dutchman’s previous team-mates were, especially in terms of race pace. With the first half of the 2021 campaign done and dusted, here’s how we rank the 20 driver’s seasons so far.įew drivers on the grid have had as mixed a first half of the year as Checo, as shown by the fact that he’s ended up slap bang in the middle of this ranking.