Sergio Perez, Red Bull, Hungaroring, 2023

2023 Formula 1 driver rankings #20: Sergio Perez

Formula 1

12th December 2023, 7:1518th December 2023, 16:53 | Written by Will Wood

It is undeniably harsh but inescapably true – Sergio Perez dramatically underachieved in 2023 in one of the greatest Formula 1 cars of all time.

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Whether Red Bull’s RB19 will go down as the best F1 car ever designed will be debated long into the future. After all, the single-lap performance advantage it held over its peers throughout 2023 was nothing compared to the occasionally ridiculous gaps that McLaren’s MP4-4, Williams’ FW14 or Ferrari’s F2002 enjoyed over their competition.

But what isn’t up for debate is the unprecedented level of success Red Bull achieved with the RB19 – almost entirely thanks to Max Verstappen. Although Perez secured his best ever finish in the world championship by taking second place, the fact he did so spoke more for how utterly dominant Red Bull were in 2023 than his team mate’s relentless run of success did.

Following on from an already historic 2022 season in which Verstappen had set an all-time record for most grand prix victories in a season, Perez arrived into 2023 determined that this would be the year he could fight his double-world champion team mate on an equal footing for the title. And once the season began, it appeared that he may have made a genuine step up over the winter.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull, Baku City Circuit, 2023 — Perez scored two early wins, then went off the boil

With two grand prix victories in the opening four rounds in Jeddah and Baku, Perez found himself within striking distance of the world championship lead for the first time in his career, just six points shy of car number one. It didn’t matter that the main reason he had been given the lead on both occasions was because Verstappen had been struck with an element of misfortune – he still kept the world champion behind him once he was ahead.

Then Miami arrived and, with it, an extremely rare Verstappen error. A ruined first Q3 lap left the champion vulnerable and he was punished by a red flag when Charles Leclerc crashed on his final run, leaving Perez on pole with his team mate eight places lower. There was not a better opportunity for him to take the lead of the Formula 1 drivers’ standings than this. And yet, despite leading the bulk of the race under minimal pressure, Perez was caught by Verstappen and could not fend him off in the closing laps, losing a victory that really should have been his.

Whether this was more of a psychological boost for Verstappen or a blow for Perez is impossible to know, but from that fifth round of the season, Perez’s championship utterly collapsed. He left Monaco without a point having crashed out in Q1 and bullied rivals in the race. He was knocked out of Q2 in Spain, then again in Austria after having three separate laps deleted for exceeding track limits in the second round. By the time he arrived in Hungary, Perez had not seen Q3 action for five consecutive rounds.

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With the arrival of Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri that weekend, it was clear that the pressure was starting to get to Perez. So much, it seemed, that he even crashed his car on his first push lap of the weekend in the opening practice session.

Sergio Perez

	Best	Worst
GP start	1 (x2)	20 (x3)
GP finish	1 (x2)	16
Points	285

Back-to-back podiums before the summer break helped steady the ship, but by now Verstappen had run so far away at the head of the championship he may as well have been in a different post code. At least his struggles in Singapore could be blamed on Red Bull simply lacking pace around Marina Bay, but once again he was slower than Verstappen at every point over the weekend and his move on Alexander Albon was utterly amateurish.

Another poor performance followed in Japan, where Perez looked like a rookie crashing into Kevin Magnussen, then was humiliated by having to rejoin the race 40 minutes after pulling out to serve the penalty he received for it. Qatar was no better, either. He missed Q3 yet again, confirmed Verstappen’s championship in the sprint race by getting involved in a three-way crash and then took three separate time penalties in the grand prix for repeated track limits violations, dropping him down to 10th place in a car that his team mate was taking to his 14th grand prix victory.

Perhaps his biggest heartbreak for Perez came at his home grand prix in Mexico. He got one of the best starts of the season and was in position to fight for the lead heading into turn one, but the prospect of leading in front of his faithful fans proved too intoxicating and he made an ill-judged move that saw him hit Leclerc, bounce into the air and suffer significant damage that effectively ended his race on lap one.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull, Zandvoort, 2023 — Perez’s season was strewn with errors

At least he could blame his poor starting position in Brazil on bad luck, having been caught out by yellow flags on his only Q3 effort, but he lost a podium finish in the grand prix when Fernando Alonso outfoxed him on the final lap – then Leclerc did the exact same thing to him at the end of the next race in Las Vegas, for second place.

Despite all his errors, all his inconsistency, all his underachieving, Perez had still, somehow, managed to cement second place in the drivers’ championship. He could have ended a difficult season on a positive note by taking a podium finish in the final round in Abu Dhabi, but a clumsy move on Lando Norris earned him another penalty that left him fourth, while his post-race radio ranting earned him a telling-off from the stewards.

Perez’s 2023 season was not good enough for a veteran driver in any car – but unacceptable for someone in championship-winning machinery. With an average qualifying performance barely better than McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri, fewer pole positions than Leclerc and only two victories in the most successful F1 car ever built, Perez’s performance deserves to be recognised for how bad it truly was.

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Will Wood

Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...
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111 comments on “2023 Formula 1 driver rankings #20: Sergio Perez”

SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
12th December 2023, 7:42
Harsh indeed, but I can’t deny the truth of it.
Bottom line is you can point at “Verstappen is in another league” as much as you want. And I’m sure there will be plenty of “they developed the car away from him” comments as well, as if we’ve seen a vastly different machine from race 1 to race 22. But at the end of the day, nobody was expecting Sergio Perez to beat Max Verstappen. What would have been the lowest expectation is a podium at (almost) every opportunity. When your teammate wins 19 races, you yourself win 2 and your team ends up losing at only one race all season. Anything lower than P3 is equivalent to be getting lapped five times while driving a Haas, frankly. And that’s being generous, by allowing a P3 result instead of a P2 behind his teammate, given how the gaps in qualifying weren’t astronomical.
Let’s see if he can turn things around, but unless the first ten races show a significant change of from in 2024, nobody could blame Red Bull for making another mid-season driver switch.
1. SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
  12th December 2023, 7:42
  change of form*
2. S
  12th December 2023, 8:02
  nobody could blame Red Bull for making another mid-season driver switch.
  Well, why not, I guess…
  Prove to even the most disbelieving of people that Red Bull do consistently develop their cars away from their No.2 drivers – as they simply aren’t interested in them at all, unless they are needed to help win the WDC for No.1.
S
12th December 2023, 7:43
Red Bull’s 2023 car was the most successful Formula 1 car in history. But you wouldn’t have known it watching Sergio Perez driving.
If you ignore the fact that he won two races in it, and took a further 6 podium places… Plus the pole positions and favourable sprint results, of course.
Not to mention the fact that the team developed it to exploit Verstappen’s style far more than Perez’ driving preferences.
Mahesh (@m47e57)
12th December 2023, 7:53
Honestly too harsh. Finished second after all…
1. Asd
  12th December 2023, 9:36
  Yes, but why and how did he finish second? How much of that was attributed to great driving performances better from those who finished behind him?
  Did he finish 2nd because sth…. or did he finish 2nd despite sth… ?
  1. Mahesh (@m47e57)
    12th December 2023, 9:48
    yeh he clearly has his weaknesses. Like his qualifying is generally not good enough, I think if he fixed that he would have been be closer to Max but I don’t think he would ever beat him. In addition, it’s true he made errors etc pointed out above. But I really don’t think you could currently put anyone else in that car against Max and have them come better than second. Maybe Hamilton, maybe Alsono (who was on top form this year). But ultimately I think that they would have still come second.
    1. melanos
      12th December 2023, 11:02
      Alonso would probably have come second, and surely any other competent driver, but the question is the huge gap. More than double the points. I would have expected Alonso to be much, much closer. If the other driver would have done better than Checo, it is anybody’s guess.
      1. ark_keeper
        12th December 2023, 16:09
        Less than 50% podiums in that car is a massive failure. Alonso had 8, Perez only had 9. The car is even more dominant and reliable, you get 3 more sprints to score points, and you end up with less points than the last season?!
      2. gilb66
        12th December 2023, 21:06
        My guess: the driver that equalled Alonso in his rookie year would do better than Perez.
      3. SteveP
        14th December 2023, 8:44
        Alonso would probably have come second,
        Alonso would at the least verbally take apart any engineers who modified the car behaviour away from what he likes
2. anon
  12th December 2023, 21:32
  @m47e57 as others have noted, the attitude seems to be more that Perez finished in 2nd by default thanks to the car that he was driving, and not because of Perez’s performances in themselves. By pretty much any measure, Perez managed to achieve more in 2022, despite the field being closer to Red Bull in terms of performance, than he managed to achieve in 2023 with a larger performance advantage.
  Perez’s average qualifying position went from 4.82 to 8.76 – i.e. he was qualifying about 4 places lower on the grid in 2023 than in 2022 – whilst the average gap between himself and Verstappen in qualifying got about 30% worse.
  His average race finishing position also worsened (from 5.41 to 5.86), which is reflected in Perez also failing to score as many podiums in 2023 as he did in 2022 (11 in 2022 and 9 in 2023).
  Despite the fact that 2023 also saw a doubling in the number of sprint races, Perez also managed to score less points in 2023 (285) than he did in 2022 (305).
  In terms of accidents, Perez also crashed more frequently due to self-inflicted mistakes in 2023 and, when he did crash, the list of parts that had to be changed indicate that Perez was damaging the car more heavily too. When the only figures that went up in 2023 were the number of accidents and cost of his self-inflicted crashes, you have to say that things really were going in the wrong direction.
PacificPR (@streydt)
12th December 2023, 8:00
I think Perez deserves more credit than this ranking, of course his season was mediocre at best – and true he was driving in the best car on the grid and under performing compared to Verstappen. However Perez also had to deal with huge amounts of pressure, especially once his bid to be a championship contender unraveled. Keeping this in mind I think Perez deserves more credit than the likes of Zhou, Magnussen, Hulkeberg, Bottas a.o. Furthermore looking back at the history of F1 it’s often the real champions like Senna, Schumacher, Max or even Mansell – that seem to be able to maximize the potential of their cars while their teammates couldn’t. For example Senna vs Berger and Mansell vs Patrese. It would have been great if Perez could have matched Verstappen, but I fear for Perez he never will – accepting that might take away the pressure. This doesn’t take away that I would much prefer to see Verstappen being teamed up with a driver that does have championship potential.
1. S
  12th December 2023, 8:04
  especially once his bid to be a championship contender unraveled.
  That was never a thing. Perez knows which team he is driving for, and what’s written in his contract.
2. Alex
  12th December 2023, 8:19
  I’m with you for a lot of what you said in this note, but I’ll just add that rankings are hard when the whole world reads them… you can always raise a challenge.
  For me, Perez has some races (too few) where he raced like we know he can / put in the kind of performance you might see from someone like Sainz… but also showed inconsistency, especially in qualifying, and has some weekends that were wasted.
  That description could apply to Stroll and Magnussen, and probably Zhou as well (I think Hulk and Bottas both did clearly better)
  Those comparisons are damning for driver as good as Perez has been in the past, but they’re fair ones. And if he’s close to Zhou / Stroll / Magnussen – one of those four has to take 20th.
3. Red Andy (@red-andy)
  12th December 2023, 10:20
  It was the best car, but with an advantage that was generally measured in tenths rather than whole seconds (unlike, say, the early years of Mercedes dominance). With the rest of the field so closely matched it was inevitable that Perez, who was unable to extract those last couple of tenths as consistently as his teammate, would often fall behind other cars even when Verstappen wouldn’t.
  Does that merit him being ranked behind drivers like – for example – Stroll, who failed to make the best of the most competitive car he’s even driven, or the Alpine pair, who were anonymous all season except for when they were arguing over the radio or crashing into one another? I don’t think so, personally. But obviously your view of how well Perez performed is coloured by your perception of Verstappen’s performance and the perennial ‘driver vs. car’ debate.
  1. Bob
    12th December 2023, 12:28
    Perez was on average 0.43 slower than max in race pace, every body else was 0.64 + slower, with Oscar in his McLaren some 1.13 slower. https://twitter.com/fiagirly/status/1731745296168669194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1731745296168669194%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=
    1. Jockey Ewing
      12th December 2023, 22:36
      Interesting graph, so according to this Bottas was slower than Sargeant and Zhou and de Vries over the course of the season (or considering their whole participation). And Lawson who was fairly good, was slower than everyone.
      The gaps betewwn the faster end of the drivers seems legit, but the aformentioned ones are interesting for me.
      Maybe Bottas was on track sometimes, even for many laps to do testing after effectively giving up races? Or maybe the creator of the stat have not excluded very slow laps, and Bottas had a bit more of those too? It would be nice to see the methodology used when this stat was created. Also when I have opened it and enlarged it to see it in fullscreen on my monitor, it seemd to be quite annoyingly blurry, questionably professional quality when it comes to image editing.
      It would be nice to have a database about F1 seasons to create my own queries to run against that db.
      1. Jockey Ewing
        12th December 2023, 22:44
        Although if it is all legit, then Bottas was very effective at scoring points and with sometimes being in contention for points with this pace.
4. Todfod (@todfod)
  12th December 2023, 10:50
  I agree. I think Perez has been absolute rubbish after Baku, yet he’s not been as bad as some of the other drivers on the grid this season, who probably wouldn’t even be able to secure P2 in the WDC despite driving a Red Bull.
  I don’t see how Lance Stroll was better than Perez this season.. that guy was miserable in what was the 2nd quickest car at times. Stroll got beaten in a more convincing manner by Alonso, than Perez did by Verstappen.
  Zhou and Magnussen were pretty miserable as well. Do you honestly believe that either Zhou or Magnussen would have taken a win in a Red Bull all season long? I seriously doubt it.
  If I had to rank the bottom 6 drivers, it would be –
  22) De Vries
  21) Sargeant
  20) Stroll
  19) Zhou
  18) Magnussen
  17) Perez
  1. checofan
    12th December 2023, 12:52
    To be honest we don’t know how others would fare in RB19 compared to Perez but we know how he did.
    1. W.m. Bravenboer
      12th December 2023, 19:27
      We have one: Ricciardo came close to Max’ times at Silverstone after only a few laps.
kuvemar
12th December 2023, 8:30
Completely justified and I say this as someone who’s been a Checo fan since his debut. An absolutely shameful performance and I’m not liking his change of character in the last two seasons as well. There is no excuse for not coming second in every race with this car and he has only himself to blame that he didn’t.
1. elvira
  12th December 2023, 8:43
  Given that it’s Perez I think the yardstick should be set much lower ie. no excuse for not at least being in with a chance at second (on most tracks).
Nick T.
12th December 2023, 8:32
He may be a much better in a midfield car with a forgiving setup, but he was absolutely atrocious in the RBR. I think Alonso ended up having more podiums that Perez and I know for a fact Alonso had about double the amount of Q3 appearances. Pretty confident even Stroll would have had more than two wins.
1. Nick T.
  12th December 2023, 8:33
  BTW, let me add that I’ve always liked Sergio. However, him in that seat makes F1 unnecessarily predictable and that’s a very bad thing.
2. AlexT
  12th December 2023, 13:09
  Truly Harsh. For a driver who finished 2nd in the WDC after all. He was not magnificent as Max but he’s far better than than half the field of drivers, even with a mediocer season. At worst, he should be ranked no lower than 10th.
Electroball76
12th December 2023, 8:55
I think it’s very tempting to say ‘Driver X would do much better in that car than Checo’. We have already seen a whole bunch of drivers try, and fail, to master the second RB.
In recent seasons nearly half the grid are current or former ‘RedBull family’ drivers.
Who could take Checo’s place and challenge Max for the Championship? Alonso or Lewis, probably. Lando or Leclerc, possibly. Piastri as a wildcard? Everyone else has either tried already or seems a bit unlikely.
I think RedBull will only be agonizing over whether Sergio or Daniel is the better option right now.
1. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
  12th December 2023, 9:12
  Couldn’t agree more. This rating is too harsh, he underachieved but there is not a chance in hell he was the 20th worse driver this season.
2. MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
  12th December 2023, 11:18
  A returning Sebastian Vettel?
  (Long shot I know.)
  1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
    12th December 2023, 12:27
    Obviously vettel would probably be much better than what we’ve seen since 2018 if he were back into a car that suited him, however I think verstappen is performing more consistently near the potential of the car than vettel was during his red bull winning years.
keith
12th December 2023, 8:56
OK, I agree that the numbers are damning and on face value Max and others smashed him but what we don’t know is what freedom he had in direction and set up and in a team that is clearly centred around Max and his success its likely very difficult to assert yourself. I’m not making excuses he made some poor judgements and ill-conconcieved moves but I also recall that he struggled with balance and brake set up in the first part of the season and that may have been down to having to adopt a ‘Max set-up’ that he couldn’t get comfortable with. Remember how other drivers (Berger, Alessi) struggled with Schumacher’s set up when they first tested the Benetton? We saw a similar thing with DR at McLaren in a car that had largely been built around Lando’s feedback. All I’m saying is the guy can drive, he’s not Max or Lewis or Fernando – he may not even be a match for DR but he’s not Stroll either. The first 3rd of 2024 will be telling. If he’s not delivering consistant results by Monaco he probably won’t see the season out with RB. His best play is to focus on finishing as close to Max as possible and work from there to narrow the gap. Don’t try and beat him from the get go, rather aim to wear him down and if Max has some misfortune Checo will be there to benefit.
1. Robert Henning
  12th December 2023, 10:55
  The RB was a good car for Perez to drive before Max started to beat him. It is purely an issue of talent.
  Red Bull officially upgraded the least in 2023. So the car didn’t even change much.
  Perez scored less in 2023 than 2022.
LosD (@losd)
12th December 2023, 9:17
Oooooooof.
But fair.
Patrick (@anunaki)
12th December 2023, 10:02
I think this ranking is way too harsh. Perez is not capable to drive a very difficult car as fast as Max, sure. But drivers like for example Stroll, Zhou and Magnussen were no better than him and probably some others as well.
1. MichaelN
  12th December 2023, 11:39
  Agreed. There are a lot of drivers in the lower midfield who did absolutely nothing noteworthy. Pérez, for all his woes, still took poles and wins.
  1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
    12th December 2023, 12:32
    Keeping in mind those poles and wins are probably worth 1-2 points for guys in midfield cars, they’re not THAT impressive.
Michael
12th December 2023, 10:02
Too harsh ranking.Stroll,Magnussen and Sargent for example had way worse seasons.Perez was not great but he was against Max Verstappen who had the best season(statistical at least) of all time.I think at least 14 drivers on this grid would perform the same or even worse against Max.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
12th December 2023, 10:04
I don’t agree with this rating. Sergio is worse than Daniel? No, I don’t think so, but that is what this rating says. His WDC points beat every other driver except Max. Ignoring retirements, Sergio only completed one race outside of the points. If we include his retirements then there were three races where he didn’t leave the Grand prix with points, which is a very respectable result. Only Max and Lewis finished the season with less no-points races. There’s a good reason Daniel hasn’t replaced Sergio, and that is Daniel isn’t as good as Sergio. While Sergio hasn’t produced as many wins or points as Max has, that isn’t Sergio’s job. His job is to be a credible support to Max, and that is what he has done.
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:35
  I’d say if we go look at their f1 peak, ricciardo should be better than perez indeed, he’s been closer to verstappen when they were team mates and he was kind of a top driver himself when he was at a top team, which I don’t think perez has ever been.
  If we go look at this season, perez, apart from early on in the season, severely underperformed, while ricciardo was sometimes good, sometimes meh, which makes him the one who had the better season, though I wouldn’t trust at all putting him in the red bull with what he showed so far.
2. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:37
  Also there’s absolutely no way what perez did this season can be considered credible support to verstappen, let’s speed up the mercedes to red bull level and perez with this season could do absolutely nothing to support verstappen vs hamilton, it would be a 1 vs 1 situation, in fact russell would be in the mix more often.
3. TylerS
  12th December 2023, 19:52
  Verstappen only completed one race outside of second place. In such a dominant car nobody would have faulted Perez for coming 2nd to Max every race. But he was struggling to hold onto 2nd in the championship until the final 2 races, against Lewis is a far slower car. It’s very fair to say that Perez failed to extract anywhere near as much pace from his car as was expected of him, but that’s exactly what he’s supposed to do. As a result, he gets a very low driver ranking, regardless of his final points tally. That tally should’ve been significantly higher.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
12th December 2023, 10:36
I’m enjoying the pictures on these. What ranking will they stop showing the driver trudging away from a wreck? About 16th, or higher than that?
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:38
  Yes, I suppose, just the last few will have that, so if anything I’d expect it to happen even earlier (as in 17th+).
2. notagrumpyfan
  12th December 2023, 13:39
  Where is your full ranking @bullfrog?
  I thought it was you who put out a full ranking with explanations next to each.
  1. Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
    12th December 2023, 15:12
    Have you confused me with someone else? I’m here for reviews and ratings by Will, not from the likes of me.
    1. notagrumpyfan
      12th December 2023, 17:27
      Probably.
      There is this contributor who always leaves long (but interesting) reviews of all drivers.
      I saw it yesterday, but today couldn’t find it anymore.
3. Shimks (@shimks)
  13th December 2023, 13:25
  Very funny observation, @bullfrog. :)
Robert Henning
12th December 2023, 10:53
So Red Bull sandwich.
It is a bit harsh. I’d have had him outside top 10 after the stinkers he dropped. Maybe close to 15.
But then he’s getting rated badly because of the car he’s driving. Not because of his own performances discounting Verstappen so there’s that.
Good fun exercise but too perception biased.
1. S
  12th December 2023, 11:11
  too perception biased.
  That’s entirely it – it’s all just one person’s opinion.
  It’s not objectively right or wrong, because there is no right or wrong here.
  Clearly the author feels that the guy in Red Bull’s second car should be superhuman, and has rated him simply for not meeting that imaginary expectation.
2. GechiChan (@gechichan)
  13th December 2023, 7:50
  Of course it’s all about perception with rankings, but the main thing with Perez is that he’s not achieving at least 90% of the car’s potential. And what a car that was… it’s just a shame to know that the team put huge efforts & talent into building such an impressive car and one of your drivers regularly exists in Q1 /Q2 or crashes out. It’s almost disrespectful, imo.
Jere (@jerejj)
12th December 2023, 11:42
The bottom three are more or less as I expected with Lance presumably coming next.
BMW P85 V10
12th December 2023, 12:02
Putting Perez on the Nr. 20 spot measuring his overall performance is a bit to hard for the runner up in 2023’s Championship. I agree he doesn’t deserve a top spot in the rankings either but there’s more to it then the numbers tell.
As Perez won two out four of first GP’s of the season the media was immediately there to position him in the center of the title fight. Some of the media where just hoping on some more competion for Max others media where more into turning Red Bull’s smooth ride into a rough ride with internal problems. Perez was vulnareble for what the media told about him.
Second, the pressure from the homefront of Perez (to include his dad with his irratic statements) was also huge.
But his good results made him actually think he could run for the championship.
At the same time Max used his compromised race in Baku to play with his car settings and found what was like a holy grale for him in terms of setup, leaving him in a much better form for Miami.
Right after his second season win and genually thinking he was in content Perez suffered his first blow on the nose from Max, who simply took al there was to have for Perez.
After that Max kept hammering on Perez’nose while the media and his Mexican friends surely didn’t want to let go of Perez’ title ambitions. At that point Perez broke down and it toke a whole while to get on top of things again.
Other drivers that might have done better:
Alonso: prefers understeer over oversteer, which could bring him the same position as Perez.
Hamilton: Prefers a neutral car and not that is so pointy at the front and loose at the end. Most likely he couldn’t deal with the RB19 to.
Leclrec: might have surpised Max in qualifying and even some races, but his lack of constanty would break him up also.
And I wonder if the RB19 was the fastest car all season, for sure it was in Max’ hands, but it surely wasn’t in qualifying. Perez race pace (as a known tire whisperer) wasn’t always on par with the competion, while Max was always able to squeeze out som extra tenths.
Rolfski (@rolfski)
12th December 2023, 12:37
And this article doesn’t even deep-dive into his average race pace against his teammate, which makes him look even worse. He went as bad as losing a whopping 4s per lap in Zandvoort against Max but more often he was over half a second slower per lap under similar circumstances, which is beyond acceptable for any team boss.
Still, I would rank him higher though. In the end, he did what Red Bull paid him to do and while slower than Max, often showed good race craft on Sundays.
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:40
  I really doubt red bull paid him to get 50% of his team mate’s points, more like 70-75%. Especially with such a car, even if you have a team mate winning all races, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to demand consistent 2nd places and that would give around 75%, depending on FL.
2. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:41
  As for zandvoort, I think that’s one thing perez has shown to be pretty consistent: he’s terrible in the rain, race after race after race.
Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
12th December 2023, 12:40
Although I have been very critical of Perez taking the other Red Bull seat, there is no way I can agree with him being only the 20th best driver of the season.
Based on the comments above, most of the commentators also disagree with this ranking. Which begs the question… Are these rankings simply based on the average RaceFans driver ratings from each race?
If that is indeed the case, then there will certainly be several other rankings that will be very hard to agree with. Just to name a few:
– Ricciardo ranked 5th.
– Russell ranked 8th while Hamilton is 9th.
– Sainz ranked 14th.
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  12th December 2023, 12:46
  I’ve been critical before of rankings being identical to the race ratings, but that’s not fully the case this year: you have de vries behind sargeant, while in the average he ended up ahead, so I’m sure ricciardo and most likely lawson, who had few races, will not be ranked in the same place as the race ratings.
  Sainz 14th I would indeed disagree, should be definitely better ranked, and hamilton should definitely be ahead of russell, and probably by a few places.
  As for perez, I’m not sure: his season was terrible, and so was stroll’s, they both had very few good races, I think I will be one of the minority who agrees with perez 20th, don’t really know who else would’ve clearly done worse, with stroll it’s very close imo.
2. Will Wood (@willwood)
  12th December 2023, 12:54
  I mentioned in the #22 article, but the rankings are not based solely on the average ratings this season.
  1. Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
    12th December 2023, 13:01
    Ok, good to know!
3. notagrumpyfan
  12th December 2023, 13:58
  – Ricciardo ranked 5th.
  From the ratings Ricciardo sits at an average 6.0 (the last bar chart after the LVGP was wrong).
  I expect him to sit next to Lawson at the lower end of the top-10.
  Also Hamilton is still rated higher than Russell.
  Sainz will be interesting one.
  PS in the average rating Perez is sitting ahead of Stroll.
  1. Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
    12th December 2023, 14:06
    My calculations were based on that Las Vegas bar chart plus Abu Dhabi ratings and I got Russell higher than Hamilton. But sure, if there are mistakes in that Las Vegas chart, my calculations might be incorrect.
    1. notagrumpyfan
      12th December 2023, 17:29
      TBH I didn’t recalculate Hamilton vs Russell. I assumed that the gap was too wide to be overcome in 1 race.
    2. notagrumpyfan
      12th December 2023, 17:35
      Checked it now, and indeed Russell overtook Hamilton in the last race by 1 cumulative rating point.
      My mistake, sorry.
      1. A M (@amam)
        13th December 2023, 19:10
        Many were complaining that Hamilton was being marked too harshly (for whatever reason). Russell being ahead by 1 points kinda backs that up.
F1 frog (@f1frog)
12th December 2023, 12:51
Perez had the best car in 21 races and finished in the top two in 6 races. So including Singapore, he dropped points in 16 races out of 22.
1. notagrumpyfan
  12th December 2023, 17:37
  @f1frog,
  Is it you who left the detailed ranking and season performance analysis below an earlier article?
  1. F1 frog (@f1frog)
    12th December 2023, 19:16
    Yes but it got deleted.
Dex
12th December 2023, 13:03
The thing is, put any other driver (top 5 or 6 excluded) in his place, they would all perform relatively similarly I’m sure. But that’s the difference of having Max Verstappen for a reference, of having Gasly, Magnussen, Tsunoda or Bottas for example. That’s why I think that this is unfair, because it’s based on assumption that being compared to Verstappen is the same as being compared to other any random teammate. Sure, he could be closer and pressure got to him, but in the end even Ferrari or Mercedes drivers would probably suffer similar faith, not to mention Perez who always seemed just slightly above average (weak qualifier, above average in races).
melanos
12th December 2023, 13:15
Bit harsh. Checo’s early efforts this season, with 2 wins in the first 4 racing weekends and still challenging Max, should be acknowledged somehow, even if after Miami he was nowhere.
I guess that if the seasons results had been exactly the same but in reverse order with Checo shining in the last 4 GPs, his ranking would have been quite higher. Memory plays those tricks on us. Truism: you’re as good as your last 3 races.
Ankita
12th December 2023, 13:24
This harsh ranking is not against PER but againt VER. It’s denying that VER is way above everyone else. The argument in the English media/websites is as follows: PER was so terrible even in the best car anyone could have won the championship with. The idea here is to try to diminish what VER achieved. PER is just the collateral victim of the campaign against VER orchestrated from the island …
At any rate, PER’s season was poor but, really the worst ? He won two races on merit, he was second in the standings by a margin.
1. MichaelN
  12th December 2023, 14:32
  At any rate, PER’s season was poor but, really the worst ?
  There’s definitely some exaggeration going on here. But Verstappen hasn’t been this much better than Pérez even just last year. Pérez really did have a particularly poor season, and even if he was never really going to challenge Verstappen (that was just a narrative spun to ‘save’ the interest in the championship early on), he still had no business being off the podium more often than he was on it in this car. Ranking him 20th is a bit overdone, but he is definitely not in the top 10 either.
  And while emphasizing the performance of the car might detract a bit from Verstappen, it’s also true that Red Bull did have a significant advantage, especially in the races. Though they rarely had to show all their cards, the fact that Verstappen could quite easily recover from pretty much every set-back showed they usually had plenty of pace in hand. Tellingly, it was only when he had to fight another Red Bull in Azerbaijan that he failed to recover from an inopportune safety car call.
Señor Sjon
12th December 2023, 13:26
At least he is leading the penalty point list.
Dane
12th December 2023, 14:37
Oooff
That feels too harsh, but it’s probably the honest answer.
Peter707
12th December 2023, 15:05
I don’t think it is particularly harsh. Apart from the first few races, his performance was very poor, definitely behind that of Zhou or Magnussen. I would rank him 19th, just ahead of Stroll.
He finished runner-up only due to the huge fluctuation in the field, the second-best car changing from month to month among Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Aston.
Richard71
12th December 2023, 15:57
This is just ridiculous, he finished second in the points so the only conclusion we can make for ranking him 20th is he’s being judged by the potential of the car which is mostly what the article states. By ranking him 20th though the writer is saying every driver ahead of him would have done better than Perez in the same car. He scored 50% of the first place and team cars points. Stroll only scored 36% of what his team car did and in doing so cost them at least one spot in the constructors championship. If you are going to judge Perez for failure to capitalize on the cars performance level you have to do the same for every other car and simple math shows that at least Stroll got less out of his car compared to Alonzo than Perez did compared to Max.
Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
12th December 2023, 18:47
As a Checo fan I can’t say he’s been in the top 10 of F1 drivers this year… 20th seems harsh though.
1. Janith
  12th December 2023, 20:59
  Who cares? Man is racking up podiums and 1, 2 wins every season. Then have a strong season in a midfield team beating a teammate. Nobody would care how awful he was this season he was compared to his teammate
  1. Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
    12th December 2023, 22:07
    Because I’m a fan and I think people are judging him overly harshly? Like I said I’m not even pretending he’s in the top 10 drivers for the entire season, but he’s had a few races where he was the one of the best. So putting him down in 20th 2 places above dead last doesn’t seem right. I get it’s based on his results vs Max. But considering the level Max has been operating at it’s going to skew the results massively and make most drivers on the grid look like amateurs.
    1. Janith
      13th December 2023, 9:27
      Agree about your last point. But Perez had his chance already. He is not good enough. I think he should have been dumped already after the 2022 season. But I mean Webber, Bottas, Barrichello stayed for so long in top teams with very little performance. It’s the system(it’s awful) but it is what it is
Ronpad
12th December 2023, 18:51
Putting Perez below Stroll is just ridiculous. The gap between Alonso and Stroll was much bigger. This is just trying to stir the pot (and succeeding).
1. Janith
  12th December 2023, 20:55
  Actually Stroll was closer to Alo than Perez was to Verstappen
2. Addme (@dontme)
  12th December 2023, 21:51
  Seems fair. The only thing Perez had to do was show up, start the car and wait for the straight to press DRS. Other drivers actually had to race.
  1. Craig
    12th December 2023, 23:08
    And even then after the first couple rounds he seemed to suddenly lack that straight line speed.
W (@vishnusxdx)
12th December 2023, 20:38
This ranking reminds me of the overly harsh Kimi Raikkonen ranking Racefans produced. Not very logical and more fabricated towards comments than it was built on logic. But it’s in line with the ridiculous driver score system, so at least consistent in that I guess.
1. Janith
  12th December 2023, 20:56
  Kimi Raikkonen should have been ranked much lower in every year he competed with Ferrari minus 2016 maybe
Janith
13th December 2023, 1:45
I mean Perez is overstaying at Red Bull for whatever reason but hard to criticize the guy when his predecessors fared no better(Albon, Gasly). Max is actually THAT good?
1. Esploratore (@esploratore1)
  13th December 2023, 4:07
  It’s very clear perez did NOT perform at his usual level after the first few races: take the first 4-5 races perez, he wasn’t far from verstappen, I don’t see how that reflects well on verstappen? Barely beating a midfield driver?
  He’s not THAT good, he’s still probably the best driver atm, but what’s clear to me is that perez after the first few races this season, albon especially since his 2nd red bull season and gasly pretty much all his red bull stint performed well below what they’re capable of.
2. Janith
  13th December 2023, 6:46
  Lolz. Ignorance. Max is THAT good. He is an alien racing amongst humans. Albon was embarrassing in 2020. 17-0 lol. And this year he is one of the best drivers. Max is something else. Haha
3. Peter707
  13th December 2023, 9:55
  The team is THAT toxic. Gasly and Albon were definitely underperforming. Perez was an exception, he was able to deliver in his more or less usual form until this year.
  1. Janith
    14th December 2023, 9:38
    Lolz. Definitely not. Albon had a higher percentage of points in 2020 than Perez did in 2021 or 2023.
Oxnard (@montalvo)
13th December 2023, 2:39
Perez had a bad season, not a 20th out of 22 bad season though. The RB19 is not the quali monster other dominating cars of the past have been. Cars that were half a second or more faster on a quali lap. Plus this year had quite a thick best-of-the-rest field, making it quite difficult to carbe through the field.
The man has won two races, with a bit of luck yes, but still against one of the best drivers ever to compete in F1.
But besides that, did Stroll have a better season? Zhou? Who never seems to be able to punch above his weight. Bottas? Who seems more busy with his nude calendar, moustache and haircut rather than his racing. Magnussen? Who had a full year of experience in these newer cars, only to be given driving lessons by Hulkenberg.
1. Janith
  13th December 2023, 6:49
  Stop comparing drivers in rocketships to drivers in mere tractors. Perez was awful this season compared to his teammate. Only Sargeant did worse
  1. MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
    13th December 2023, 7:16
    I still don’t see anyone who would have done a better job than Perez did. He still won two races, RB got the 1-2 in the drivers championship and the constructors title too. Job done and all boxes ticked.
    1. Janith
      13th December 2023, 9:22
      Be objective. Most of the grid are very fast. But Perez is incredibly lucky to be driving what he is driving now for the 4th year in a row with very little performance to speak of against Max. He is now completely broken. I have never seen a worse performing top team driver for so long in F1 than Perez
      1. MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
        13th December 2023, 12:18
        Specify someone who would have done better.
      2. MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
        13th December 2023, 15:26
        Just saying that second Red Bull would be an extreme challenge for any driver, not just Perez. I’m not sure Tsunoda or Ricciardo would have fared much better. Maybe… but also maybe not.
    2. Janith
      14th December 2023, 9:36
      Don’t be ridiculous. He got lucky with timing. The Red Bulls got faster and faster every year since 2020. If Albon drove the 2021 Red Bull he wouldn’t be loosing his seat.
      1. MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
        14th December 2023, 10:40
        Be that as it may, but Albon isn’t there now.
        Also, Mexico has a population of around 129 million people = a large market for Red Bull.
Jim (@jimgogo)
13th December 2023, 3:16
F1 is a real travesty when a particular season has such a dominant team/car but not an equal driver pairing. Look at Schumacher/Barichello/Hamilton/Bottas and now Verstappen/Perez. I’m sure Red Bull thinks it’s great, no inter-team rivalry, no taking each other out etc but this is at the severe detriment of the sport, it creates a season as dull as dishwater to view.
Seasons with one dominant team/car don’t have to be so boring, Mercedes with Hamilton/Rosberg between 2014-2016 is a prime example of that. F1 and the teams need to do better not to let this happen.
Hakk the Rack
13th December 2023, 18:24
This is a joke. He is a 1992 Patrese. He came 2nd. He made 0 troubles to Max, what was Red Bull’s point in 2023. He’s a dream number 2 therefore the harmony inside the team is as good as during Schumi-Rubens days.
A M (@amam)
13th December 2023, 18:57
Perez struggled to secure P2 against Hamilton who drove a much slower, temperamental car. P20 is a fair ranking. IMO the only other driver who was as bad as Perez, was Stroll.
1. Patrick (@anunaki)
  13th December 2023, 19:51
  The same happened with Bottas vs Verstappen during the Mercedes dominance but I can’t remember Bottas being 20th in the ranks.
  1. Peter707
    13th December 2023, 20:57
    The same happened with Bottas (classic second driver breakdown), but none of his seasons were this poor.
    His worst year was 2018, but even then he scored 8 podiums despite Mercedes not being particularly dominant (winning 11 out of 21 races). Compare this with Checo’s 9 podium of this year while Max winning 19 out of 22.
    1. A M (@amam)
      14th December 2023, 10:23
      Please don’t compare Bottas in 2018 to Perez in 2023. In 2018, Ferrari had an equal car to Merc. In fact, AMuS rated Ferrari the fastest car of 2018. In 2023, Perez drove a rocketship.
      1. Peter707
        14th December 2023, 20:05
        Indeed. Bottas and Perez had similar results in their worst year, but only Perez drove a rocketship.That’s why Valtteri has never been ranked this low.
Olivier
13th December 2023, 23:56
I don’t agree. Perez didn’t have a great season and fully deserved to be in the bottom 5, but 20th? After winning 2 races and beating Max “the second coming “ Verstappen? I mean as much as I like Riccardo, arguably he didn’t do much this year, and both Stroll and Sargent were flatten by their teammates and what do they have to show for?
Daniel
14th December 2023, 1:08
Makes no sense, lot of these people not taking into consideration that the pressure Checo had was crazy high and having a racist boss didn’t help. I would put him at 12.
Richard71
14th December 2023, 19:19
If you apply the writers logic to the other teams Piastri, Stroll and Magnussen should all be ranked lower than Perez. They all got less out of their car compared to their sister car than Perez did. I can though see an argument for Piastri being higher using this logic since he did it as a rookie.
jpvalverde85 (@jpvalverde85)
18th December 2023, 22:08
Too much hate in this site to put Checo that far, after all he was just getting his job done as he could with a car not built nor upgraded for him. Yeah Checo could have done better, but dont fool yourselves, at the first races the car was relatively neutral and he did well, then he opened his mouth about a title fight, development pointed to Max style an everything went downhill from there, is so obvious that hurts. By the way, if you have not seen it, Max drives with a very strong front end, Checo like Lewis usually prefers a strong rear end and manages the understeer, can anyone say that Dan Ric is a bad driver after a bad year on Macca? Nyck also couldnt find his mojo on that AT and the team certainly sacked him violently, he didnt deserve that, after all they are human beings and the cars are machines built by human beings, things can go south. There are no points for effort but even factoring the car performance, Checo wasnt that bad, not stellar either, probably around 10-15th on the rankings.
Dale
21st December 2023, 23:04
What a joke.
Will Wood … credibility as an F1 journo = ZERO
You’re missing a great sport behind all those biases Will. See a therapist.