Formula One Management and the FIA’s efforts to improve the standard of competition in the championship did not pay off last year.
The 2023 season was the second since the aerodynamic regulations were overhauled in a bid to improve racing, and the third since the budget cap was introduced to close up the field. It was also one of the most one-sided ever seen, Red Bull winning all bar one of the 22 grands prix.Since 2008, RaceFans has invited readers to rate every race. But only two of last year’s 22 grands prix feature among the top 100 held during that 15-year spell.
Unsurprisingly, the highest score went to the one truly competitive round held last year, where Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jnr overcame pressure from his Mercedes and McLaren rivals to inflict Red Bull’s sole defeat of the season. That earned an average score of 8.2 out of 10 and is ranked 28th in the top 100.
The only other grand prix from last season to make the cut for the top 100 was the Dutch Grand Prix. Rain often makes for exciting races, and showers at the beginning and end of the race produced a lively encounter, plus a home win for Max Verstappen, earning an average rating of 7.7 out of 10.
This was the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, won by Sergio Perez, which was rated 3.7 out of 10. The ease with which he cruised off into the lead, and the lack of much action behind him, affirmed this as the most underwhelming race of the year in the minds of our readers, on a track often hyped by F1 for producing dramatic races. Among the three races to receive lower scores was the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, which was abandoned after three laps behind the Safety Car due to heavy rain.
F1’s overhaul of its regulations in 2022, which was intended to promote closer racing, has not produced races with significantly higher ratings. Six races from the 2022 season appear in the top 100, and the highest-rated race since the current rules were introduced is that year’s British Grand Prix, ranked 12th with a score of 8.9 out of 10.
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The highest and lowest-scoring races, as rated by our readers, are as follows:
Top five
1. 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix – 9.45/10
2. 2019 German Grand Prix – 9.44/10
3. 2011 Chinese Grand Prix – 9.24/10
4. 2014 Canadian Grand Prix – 9.19/10
5. 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix – 9.14/10
Bottom five
5. 2010 German Grand Prix – 3.74/10
4. 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix – 3.72/10
3. 2019 French Grand Prix – 3.47/10
2. 2020 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – 3.27/10
1. 2021 Belgian Grand Prix – 1.86/10
Based on the ratings of 314 grands prix since the start of 2008*, the Baku City Circuit ranks 25th out of 37 circuits for the quality of racing it produces. The top-rated track on the calendar today remains the Circuit of the Americas: F1 grands prix at the Austin venue have received an average score of 7.5 out of 10.
Another US track, the Miami International Autodrome, is at the bottom of that list, but has only held two races so far. The same goes for the second-lowest rated circuit, Losail International in Qatar.
The latest updates to our race and circuit ratings can be found here:
- Rate the Race: Top 100 Formula 1 grands prix
- Rate the Race: Bottom 10 Formula 1 grands prix
- Rate the Race: Circuit ratings
*The 2014 Japanese Grand Prix is not included due to Jules Bianchi’s crash and the 2023 Mexican Grand Prix is not included due to a technical fault
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bogolo moremong (@bogolo)
20th March 2024, 7:24
a total farce of a “race”. Worst by a country mile.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 7:39
Yeah, that one hopefully remains bottom of the pile forever.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
20th March 2024, 9:09
Except it kinda suggests that the circuit was bad. The main point of that one was that it should never have even been certified as a race.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 10:34
Good point there @dbradock, the issue there was not that the race track in Belgium is no good, but the circumstances with the weather really did not allow a race to take place, but the FIA and F1 went ahead anyway making it an abomination of a “race”.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th March 2024, 12:42
I disagree the conditions didn’t allow a race to take place, it’s happened in the past, it’s the fia and f1 who became too risk averse in recent times.
frood19 (@frood19)
21st March 2024, 6:37
Spa is a legendary track of course, but there have been quite a few dull dry races of late. DRS really takes all the fun out of it – if ever a circuit didn’t need a DRS zone, it’s Spa. The long lap doesn’t help because you see the action that much less often in a race.
Having said that, I was there in 2000 all weekend and that was pretty amazing.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th March 2024, 12:41
The race would’ve been great, I don’t remember if I voted it 1, but if I did my 1 is for f1 for not racing, not to how the race would’ve been, just like my rating to spa 1998 would’ve also been high.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 7:39
I do think that the racing being not too great is largely to do with Red Bull and Verstappen doing so good a job of it and less about the technical regulations. Often enough we see how close the grid is and how the racing through the field is pretty decent.
Off course the CHANGE does factor in, because before this change while it was harder to race, the top teams and the rest of the grid were converging and were close together and the change threw open the form book and was what gave Red Bull the opportunity to get their work done better than all rivals.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
20th March 2024, 9:14
Change has brought most cars (except RBR) closer together, but I don’t think they’ve actually improved racing a lot but more created the dreaded DRS trains where a line of cars just follow the one in front.
Perhaps if they weren’t so harsh on drivers sending it up the inside and making contact, we might see more actually have a crack rather than just settle in and hope the car in fronts tyres give up.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
20th March 2024, 13:44
I think, generally, across the field, races are much more boring now we don’t have as much difference in tyre wear and DRS makes it all pointless after lap 1 (everyone gets back to their position pace-wise very quickly).
Tristan
20th March 2024, 8:02
Ha, not even in the bottom 5, and everyone’s complaining? Some of those comment threads made for great reading… Team orders? Outrageous, how can it be allowed?
Anyway, okay, the sport isn’t dying, let’s go back to enjoying what competition there is, and those raunchy texts.
Gasly v Ocon at the botton who wins?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th March 2024, 12:45
Saying no race is in the bottom 5 yet is talking up the current situation, 1 of those 5 they didn’t allow a race to take place, one of the others is nowhere near that bad, but people got angry because of team orders, you will also find canada 2019 for the same reason among the “worst” races when it was actually good, and one of those races is already in the new red bull domination period, the other one is in the merc dominant period.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th March 2024, 12:45
And france 2019 was a notorious borefest, in a period where the ordinary race was way more interesting than now.
Craig
20th March 2024, 18:25
I think some people like to forget some of these rather significant details. It’s a bit like how Singapore and to some degree Las Vegas from last year are held up so highly because the rest of the season was just so boring. Context really is vital and just because races from the current era aren’t featuring in the ‘top 5 worst’ doesn’t automatically make them good.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
20th March 2024, 8:53
I had a look at France 2019 because it was the only one of the bottom five that I didn’t really remember.
Looking back, I think there was a growing sense of despair about Mercedes dominance at that time – we’d had two seasons in 2017 and 2018 where it appeared that other teams were finally beginning to close the gap, and then in the early part of 2019 it suddenly widened again. France was round 8 of the 2019 season and Mercedes had won all of them, with France being their sixth one-two finish. (They were gifted the win in Canada, but otherwise no one else had been close).
Combine that with a deeply uninteresting race around an uninspiring track (possibly the worst of the 1000+ available layouts at Paul Ricard?) and you can see why the ratings turned out the way they did. Paul Ricard is gone now, but many of the ingredients that combined to make that race a particularly poor one are present again today. So I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two entries from 2024 end up occupying the very lowest end of the list.
jhg103 (@joshgeake)
20th March 2024, 9:13
I remember this feeling from 2019. In 2017 and 2018 we had impassioned and emotional efforts from Ferrari which ultimately succumbed to self-destruction. Then we had to watch Mercedes dominate all over again in that metallic, soulless and mechanical way they always did. There was never any flair in what they did, they just dominated.
Paul Ricard has to be the least inspiring track since…ever?
Fras
20th March 2024, 14:45
Need to remember that out of those 8 races at start of 2019. Ferrari should have won:
Bahrain, China, monaco, Baku and Canada. If it wasn’t for a reliability error and driver errors.
They were also fighting for the Spain win,
Leclerc was the fastest car at 3 of the races and Vettel was fastest at the other 2.
Merc did win the races but they really shouldn’t have won all 8.
AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
20th March 2024, 20:23
I don’t disagree with your point, but China? That looked like a very straightforward Mercedes win.
Dex
20th March 2024, 9:03
To be honest, I don’t remember races that well. It all gets mixed up in my head, even when we talk about a single season, let alone 15 years of racing. This takes a photographic memory. Boring races are easiest to forget, like some of Sochi GP’s .
I admire anyone who can remember more than a few specific races and can tell the exact season, venue and final positions (at least top 3 or 4). I know for a fact that drivers forget that too, and they were there.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
20th March 2024, 14:00
Snap. I admire people who can remember all these specific details about races. My memory just does not do this. I have been watching F1 for 30+ years. So there’s a lot to recall. I can remember some obviously.
dot_com (@dot_com)
20th March 2024, 15:13
I’m so glad you said that! It frustrates me a little when they remember details of a race 5 years ago – I’ve watched every race since 1998 but I barely remember what happened last year, most of the time! Certain races obviously stay in my memory, but most of them are just a blur. Which is actually nice, because I spend quite a lot of time watching archive races on the F1TV app, and I have no idea what’s going to happen next most of the time!
albo94
20th March 2024, 9:12
I like how this ranking accurately depicts how bad 2023 was. I have never felt so bored in years ( 2013, 15 and 20 were also dull).
If the top 100 races were perfectly distributed over 15 years, there should be either six or seven per season. With only 2 in 2023 (and none in the top 20), it is a 70% deficit from average. Crazy.
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
20th March 2024, 13:00
Spot on – lost a lot of love for the sport last year. Incredibly dull. Dull audio, fake racing, winner already decided.
Matteo (@m-bagattini)
20th March 2024, 9:45
I would love to see how average, median and mode moved over the years.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
20th March 2024, 10:22
@m-bagattini Yeah I feel like we’ve got enough seasons now for this sort of thing to be worth doing. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll consider it for the future.
Coventry Climax
20th March 2024, 19:06
I’m no statistics expert, so maybe it’s what you’re already asking for,
but I think races are rated compared to / in the context of what happened only a few races back.
Given how passionate people are about V8’s, 10’s and even 12’s, you’d expect races in the years running these engines to be rated higher on average than when hybrid and V6 was first introduced.
Same with DRS; you might expect races to be rated different since that was introduced, but I think people will measure against the previous race mostly, or at least compare to those that are still somewhat recent and fresh in the memory.
I have no idea how to include such things into it all, and maybe the race ratings aren’t even suited to do such a thing?
But there isn’t much else to go on, is there?
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
20th March 2024, 11:31
There’s more into F1 than single race ratings. 2010 was great even tho the races weren’t exactly the most exciting ever (in general). Because you didn’t know who would be the team to beat coming into the weeked.
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
20th March 2024, 13:01
Agreed – people laud 2010 as an all time great season. The storyline was great, the racing itself was generally very dull. The Bahrain opener was a total snorefest after so much anticipation.
Jere (@jerejj)
20th March 2024, 11:45
I’m surprised neither the 2014 Bahrain GP or the 2015 US GP is in the top 5 or alternatively 2015 Hungarian GP, & likewise, with the bottom 5, some of those races weren’t necessarily that bad, while, for example, a race like the inaugural Abu Dhabi GP could definitely be in the mix.
jamt
20th March 2024, 12:33
Probably there is enough data to evaluate the racing quality over a full season. I wonder which year the racing was better and if there is some interesting trend to be reported.
Somehow I have the idea that every time we have a major change in regulations, the year before their implementation tend to be a “good” one. It is that true?
Prajwal (@prajwal)
20th March 2024, 12:46
Interesting to see that most of the top 5 races are pre-2014 and most of the bottom 5 races are post-2019.
RH
20th March 2024, 16:46
That could just be selection bias. It will be nice to see a distribution of race ratings by year. Maybe it’ll be interesting to see average race rating per season with standard deviation and median for instance.
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
20th March 2024, 12:59
I cannot believe Valencia 2009 didn’t make the cut. 1 overtake, nothing happened, worst race i’ve seen. Unless i’ve miscalculated 15 years…
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
20th March 2024, 13:47
But it threw an unexpected result in Barrichello beating Hamilton to victory. That makes people vote it higher.
Also, there’s context: 2009 was great so a dull-ish race is more beareable than a dull race in a season full of horrible races with predictable results.
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
20th March 2024, 16:18
Did it? I’m sure Brawn were still way ahead at this point. I remember being happy for Rubens, but the actual race was appalling.
K (@sugoi)
20th March 2024, 15:04
2005 US GP: hold my beer.
RH
20th March 2024, 16:45
The takeaway is basically that expected results according to performance often doesn’t sit well and it is in chaos that everyone likes races. Which I frankly agree with. French GP 19 and AD 20 were easily the worst races I’ve seen.
I think 2024 will have a few of these types of races for sure.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
20th March 2024, 17:49
The results are probably skewed by outliers – if you removed them, I suspect 2023 and 2024 are really bad seasons.
There’s also the Alonso and Hamilton effect where almost every race gets +2 points because of them.