At the beginning of last year we asked RaceFans readers which of the 20 drivers on the grid would beat their team mates over the course of the season.
You correctly named seven of the 10 winners. But three drivers fell short of your expectations.Two of them are without an F1 drive for 2025 and are likely at the end of their careers. But the other faces one of the biggest challenges of his career to date, amid claims his form last year shows he’s no longer the force he once was.
The expected winners of 2024
Pierre Gasly vs Esteban Ocon
71.6% said Gasly would win
There was little to choose between the two Alpine drivers and long-term rivals when they first teamed up in 2023. Pierre Gasly pipped Esteban Ocon by just four points.
The second time around, more of you were confident Gasly would lead the way, and he did, by 38 to 23. But that didn’t tell the whole story: Ocon scored the team’s best result of the year with second place in Brazil, and didn’t have access to their best parts at the end of the season as he was on his way to Haas. Still, Gasly can consider himself the narrow winner in what looked like a grudge match at times.
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Charles Leclerc vs Carlos Sainz Jnr
74.3% said Leclerc would win
Carlos Sainz Jnr out-scored Charles Leclerc in their first season together as team mates at Ferrari and nearly did so again in 2023. More than a quarter of our readers fancied his chances of doing so again, but even factoring out his missed appearance in Jeddah this was a clear 340-290 points win for Leclerc.
Lando Norris vs Oscar Piastri
81.7% said Norris would win
Oscar Piastri made an excellent start to his Formula 1 career at McLaren in 2023. He showed a lot of promise in the second half of the season especially.
That emboldened quite a few of our readers – almost one in five – to predict he would beat Lando Norris in their second season as team mates. It did not come to pass, however, partly because Norris raised his game as he went up against Max Verstappen in the championship fight. Norris led Piastri 374 to 292 at the end of the year, the pair collecting enough points between them for McLaren to win the constructors’ championship.
Nico Hulkenberg vs Kevin Magnussen
83.4% said Hulkenberg would win
The Haas drivers only made occasional forays into the points during 2023, and Nico Hulkenberg’s sixth place finish in Australia was the main reason he came out ahead.
Both drivers picked up far more points last year as the VF-24 proved far kinder to its tyres and Haas’s upgrades worked as intended. Hulkenberg led the way once again though, out-scoring Magnussen 41-16, as most of our readers expected.
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Fernando Alonso vs Lance Stroll
98.4% said Alonso would win
The next three votes were by far the most emphatic and in each case the expected winner did not disappoint. Lance Stroll has not out-scored a team mate since joining his father’s team in 2019 and that didn’t change last year, Fernando Alonso thumping him by 70 points to 24.
Alexander Albon vs Logan Sargeant
98.9% said Albon would win
Almost no one expected Logan Sargeant to out-score Alexander Albon. Sure enough, he failed to collect a single point before his season ended early at the Dutch Grand Prix, during which time Albon picked up four.
But how many would have tipped Franco Colapinto to do so well as Sargeant’s replacement?
Max Verstappen vs Sergio Perez
99.5% said Verstappen would win
Only one person tipped Sergio Perez to out-score Max Verstappen. To be fair to Perez, his season began relatively well, then went off the rails badly and never recovered. His 437-152 defeat to Verstappen may well be the final word on his 15-year F1 career.
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The unexpected losers of 2024
Daniel Ricciardo vs Yuki Tsunoda
68.4% said Ricciardo would win
It wasn’t just the RaceFans readership who predicted Daniel Ricciardo would fare better than he did at RB last year – the Red Bull leadership clearly expected more. But he never consistently had the upper hand over team mate Yuki Tsunoda, and eventually Red Bull realised the magic was gone, and cut him loose, by which time he was 12-20 down on points.
Lewis Hamilton vs George Russell
72.2% said Hamilton would win
George Russell out-scored Lewis Hamilton during their first season as team mates. However that year Hamilton bore the brunt of the team’s early experiments to work out how they got the W13 so badly wrong, which arguably compromised his points-scoring.
This year was a different matter. Heading for the exit at Mercedes, Hamilton never got comfortable with his car’s performance over a single flying lap and often found himself playing catch-up as a result. Even Russell’s disqualification at Spa, which handed victory to Hamilton and a massive points swing in his favour, couldn’t stop the younger driver coming out on top by 245 to 223.
What that says about Hamilton’s abilities as he heads into his fifth decade is one of the most intriguing questions for the upcoming season and his big-money move to Ferrari.
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Valtteri Bottas vs Zhou Guanyu
76.2% said Bottas would win
More than three-quarters of our readers expected Valtteri Bottas would continue to out-score Zhou Guanyu at Sauber. But while he was consistently their best performer over the season, Sauber had the slowest car on the grid on average and were therefore at the mercy of their rivals’ performance in terms of points-scoring opportunities.
In Qatar, one of their better weekends, Bottas was hit by Liam Lawson, and Zhou grabbed his chance to score the team’s sole points of the year with eighth place. It proved moot, however, as at the end of the year both Sauber drivers were dropped.
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spoutnik (@spoutnik)
6th January 2025, 8:06
It would be nice to include the poll articles for each team battles, just to remember the votes each one did at the time.
I think my only prediction mistake was Bottas vs Zhou, that is probably the most unexpected of them all.
MacLeod (@macleod)
6th January 2025, 8:31
That because of lucky points as Bottas was beter the whole year. So looking only to points isn’t telling the whole story.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
6th January 2025, 11:10
Zhou took the opportunity to score points when it arose, which is basically your only job when you’re in a backmarker team that is only going to have one or two chances at a top 10 finish per season. Bottas could have scored too, but he wasn’t good enough on the day it mattered most.
rprp
6th January 2025, 13:07
This is a bad take. Bottas was unlucky in Qatar – he got hit by Lawson and was still close to scoring points.
montreal95 (@montreal95)
6th January 2025, 14:05
Absolute nonsense. Bottas was better the whole season. Zhou took advantage of 4 retirements ahead of him to take his single points finish so it basically means nothing.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th January 2025, 3:18
I don’t think it’s completely wrong what he’s saying, in such a bad car you only have very rare occasions and need to make them count, but I have no doubt bottas was better the whole season, this reminds me of the situation always at sauber in 2016: nasr took the opportunity given by the wet race in brazil, but his team mate (think ericsson) outperformed him the rest of the season, and sauber ended up dropping nasr, despite him scoring the points.
In a way similar to this year: if a driver was gonna continue, it’d have been bottas, despite not scoring.
MacLeod (@macleod)
7th January 2025, 8:10
@red-andy Yes Zhou grap the points when it was possible but that doesn’t make him better then Bottas. Sometimes luck is needed and Bottas has the worst in the year.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
6th January 2025, 8:32
Come on then, own up. Who was it who said Checo would beat Max? Someone did, and I bet they’re wishing there was an edit button.
An Sionnach
6th January 2025, 10:28
My guess is that it was more a vote of dislike for Max than a genuine belief he would be beaten.
PacificPR (@streydt)
6th January 2025, 10:30
Perez Senior.
Jungle
6th January 2025, 11:35
Bernasaurus comment made me chuckle then PacificPR just finished it off. Funniest thing I have read in a while!
El Pollo Loco
6th January 2025, 15:59
It was a pcxmac (sorry, can’t ever remember his username properly) conspiracy theory that didn’t pan out.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th January 2025, 3:19
Now that’s a more reasonable theory!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th January 2025, 3:20
Ahah, that’s a fun accusation, I think the first answer is right.
El Pollo Loco
7th January 2025, 22:16
Me too (a vote out of dislike that is).
Andy (@andycz)
6th January 2025, 9:27
Keith, when you will publish the rating of drivers? Usually it was around Christmas. Looking forward to it!!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th January 2025, 3:24
It’s a bit difficult to see if the team mate battles articles have all been made, I only saw a few but might not have noticed, in any case in recent years the driver ratings only came out once all those articles were done.
An Sionnach
6th January 2025, 10:39
I see the alternative setups narrative refuses to die. I think Hamilton still has more to offer than Russell, but I don’t buy the line that Lewis sacrificed for the team while Rusell never did. There’s an air of desperation about it. More wanting it to be true than anything. We’ve seen that Lewis can still do it when it counts, like in Texas in 2023; Vegas and Abu Dhabi this year. Once he gets the bit between his teeth in a race, he is clearly much better. It’s unnecessary to make up excuses for him and I don’t think it would matter if he was outscored overall. He’s still the better driver.
David (@nvherman)
6th January 2025, 11:55
I’d have to agree: whilst I’ve never been a fan of Hamilton (despite being British, he always comes across as too whiny for me, even though he’s had top equipment for most of his career), Russell is overrated. Almost to the same degree that Ricciardo was.
osnola
6th January 2025, 15:02
Agree on both counts.
Lewis is very susceptible to mind games and as he himself declared mentally not the strongest.
These last merc years cost him a lot of energy and thats probably the main reason why georges shines and lewis not.
As far as talent goes, george is not on the same level as Lewis, Max, Charles and probably Norris.
El Pollo Loco
6th January 2025, 16:05
Ricciardo was not overrated. His sample size of performance before his collapse precludes a fluke. He was great until he wasn’t. However, I agree Russell is and never will be an elite driver of the likes of Max, Alonso and Lewis. One could be forgiven for having had high expectations of him and he is a very, very good driver. Just not a driver who should ever be discussed in the pantheons of greats.
SteveP
6th January 2025, 19:38
Speaking as someone who had regular push back on my comments regarding DR, I have to disagree.
Plenty of people here thought he would “wipe the floor” with Tsunoda. Frankly, De Vries was more likely to have beaten Tsunoda than Ricciardo given a complete season. Not a floor wiping level, but just more likely.
Russell? Good, but not great.
If, and it’s a big, big if, Max were to end up moving to Mercedes then I would predict a likely departure of GR rather than AKA unless Kimi shows up as a Mazespin level dud.
El Pollo Loco
6th January 2025, 21:54
If we’re talking about current Ricciardo? Yeah, he’s overrated. I’m saying he wasn’t overrated during his time at RBR and Renault. After that, he was average at best.
Grace Smith
9th January 2025, 9:30
I like Toto’s explanation on setups. He said that Lewis always wanted to experiment with the extremes in the hope of finding perfection but George and his team took smaller steps from a known point. I also liked Valteri’s explanation which was that Lewis was always experimenting with setups but was regularly unsuccessful and moved to Valteri’s for qualifying.
MichaelN
6th January 2025, 12:23
It was much more obvious in 2022, where results and such lined up very well with stated programs. I’ll admit I didn’t pay close enough attention in 2024 to Mercedes in particular, but overall it seems that Hamilton just didn’t gel well with the car, and rather than getting on with it, he perhaps tried a few too many things to fix it. Either way, he was usually strong in the races but often lacked that little bit in qualifying.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
6th January 2025, 12:45
I agree that it’s probably overblown, but it’s an overreaction to an already reactionary fanbase who will jump on any opportunity to criticise a highly rated driver as “washed” or “past it”, as soon as they have a few weak races. Lewis definitely struggled in qualifying in 2024, which is unusual, but could still be a car specific issue and not an indication of a performance declining trend. I mean, similar comments have been made of Alonso as far back as 2016-2017 any time he wasn’t demolishing his teammates, and he has continued to be competitive 8 years later. I wouldn’t judge a driver’s future career based on a few races of even most of a season. Both Hamilton and Alonso had strong seasons in 2023, finishing 3rd and 4th in the drivers’ championship respectively after the dominant Redbulls. 2025 will be a very interesting season for Hamilton in particular with a new car, team and teammate, but this will tell us a lot about his performance level and whether there really is any age-related decline.
El Pollo Loco
6th January 2025, 16:01
+1
Edvaldo
6th January 2025, 13:23
I was expecting Hamilton to lose since around Australia, and worse: to finish the season under 100 points and without a podium, that’s how bad he looked in the early stages of the season.
It was a surprise that they managed to win as many races as they did.
As for Ricciardo, I’m under the impression he drove better in 2023, so it was a surprise to see him in ‘Mclaren form’ in 2024. No wonder he’s gone.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th January 2025, 3:28
Not sure he was as bad as the mclaren years in 2024, but it’s also true he had a weaker team mate to compare to, as in comprehensively losing to tsunoda might equal being demolished by norris.
El Pollo Loco
7th January 2025, 22:22
I’d say he was more reminiscent of 2021. Inexplicable highs and lows while far below the expected average of him the rest of the time. Kimi is a bit of a similar case for me in some ways. He was magic at McLaren, but he never really recaptured that form after subsequent changes to the tires in particular. Also similar in the case that they both had outsized characters and were fan favorites.