All 22 Formula One drivers ranked by how badly they’d do in The Traitors

The parallels are uncanny.

Twenty-two competitors, exotic backdrops, intra-team squabbling, success dependent on hiding your true intentions while ruthlessly eliminating rivals.

Yes, reality show The Traitors and reality show ‘Formula One’ share much in common: subterfuge, silly outfits, organisers who sometimes seem to be making up the rules as they go along.

So, with the latest series of The Traitors UK ending just as F1 2026 gears up, naturally we've ranked every F1 driver by the only sensible metric: just how badly they'd flop at the castle.

These are, to make clear, based on no psychological expertise of any kind, merely on watching quite a lot of Traitors and slightly less Drive To Survive. So, from first-round elimination to series champion, here goes…

We know, we know. With his decades of paddock politicking and reputation for strategic brilliance, Nando would make a fearsome Traitor or Faithful. Hence why he’d be straight out the door.

As regular Traitors viewers will attest, any contestant who shows genuine aptitude for the game is immediately voted out or banished, with only the bland surviving. So Nando would dominate the first episode with calculated gameplay and ruthless tactics… only to be instantly removed for being too calculated and ruthless. On the plus side, might bring his own deckchair to the round table.

Same issue as Alonso: too much main character energy to last long. Also he’s seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. No way you’re going to be able to keep that under your hat in the castle. Q1 exit.

Would stop at nothing to win, therefore wouldn’t get close to winning. Insanely, terrifyingly competitive in the missions, then voted straight out because ‘that’s Traitor behaviour’. (Faithfuls, quick side-note for you here: there is quite literally no behaviour that differentiates Traitors from non-Traitors. That’s the point of the game.)

Too nice, too sensitive, too honest. If picked as a Traitor, would feel terrible lying about being a Traitor. If picked as a Faithful, would feel terrible accusing someone else of being a traitor, even if they’d literally just said to him, “thing is, Lando, I’m a Traitor". Not troubling the points.

Like Lando, too sweet to succeed. Like Lando, powerful lack of poker face. Good at gaining trust, terrible at cold-heartedly exploiting that trust to his advantage. Teary mid-game exit.

Captain Powerpoint would obsessively track voting patterns, and bring genuine statistical evidence to breakfast. Only to be quickly banished, because – as we know – presenting actual evidence of traitorous behaviour is exactly what a Traitor would do.

Prepared to burn childhood friends. Unprepared to hide it. Would treat every accusation like a racing incident that was definitely the other guy’s fault. Gone mid-argument.

Knows what it’s like to be publicly banished (see: Red Bull 2019). So would either be paranoid and defensive (bad for Traitors), or zen and accepting (bad for Traitors). Also way too French and well-dressed. Q2 exit. Have we thought about this too much? Yes we have.

Possibly the loveliest man on the grid, Albon’s totally genuine ‘yeah I rescue street animals’ shtick would see him doomed to inevitable failure for being too nice. If recruited as Traitor, would somehow vote to murder himself.

Years of surviving ‘yeah but your dad pays for your seat’ rumours would indicate a thick skin. Occasionally paddock tantrums would indicate… not that thick. If picked as a Traitor, would always be several seconds behind his teammate in removing his hood, signing letters, etc.

Once famously stated: “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to win.” That attitude is exactly why Lawson would crash and burn in The Traitors, where the best strategy for survival appears to be ‘minimal grasp of the fact it’s a contest at all’.

Williams’ ‘Smooth Operator’ is the model of consistency. Never good news in the castle, where intellectual coherence is considered far more suspicious than just wildly changing your mind every nine seconds.

Polite, sensible, safe, quietly ruthless: yeah, the easy-to-underestimate Piastri could pick up some points here. And is it mere coincidence that OSCAR PIASTRI is an anagram of PICKS A TRAITOR (if you use the T twice and also add a K)? Top Gear suggests not. Solid midfield finish.

Surviving 15 years in F1 before scoring his first podium suggests the mental fortitude to shake a few round-table accusations. Victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours suggests adaptability. The fact we’re persisting with this list suggests a very quiet week in the world of car news.

After 15 years at the sharp end of F1, Checo still gives off strong ‘supply teacher who lets everyone just watch a film or something’ vibes. We mean this, of course, as the greatest of compliments: tired-dad energy is the perfect Traitors camouflage. Podium hopeful.

Years spent pretending he’s totally fine with being a career number-two driver = accomplished liar. Combination of Finnish taciturnity and mildly threatening demeanour could work in Bottas’s favour. Tricky-to-spell first name may deter fellow contestants voting for him at the round table.

With just one F1 season under his belt, it’s impossible to yet tell whether Hadjar would be a safe pair of hands or total liability, Traitors-wise. Will this prevent us speculating? It will not. Therefore: seems like a nice lad, flies under the radar, thus could make the final.

Seems like nice lad. Flies under radar. Could make final.

Nice lad. Under radar. Final.

Nice. Radar. Final. We’re getting to the end of this list whether you like it or not.

Have we reached the point of just listing the young drivers in reverse-alphabetical order before copy-pasting? Well, put it this way: nice/radar/final. Kimi’s also quite tiny, so a good chance of passing literally unnoticed to the very end of the competition. Podium shoo-in.

The Traitors format punishes prominence and rewards anonymity. And, after literally some minutes of research, Top Gear can discover nothing noteworthy about Racing Bulls’ 18-year-old rookie (beyond the whole ‘good at driving really fast around a track’ thing, obvs), who commendably seems to have entirely failed to annoy anyone in his career to date. Totally under the radar, lights-to-flag victory guaranteed.