2016's top ten F1 drivers

Outqualified team-mate Sergio Perez 12-9 this year, and moves from Force India to Renault, in search of that first podium finish. The other Nico is clearly thinking longer-term with a multi-year deal at a full works team with a fantastic track record and the necessary experience to recapture former glories. If it doesn’t happen there, that’ll be that...

Had the misfortune of being Max Verstappen’s team-mate at Toro Rosso, although anyone who takes the trouble to compare their performances will see that Sainz was far from overshadowed. Had the upper hand in qualifying and scored 10 points finishes in 2016, including sixth in Spain, the US, and Brazil. With Verstappen and Ricciardo locked into Red Bull for the medium-term if not longer, we’d love to see this kid installed in one of the top teams. Maybe even Ferrari.

Something of a conundrum, it could be that 2017 is the year we finally get to find out what Bottas is really made of. Outqualifying Felipe Massa 17-4 is one thing, finding himself with the opportunity to measure up against Lewis Hamilton is something else altogether. We hope it happens, otherwise the amiable Finn is in danger of having the F1 career that never truly happened.

McLaren’s failure to give Fernando Alonso a front-running car is possibly the single most frustrating thing about contemporary F1, although the Honda power unit is clearly improving. Alonso is still arguably the sharpest (and sharpest-elbowed) racing driver in the world, one whose mental steel is matched only by his raw pace and his absolute determination never to give up. Dig deep into some of 2016’s race results and there’s ample proof. Let’s hope we don’t have to dig quite so hard next year.

Character-building. That’s the euphemism that probably works best here. Vettel’s Ferrari adventure hasn’t gone according to the script, and though the season began well enough – podiums in Melbourne, China, Spain, Canada and in Azerbaijan – there was only one more to be had during the next 12 races. The mid-season departure of James Allison, Ferrari’s brilliant technical director, was a personal blow, and for all that the team tried to paper over the loss, Vettel was visibly rattled. We like it when the real human emerges in F1, and Vettel’s splenetic display during the Mexican GP – when he plastered the f-bomb all over the airwaves, and told race director Charlie Whiting to, er, do one – was nothing if not human. But after Ferrari’s bungled strategic calls, he sounded increasingly like a man on the edge. It didn’t help that he also became the first to fall foul of the so-called Verstappen rule, which he instigated in one of the year’s more pointed ironies, for weaving around on the defensive line. Still an absolute great, when things go right. Maybe that’ll happen more in 2017. Or maybe he’ll have to wait until 2018, when he switches red for silver...

We were at Ferrari’s world finals last year, and saw the look in Sergio Marchionne’s eye as he mused on the upcoming 2016 season. Sheesh. The boss’s old-school motivational skills were probably meant to evoke the unsentimental approach of Enzo Ferrari himself, but while things clearly didn’t go to plan this year, it was Kimi Räikkönen who somehow prevailed. A move to pushrod front suspension gave the SF16-H the sort of front end he revels in. He outqualified his embattled, more obviously emotional team-mate (12-9), but didn’t out-race him, and finished sixth to Vettel’s fourth in the championship. Yet this perennial fan favourite reminded us once again that the best definition of cool is not expending too much energy trying to define yourself. Behind the omnipresent sunglasses and impenetrable interview gambit, who knows, maybe Kimi really is all churned up inside. But while the most political of all organisations bubbled furiously around him, he just got on with it. No mean feat.

Even in ultimate victory, you sense the history books relegating Rosberg to the second tier. After having seen off the toughest rival of all, in equal equipment? Sure, he got lucky, and Lewis would have beaten him again if the mechanical gremlins had taken up residency in the other side of the Mercedes garage. But Rosberg’s single-lap qualifying pace and his sheer professionalism coupled with an unbelievable stoicism means that we’re giving him serious props. He’s a smart, funny guy, too, and the way he pushed the reset button for 2016 and prepared himself for the hammer blows from his former friend turned nemesis to get the job done is surely a lesson for us all. Announcing his retirement out of nowhere five days after winning the driver’s championship baffled many – including Mercedes’ irascible non-exec chairman Niki Lauda – and suggested that defeating Lewis was a task he wasn’t up to all over again. Only Barack Obama has ever dropped the mic more effectively.

With Jenson Button now retired, it falls to Danny Ric to fill the role of most people’s idea of the quintessential racing driver. Having rattled ex-team-mate Vettel, he absorbed the arrival of the Dutch wunderkind with ease, outqualified him 11-6, stuck the Red Bull places it probably had no real right to be – one of the most important markers of all – pulled off some outstanding overtaking moves, and always, always looked like a threat when circumstances presented him with an opportunity. These are traits he shares with the top guys, and yet he delivers without you ever once thinking ‘t****r’.

F1 stats are usually glossed over by drivers, until they become just too impressive to ignore, and three seasons of Mercedes dominance sees Lewis now closing in some astonishing career achievements. He’s won 53 GPs, but perhaps even more telling is his tally of 61 pole positions. At some point in 2017, Hamilton will almost certainly eclipse the all-time record, Michael Schumacher’s 68 poles. There is no greater testament to his awesome natural speed, or his ability to deliver when the pressure is at its most intense. Lewis fans will say – justifiably – that his machinery let him down in 2016, and that he would otherwise have cruised to a third successive driver’s title. He also turned a mighty points deficit into an unexpectedly nerve-shredding showdown in Abu Dhabi. And although there was a conspiracy theory wobble after Malaysia, 2016-spec Lewis was mostly pretty Zen. Which helps.

At the end-of-year Autosport awards, more than one current and a few ex-F1 drivers unapologetically referred to him as Mad Max. Whatevs. Having been promoted from Toro Rosso, he won first time out in the Red Bull in the Spanish GP in Barcelona. His self-belief makes Senna look like a shrinking violet and, mad or not, Max shows all the signs of having the same supernatural speed and instinct for grip where none apparently exists as the immortal Brazilian. Yes, he can be rude, and yes, moving around the way he does in the braking area clearly isn’t the done thing. But while Rosberg keeps getting it in the nuts for not having the ‘killer’ instinct that’s the hallmark of a true great (Senna, Schumacher, Hamilton), Verstappen has trouble keeping his in check.

The clincher: specifically, his drive during the rain-lashed Brazilian GP. More generally, the brilliant audacity of his overtaking moves which he launches from way back and seem to unfold in slow motion.