F1 driver ratings — July: Who has impressed after Austrian, Styrian and Hungarian GPs?

[ASFN Admin]

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The 2020 Formula One season finally got underway in July, seven long months after the end of the previous season. It has been a decent, if predictable, opening three races in three weeks so far, with Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes looking the class of the field. The driver standings only tell us so much, and we're here to go behind the headline numbers, interrogate the data and hopefully give a little bit more context as to who the best performing drivers have been in the Austrian, Styrian and Hungarian Grands Prix. To work out these rankings, we have created a rating system that considers a variety of factors. These include how a driver performs against his team-mate in qualifying and the race, by how much (or not) he out-performs his car on race day as well as a score for overall weekend performance and his final finishing position. Those factors above combine to provide the overall performance rating used to determine the ranking order here, but we will also publish their “value added” rating, which shows the drivers who have out-performed their cars the most. This is based on how he does against his team-mate on Saturday and Sunday and how much he places above or below his expected finish — calculated by taking a car’s pace, grid place and factoring in any retirements above or below. This can be expressed as a positive or minus number, but the higher the better. As you can see, it is quite close in the middle after only three rounds, but the bottom and top end are well separated. From the points totals, the top eight are the standouts, with the top two in particular performing at a level above all the others. 20. Nicholas Latifi – Williams (32 points) A difficult, but not awful introduction to F1 for the Canadian, who has not looked entirely out of place on the grid. Has struggled relative to Russell but getting into Q2 in Hungary was a big tick for him. Already confirmed for next year, so should be able to relax into the season a little. Needs to be cut some slack as the only rookie. Value added points: -16 (20th) 19. Romain Grosjean – Haas (47 points)

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