Two F1 drivers overshadow Max Verstappen

The ratings are in after the title-deciding race on the streets of Las Vegas, which was won by Mercedes’ George Russell.

Russell proved imperious, although his time in the spotlight was somewhat spoiled by Max Verstappen having the temerity to wrap up his fourth world title at the same time.

Driver ratings for the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix

George Russell – 10.0

Mercedes may not really know why its car is sometimes the class of the field, but Russell didn’t spend much time worrying about such paltry matters – the British driver simply put his head down and delivered all weekend long.

Securing pole position at a time when his teammate couldn’t, Russell was unflappable up front during the Grand Prix – he simply pulled away from the Ferraris behind him in the early stages after weathering some early pressure from Charles Leclerc, and kept his head later in the race as Lewis Hamilton closed down his advantage.

“It’s been a real surprise seeing how strong our pace has been and securing the pole yesterday I was so pleased with,” Russell said afterward.

“And then I think we won the race in stint one. To be honest, stint one was exceptional. And I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tyres and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.”

It would have been very easy to push too hard in his eagerness to secure the victory, but he didn’t – Russell eased his car home with a measured and controlled drive to add a second win (and this time it counts!) in F1 2024. If Mercedes can produce a more consistent car in 2025, such drives underline the team’s confidence in his ability to carry the team forward.

Lewis Hamilton – 9.0

Hamilton put himself on the back foot with a very shaky Q3 in qualifying, resulting in his 10th place grid slot, and the seven-time F1 World Champion showed his class by slicing through the pack in the race itself.

He even got the opportunity to overtake former title rival Max Verstappen on track during this recovery, and was able to utilise his pace to get one over on the Ferraris in the pitstops.

It was a brilliant recovery drive, with the only separator between himself and Russell being that it was Hamilton who put himself in the compromised position in the first place.

With the end of his Mercedes career only two weeks away, the race was a welcome reminder of just how good Hamilton can be in race conditions, although the mistakes under pressure in qualifying trim do continue to raise questions – has Hamilton’s edge in those tense scenarios started to fade?

That’s a question only time will tell, as it’s been a consistent display of form throughout F1 2024 as Russell has drubbed him 17-5 in qualifying.

What might Hamilton have done had he not made those Q3 errors?

“It doesn’t really matter, really, does it?” Hamilton said afterward.

“At the end of the day, George did a great job, did everything he was supposed to do and I’m happy for him and I’m just grateful I could get back up there to support the team with a 1-2.”

Max Verstappen – 8.5

On a weekend when Red Bull was somewhat compromised by their lack of a low-downforce rear wing, Max Verstappen made the best of his crew’s efficient use of a Dremel as the team desperately tried to make up for some of the deficit caused by the excessive drag.

Over the last two years, such a weapon being missing from Red Bull’s artillery didn’t matter much – but it could have been far more damaging had Verstappen needed to drive with the more aggressive mindset he employed prior to Brazil.

Draggy rear wing or not, Verstappen hauled his car in front of Lando Norris – as was all he needed to do – and got himself involved in the battle up ahead with the Ferraris.

With Norris struggling for pace, Verstappen realised he didn’t need to fight the cars behind him too much and duly let Hamilton and the Ferraris go without much fuss – it would have been intriguing to see him battling harder had he needed to hold them back.

But Verstappen drove exactly the race that was needed for him to land his fourth consecutive title, with the Dutch driver seeing the bigger picture and delivering precisely what was needed.

It wasn’t quite the rampant display of superiority that he produced in Brazil but, then again, he didn’t need to.

With Verstappen opening up his championship lead once again over his closest challenger, it highlighted the consistently strong performances he’s put in even when the car under him hasn’t been capable of victories.

“That is something I’m very proud of, in those tough races where we were definitely not the fastest car, we kept it together as a team,” he said.

“We worked very hard back at the factory as well, remained calm, most of the times. And we barely made any mistakes.

“We really maximised or even overperformed in some places. Plus, our opposition also in a few places definitely didn’t grab the points that they should have. And all those things, of course, matter at the end of the day when you fight for a championship.”

Charles Leclerc – 8.0

Leclerc had a contentious race in Las Vegas, with the Monegasque getting quite angry over team radio over the events of the Grand Prix as Carlos Sainz went against apparent team orders to overtake him after Leclerc’s final pitstop.

It led to Leclerc exclaiming: “Maybe try asking him in Spanish!” before he released a tirade of expletives over the radio following the chequered flag.

Whether it’s a weakness or not is in the eye of the observer, but Leclerc’s willingness to obey any and all team order or instruction has compromised him on more than occasion – while Sainz has shown a willingness to question and deviate from these calls.

Leclerc had the upper hand over Sainz in the early stages of the race after getting ahead at Turn 1 while Sainz was preoccupied with Pierre Gasly, but lost out after pushing too hard in the first stint and wrecking his starting tyres after being unable to find a way past Russell.

“I felt like I had everything under control, but then, from one corner to the other, I lost three seconds per lap, which was absolutely crazy,” Leclerc said afterward.

“So that took me by surprise, and we lost quite a lot there but then, on the hard, we were strong, but obviously wasn’t enough to do anything better.”

Leclerc held his hands up that it was likely his enthusiasm to get past Russell which resulted in him exhausting those medium compound tyres so quickly.

“I think so – but it didn’t affect him too much!” he said.

“It did affect me, though, but being in dirty air, you pay a lot the price of it. So that was difficult to manage for me, but I just went a bit too much… I just put too much stress on the tyres in the first stint, so it’s my bad.”

Nico Hulkenberg – 8.0

Starting from ninth on the grid, Hulkenberg added to his great qualifying performance to score four points and bolster Haas into sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

Running the two-stop strategy, Hulkenberg’s crowning glory was overtaking Tsunoda in the closing stages and getting the upper hand on the VCARB driver as the two teams, along with Alpine, fight over sixth spot.

This was helped by Haas offsetting their stops slightly, running later through both stints, which gave the German driver a slight tyre advantage in the closing laps.

“We’ve done a really good job over the winter and all this year,” Hulkenberg said afterward.

“I would like, obviously, to celebrate with the team Abu Dhabi Sunday night. But it’s two to go, and we’ll go down to the wire.

“Nobody else is going to hand it to us. So we have to earn it and do a good job in the next two.”

Pierre Gasly – 7.5

A race of what might have been for Pierre Gasly, who became one of the two race retirements when his Renault power unit exploded unceremoniously.

Gasly lost his up and downshifts after his pitstop, having been jumped by Yuki Tsunoda, but the French driver had been confident about being able to take the fight to the VCARB driver up until his engine went bang.

He was a hero of qualifying before being inevitably overtaken by Verstappen and Norris in the early stages, but somewhere between seventh and 10th would have been the likely outcome without the issue.

“It just feels a bit tough now to go from such a high in Brazil, such a high in quali yesterday, and it’s like a bit of slap in the face right now,” he said afterward, with Haas having overtaken Alpine in the standings.

“But anyway, we have two more chances, and, hopefully, I don’t know what’s going to be the outcome after today, but, looking at Hulkenberg and Tsunoda, they look pretty strong. So we’ll have a tough job ahead of us, but we’ll get ready in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

Carlos Sainz – 7.5

It’s understandable that Sainz is looking out for himself more in the final races of the championship, particularly in a scenario that doesn’t cost Ferrari in terms of points for the critical Constructors’ Championship battle.

Passing Leclerc after managing his tyres better than him in the first stint, Sainz found the shoe on the other foot on the hard tyres as he encountered graining before the clumsy pitlane escape played out.

With Ferrari swapping their drivers around through this phase as Sainz struggled to keep up the pace before this final stop, team radio made it clear Sainz completely ignored what Leclerc had been told, ie. that he wouldn’t race his teammate.

Instead, Sainz latched on with DRS and overtook Leclerc with ease and took off down the road. It led to noone being happy afterward – the position swapping and the mishandled pitstop call seeming to infuriate Sainz and sapping both cars of any chance of trying to keep up with Hamilton ahead.

“We just simply didn’t execute in general. We just didn’t execute a very good race,” he said.

“I think we stayed out one lap too late on Mediums, two laps too late on Hards. And by the time I was going to pit, we had this messy radio communication in the pit entry, which probably made me lose that lap that I was completely grained and I had to let pass Charles plus the two or three seconds that I lost in the pit entry. That means a lot of race time that maybe would have meant we could have ended up fighting Lewis. But yeah, it just shows that in this sport, you need to do things perfectly week in, week out. We’ve been doing things really well in strategy and on race management all year around. But today wasn’t our day.”

Sainz is docked compared to his teammate for not obeying his team’s instruction, which team boss Fred Vasseur was because the drivers “have their own vision” of how the events of the race unfolded. It’s not the crime of the century – after all, what are they going to do? Fire him? – but it was an unnecessary bit of antagonism towards Leclerc.

Yuki Tsunoda – 7.5

Qualifying seventh, Tsunoda wound up in ninth at the chequered flag, having been overtaken by VCARB championship rival Nico Hulkenberg on Lap 44.

He was lucky to escape damage to his front wing during an early pitstop when, in his eagerness to beat an Alpine out, he struck the marker board at the side of the pitlane – noticeably shaking the car as it destroyed the board.

But survive Tsunoda’s car did, although the incident did lead to him admitting he had nearly “s**t his pants” when he realised what was happening.

Satisfyingly for Tsunoda, he finished ahead of Sergio Perez. There’s not much more he can do at this point.

Lando Norris – 6.5

Whether it be tyres, setup, car characteristics, or less flexible rear wings than earlier in the season, McLaren had a 2023-esque race in which it was clear three teams had the edge in terms of pace.

With only the slightest glimmer of hope of keeping the title chase alive, Norris did his best to keep up with Verstappen in the early stages – succeeding in clearing Pierre Gasly shortly after the Dutch driver had dispatched him – but it was clear the MCL38 just didn’t have quite enough mustard to keep apace over the race distance.

Norris pointed to a long-term front-end limitation, one which he says has been inherent to McLaren since he joined the team, and the resulting front tyre graining was too significant to keep under control in Las Vegas.

“Clearly, we have a lot of work to do with our car. It’s too difficult to drive,” he said afterward.

“It doesn’t work in these conditions. It doesn’t work in many other tracks where we’ve had similar conditions, but we’ve been able to get everything out of it.

“Sometimes even when people think we’ve had the best car, we’ve absolutely not. We still won some of those races, and those were the great weekends.

“But, this weekend, even if I feel like I drove pretty well, I couldn’t have gotten anything more out of it, and if I tried, I would probably have ended up in the wall somewhere.”

Oscar Piastri – 6.5

A largely anonymous race for Oscar Piastri, who nonetheless kept his head down to claim seventh place from his eighth place grid slot – a grid slot from which he wasn’t correctly positioned for the start.

Replays showed Norris had pulled up too far forward in his grid slot, triggering the five-second penalty that, ultimately had no effect on his final result.

Having matched or beaten Norris through the middle phase of the season, the end of the year is proving something of a damp squib for Piastri, who seems to have had the wind taken from his sails in the final quarter of the season.

Speaking afterward, he admitted to struggling badly with the tyre graining – a similar complaint as Norris – but the race day weaknesses from last year don’t yet appear fully behind him.

More from the Las Vegas Grand Prix

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Esteban Ocon – 6.0

Fortune wasn’t on the side of the Alpine drivers in Las Vegas. While Gasly’s strong qualifying result came to naught due to his engine failing, Ocon’s race was undone by a particularly silly error from his team.

Coming in for a pitstop on Lap 11, Ocon found his pitbox empty – his team simply weren’t ready for him. This was, effectively, a drive-through penalty imposed on him by Alpine and, in the team’s attempt to make up for the time loss, attempted to make Ocon’s swap to hard tyres (made successfully a lap later) last to the chequered flag.

This wasn’t possible, with Ocon forced to stop again with five laps to go.

Addressing the “difficult situation”, Ocon said the chance to score points went begging.

“I think it would have clearly been a different race if we managed that phase of the race properly,” he said.

“But yeah, we didn’t maximize it and the others did.

“We know how tight it’s going to be until the end of the year, and we need to do a better job on the next two races to have a chance of getting the others.”

Alex Albon – 6.0

Albon only got to take part in the first half of the race before a power unit took him out, but the British-Thai racer was proving a threat for a points position at the point his engine went boom.

It’s been a tough run of form for both driver and team, but Albon looked set to return to an upper midfield on a weekend where his teammate seriously damaged his copybook.

With Albon explaining afterward he wasn’t encountering the same graining issues that affected almost everybody, his gain of positions only to end in heartbreak was “so frustrating”.

Zhou Guanyu – 6.0

He may only have a few weeks left in his F1 career, but Zhou put in perhaps his strongest race of the season in Las Vegas after a strong qualifying on Saturday.

A game effort in Q2 wasn’t quite enough to get into Q3, and that same ‘almost-but-not-quite’ verdict can be applied to his race as the Chinese driver knocked on the door of points, but didn’t quite have enough pace under him to make it happen.

“I’m just really happy with the upgrades working, and the team gave me a car I can finally fight,” he said.

“It’s been very positive this weekend in terms of that. Today’s race was clean, but not a lot happening ahead, so we can’t really make much more than what we were.”

Praising the upgrades, Zhou forlornly said that it’s come too late for him to save a race seat for next season, but pointed out that he wants to give credit to the engineers and crew who have created a more competitive package for his final races.

Liam Lawson – 5.0

A slide in qualifying cost Lawson any chance of a higher grid slot than his 15th-place position, and the race was similarly difficult for the Kiwi.

His first stint saw him engage in a spirited battle with Kevin Magnussen that, somehow, both emerged from unscathed.

Struggling with tyre graining, VCARB was caught in two minds about whether to try to stay out for the one-stop strategy or stick with a two – eventually, Lawson was called in for a second stop but the uncertainty had already cost him significant time.

Lawson struggled for grip, balance, and poise and succinctly summed up a tricky race by telling the media “That sucked” afterward. All valid complaints, but Tsunoda clearly had the legs on him throughout the weekend.

Given that Lawson has only six races to make an impression on Red Bull to convince him he’s the right man for the vacant seat, he can’t afford more weekends like this one.

Valtteri Bottas – 5.0

Starting on the hard tyre with the intention of a one-stop strategy, the graining problem meant Bottas was forced into a two-stop strategy, and the Finn did his best to help Zhou score some points by trying to hold up Colapinto and Stroll – ultimately, all in vain.

Like Zhou, Bottas was positive about the direction of the upgrades introduced by Sauber but, with only two races left, he looks set to finish the season without any points.

Kevin Magnussen – 5.0

Magnussen was the only driver to stick to the one-stop strategy, pitting on Lap 17 to swap his mediums for the hards.

But the tyre graining which afflicted everyone to some extent made a victim of Magnussen as well, who tried to make a go of getting it to the chequered flag in a reasonable spot as he explained afterward he had been put into a position of “no return”.

He wound up 12th.

Fernando Alonso – 5.0

An audacious attempt to start on the soft tyre netted no reward for Alonso on the first lap, and committed him to a very early stop which put him out of kilter with the rest.

While Alonso finished out of the points, the Spaniard was actually quite happy with how his race played out as he praised the strategy and the pace of the car was stronger than he was expecting.

He explained afterward that he was taking solace in the fact he’d finished so close behind the Haas, Red Bull, and VCARB – a prize that seems particularly minor given the positions Aston Martin were fighting for not that long ago.

Lance Stroll – 5.0

Stroll’s race was undone by a complete radio failure on his AMR24 which resulted in him being unable to communicate the fact he wanted a tyre change to swap from the mediums to hards earlier than had been planned pre-race.

This meant that, when he came into the pitstop, the team wasn’t ready for him and he lost circa 20 seconds while he waited for the tyres to be fitted to his car.

Explaining afterward, Stroll revealed he had tried to use the pit confirm button to notify his team, but the message didn’t go through.

With Stroll finishing 15 seconds behind Alonso, the time loss from the incident cost him the chance to finish on the same stretch of tarmac as his teammate.

Sergio Perez – 4.0

Sergio Perez was also in this race.

What does it say about his season that a ninth place finish in the Red Bull can be seen as a good day for the Mexican driver?

There was a sense of inevitability about his Q1 exit, which left him with plenty of work to do on race day.

To his merit, Perez did produce a decent race to move forward to ninth place – no easy task in an RB20 somewhat lacking in outright straight-line speed.

But, with Verstappen taking fifth and potentially having more in him had he needed to fight harder, it’s clear that ninth place is below what the Red Bull is capable of.

The recovery drive did lead to a particularly nice overtaking move on Lawson and Magnussen, which somehow was resolved without anyone hitting each other, but that was really the high point of another underwhelming weekend for Perez.

It all led to very familiar ground in the post-race media sessions, with Perez saying he’s aiming for more and better, while Christian Horner said Red Bull would have liked to have seen him take more points out of McLaren.

Franco Colapinto – 4.0

A pitlane start for Franco Colapinto meant a hero drive was never particularly likely – especially with no Safety Car intervention to aid a recovery.

Fortunate to escape serious injury in his hefty qualifying crash, Colapinto continues to show great pace but a rawness that needs refining. He did his best to steady the ship and give Williams a break from their endless rebuilds with a steady drive in the lower midfield in Las Vegas, with the Argentinean explaining afterward that he’d felt uncomfortable in the first stint.

With a completely rebuilt car and jumping straight back in for a race after such a crash, such discomfort isn’t a mystery, although he denied his confidence had been dashed.

“I think at the start of the race, I was taking a bit more margin,” he said.

“It’s difficult, after a crash like yesterday, to get back in the rhythm going straight into a race start from the pit lane – it wasn’t what I wanted.

“But I think, slowly, I started to get back in the pace. I had a really good, strong second part of the race, but I just lost a lot of laptime, a lot of seconds at the beginning of the race.”

With the pressure having ramped up on him, and the expectation, Colapinto overstepped the mark in Las Vegas, but still has the opportunity to showcase his speed with two final races before an uncertain future begins.

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