F1 midseason driver rankings: Young drivers ascend while veterans fight back

It hasn’t quite been the dominant Max Verstappen of 2022 or 2023 when F1 Sundays became routine: lights out, wait 90 minutes, and hear the Dutch national anthem. Yet he has remained at the very top of his game, making up for Red Bull’s slip in performance compared to its rivals.

The early phase of the season followed the well-worn script, as Verstappen won at a canter at Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Japan and China. But since the start of F1’s European season, he’s been forced to dig deep and produce some terrific displays to keep winning. Winning at Imola and Barcelona despite the threat of Lando Norris in the McLaren required Verstappen to be at his very best; he didn’t miss a beat. Even a race like Spa, where he could only finish fourth, took a mighty effort from 11th on the grid.

It hasn’t been a spotless season so far by any means. Verstappen’s clash with Norris in Austria and his move on Lewis Hamilton in Hungary showed that his aggressive edge, not required in the past two years, is still there—not always to his benefit.

Despite Red Bull’s recent performance dip and McLaren’s emergence, Verstappen has extended his points lead in five of the last six races. He may no longer have the outright quickest car, but Verstappen remains remarkably hard to beat.

Five seasons, more than 100 grands prix, nearly 1,900 days. Lando Norris waited a long time for his first F1 win since joining the grid in 2019, finally coming at the Miami GP this year.

Since that moment, the McLaren driver has taken the battle to Verstappen. The talent is evident, and the car is strong. He should have more than one win to his name this year. There’s been a few close calls, like at the Spanish GP when he felt “I should have won. I f—d the start.” More recently, he also dropped at the start of the Belgian GP after starting fourth, losing multiple spots after misjudging the exit of Turn 1.

“I’ve given away a lot of points over the last three or four races just because of stupid stuff—mistakes and bad starts,” he said after the race. “I don’t know why. It’s just silly things, it’s not even difficult stuff. It’s just Turn 1, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to make sure there’s a gap and not get hit.”

Norris can fight for wins, but small mistakes and iffy starts have proved costly, points-wise. Only 78 points separate the McLaren driver and Verstappen. Because the Dutchman operates at a high level, these little details matter.

Watching Piastri this year, you’d be astonished to learn this is only his second season on the F1 grid. The Australian takes everything thrown at him gracefully and calmly, even as McLaren’s surge puts him amid a constructors’ title fight going into the remainder of the season.

Piastri hasn’t quite been on Norris’s level this season, trailing 11-3 in their qualifying head-to-head, but the gap is typically marginal. He was the only driver capable of challenging Charles Leclerc through the Monaco weekend, ending up P2, and finally got the victory he deserved in Hungary despite McLaren’s best efforts to make a mess of the situation.

McLaren’s belief that it has the best driver lineup in F1 has been justified so far this year. We always knew how good Norris was, but Piastri’s ability to duke it out at the front was something we had yet to see in F1. Now, it’s abundantly clear just how good he is. Piastri’s mistakes are rare, and if he can find that extra tenth, then it may be a more even split between him and Norris through the closing 10 races.

In true Charles Leclerc fashion, the Monegasque’s season has been one of dizzying highs and gutting lows, rarely leveling out into any sustained, consistent form. Not that it’s entirely his fault.

The emotional home victory in Monaco, delivered through the tears in his eyes in the closing laps as he achieved the childhood dream he shared with his father, looks set to kickstart Leclerc’s season. Ferrari seemed to be back in contention at the front, building on a steady start to the year.

However, the upgrades on the SF-24 car have yet to work as anticipated. Even if the team can see more performance in the car, it is a) not enough relative to Mercedes, McLaren or Red Bull and b) hard to harness, particularly with a return to the bouncing for the first time in years.

Leclerc admitted after Silverstone that the recent races had been “worse than a nightmare,” but he has continued to perform. His lap at Spa was a significant achievement. He took pole after Verstappen’s penalty before finishing third in what is currently the fourth-fastest car. Leclerc remains Ferrari’s best asset, even if luck has not been with him recently.

This is George Russell’s strongest season, with fewer mistakes than in 2023.

Once again, the year didn’t start smoothly for Mercedes, which seemed to still struggle with its car concept. However, it brought an upgrade to Monaco that came alive at the following race in Canada, where George Russell put the W15 on pole position.

But after leading for 20 laps and holding an advantage, the Briton lost it on the straight when Norris breezed past and to Verstappen moments later when Russell misjudged the final chicane. Later in the race, as the track was drying following some rain, Russell was hunting down the lead again. Still, he went wide at Turn 8, allowing Norris to slip past him again for second.

“For me, it was just one too many mistakes at key moments that cost us a shot of fighting with these two towards the end of the race,” Russell said after securing his first 2024 podium finish. Mistakes do happen, but drivers need to be able to seize a moment when the opportunity presents itself. Russell had the chance to do so two races later at Austria. When Verstappen and Norris tangled, the Mercedes driver zipped past into the lead and held off Piastri, giving Mercedes its first win since the 2022 season.

Even with a few mistakes this season, Russell has stayed ahead of his teammate, outqualifying and finishing ahead of Lewis Hamilton in most races. But he has endured heartbreaking moments, like a DNF at Silverstone due to a suspected water system issue and disqualification after winning the Belgian GP due to an underweight car.

Carlos Sainz’s season has been an absolute roller coaster.

It started before Bahrain when news broke that Hamilton would join the Prancing Horse in 2025, throwing Sainz’s F1 future into question. This question followed him throughout the first half of the season, and the speculation ran rampant. It wasn’t until after Spa that he announced he’d join Williams next season. But on top of the rumor mill, the Spaniard missed a race after being sidelined with appendicitis in Saudi Arabia, with Ollie Bearman competing in his place.

In Spa, Sainz admitted that “it hasn’t been easy having to deal with, first of all, having to miss a race, but mainly with all the discussions about my future going on in the background.” But he still has shown up and performed decently well, considering the circumstances. Sixteen days after surgery, Sainz won the Australian GP, capitalizing on the moment after Verstappen retired early.

Ferrari had a competitive car early in the season, but Sainz’s results began falling away as others progressed more than the Italian crew. But in the teammate battle, Leclerc outqualified Sainz, 8-5, and finished ahead of the Spaniard, 7-5, in races they’ve been classified.

Seventh may seem harsh. After all, Hamilton has won two of the last three races and ended a two-and-a-half-year-old win drought. But this hasn’t been his finest season.

Russell has remained the quicker of the two Mercedes drivers, leading their qualifying head-to-head 10-4. He’s also 7-4 up on Hamilton in races, and both have been classified.

Hamilton has been open about his struggles, even as the Mercedes car has improved, admitting that it feels like it is on more of a knife-edge compared to what Russell has reported. This is partly because Hamilton’s driving style hasn’t quite gelled with this generation of cars, leading to more time to adjust and adapt. As Hamilton put it at Spa, “I just keep trying to drive the way I want to drive, but then I realize it doesn’t always work.”

But Silverstone was an emphatic reminder of Hamilton’s enduring quality and class. He made the most of the tricky conditions to win on merit, capitalizing on Red Bull’s struggles and McLaren’s strategy miscue. He will want to harness more of those displays through the second half to sign off from his time at Mercedes on a high.

Nico Hülkenberg made the most of his full-time return in 2023 to show he’d lost none of his edge in his years away from F1. But this season has made it unthinkable that he was ever without a seat.

Haas never expected to be a regular points-scorer this year, owing to the late development of its car and the off-season changes. But with a car that’s actually raceable, not chewing through its tires, Hülkenberg has flourished, going under the radar as one of this year’s most impressive performers.

Hülkenberg has scored 22 of Haas’s 27 points, including two sixth-place finishes. He’s also finished 11th on five occasions and, remarkably, reached Q3 more times than he’s gone out in either Q2 or Q1, fighting higher up the grid than he or Haas should be. See Hülkenberg’s last-lap pass on Sergio Pérez (who did have damage) in Austria to grab P6.

Sauber and Audi may have missed out on Carlos Sainz, their top target for next year, but the first half of this season shows that by already signing Hülkenberg, they’ll have a quality driver ready for the start of the factory program in 2026.

Yuki Tsunoda enters the summer break with a contract for next year (announced in June) and outperforming his RB teammate, veteran Daniel Ricciardo.

He started the season strong, securing the team’s first points in Australia with an eighth-place finish, which was later upgraded to seventh after Fernando Alonso’s penalty. Those six points pushed RB ahead of Haas for sixth in the constructor standings. RB remains ahead of Haas during the summer break, partly thanks to Tsunoda scoring 22 out of the team’s 34 points.

Tsunoda has advanced to Q3 eight times this season and secured seven-point finishes, the highest being P7 at Melbourne and Miami. Between the Australian GP and Monaco at the end of May, Tsunoda finished in the top 10 in five of those six races. He is one of the stronger drivers out of the midfield this year but has made mistakes. Take the Canadian GP, for example. He was in points contention before he locked up and spun, eventually ending the race P14.

Williams’ 2024 is very different from last season, and yet Alex Albon still has managed to squeeze four Q3 appearances and two top 10 finishes, amounting to four points, out of the FW45. This trend continues from 2023, when Albon continued to put together high-level performances and extract the maximum out of the car. He’s out-qualified teammate Logan Sargeant, 14-0.

Some of his races have been affected by no fault of his own, like the wheel nut issue and penalty at Imola and Carlos Sainz spinning in Canada. During that latter race, Albon pulled off an impressive double overtake on Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, and he was in the fight for points before the Ferrari driver spun and made contact with Albon.

One big moment, though, that’ll stand out from the first half of the year is what happened in Australia. The heavy crash in practice resulted in significant damage. Because Williams didn’t have a spare chassis at that race, it had to withdraw the car. And the team opted to give the remaining car to Albon, leaving Logan Sargeant on the sidelines.

Albon can extract the maximum from the car, even under pressure from higher-performing competitors. But what he needs to be a consistent top-10 contender and compete alongside the top teams is just that—that type of car.