The leading performers from a remarkable year
10 Sergio Perez
▾ DOWN 4
Perez is boosted into this position because of the way he took the fight in wheel-to-wheel battles against his team’s principal rival better than did Valtteri Bottas, which ultimately made a difference in Max Verstappen’s triumph against Lewis Hamilton. His aggressive, yet always fair, defending in the Turkey rain against the Mercedes was one example, as was his Abu Dhabi performance.
The problem is that Bottas was better on an individual level, with Perez unable to regularly get near Verstappen’s performances on pure pace. Only one front-row start in the season’s best package is a poor return, and there were Q2 eliminations in Bahrain and Qatar.
That said, there were enough occasions where he did what Red Bull needed him to – supporting Verstappen, or being a strategic problem for Mercedes (Baku, Paul Ricard). Perez also showed his typical prowess with tyre management to make big gains from lower starting spots, such as in Monaco, where he overcut three rivals – including Hamilton – to make a late charge towards the podium positions.
He learned that the only way to be fast in the RB16B was to go along with Verstappen’s set-up. After finding that changes made mid-season to make things more comfortable slowed him down even if they made the car easier to drive, he demonstrated that he can make progress with plenty of hours in the simulator. This resulted in his late-season run of three consecutive podiums.
9 Fernando Alonso
⁃ RE-ENTRY
Formula 1 is a much better competition with Alonso in it. His inch-perfect driving in several
