The end of the 2023 Formula 1 championship marks the completion of the second full season of F1’s newest set of technical regulations.
Many of those drivers who competed in both 2022 and 2023 had very different journeys to their final championship points tallies.
Looking at how certain drivers’ points totals evolved throughout the two 22-race seasons, it becomes clear to see just how strikingly different – or similar – their years progressed.
Sergio Perez – Red Bull
In 2022, Sergio Perez missed out on second in the drivers’ championship by just three points. This season, he finally achieved that runner-up spot at his third time of asking as a Red Bull driver – but arguably with a worse season than last year. Indeed, he scored fewer points with the RB19 than its less dominant predecessor.
Perez enjoyed a much stronger start to the year, helped by two victories in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. But while his points scoring followed a similar pattern through the middle phase of the season, a relatively poor run of just 21 points in the five rounds between Singapore and Mexico meant that while he finished one place higher in 2023, he had 20 fewer points than 2022.
That unusual outcome arose despite this year having the same number of events as last season, plus an extra three sprint races offering a total of 24 points between them.
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Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes
Neither of these two seasons went how Hamilton or Mercedes would have wanted with not even a single race victory across them. However, it is curious how Lewis Hamilton’s 2023 seemed to run opposite to his 2022 campaign.
Hamilton performed much more strongly in the opening half of this season than he did last year, sitting almost 50 points ahead of where he was the previous season after the eighth round in Canada. But despite securing third in the drivers’ championship by the end of the season, Hamilton’s unremarkable finish to the year meant he actually ended up scoring fewer points than the year before.
George Russell – Mercedes
George Russell was open about his disappointment with his 2023 season by the season’s end and it is not hard to see why. Although Mercedes were not as strong as they had hoped to be in either season, Russell consistently built up points over the first half of 2022, only failing to finish in the top five for the first time at Silverstone, round ten of the championship.
However, 2023 was a more challenging season for…
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