2023 F1 mid-season driver ratings part three: The best of the rest on the Formula 1 grid

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The 2023 Formula 1 mid-season break is nearly over, so it’s fine to give ratings to the drivers of the bottom four teams in the Constructors’ Championship.

Racing returns to Zandvoort this weekend with Max Verstappen looking to secure another home win in F1.

At the other end of the grid, there are four teams battling it out to break into mid-table this season.

Reliability is better than ever in Formula 1, making it even more difficult than normal for back markers to score any precious points.

With ten races to go, Williams, Haas, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri will hope their fortunes improve over the coming months.

This is part three of F1Oversteer’s mid-season driver ratings. The ratings for the top three teams and fourth to sixth are already available.

Williams: B-, Alex Albon: A, Logan Sargeant.: C+

There was some hope after the first race of the season that Williams might have turned a corner after years of being one of Formula 1’s weakest teams.

The speed George Russell has shown he possesses didn’t stop him from going nearly 50 races before finally scoring a point for the team.

Bringing in Alex Albon has proved to be an absolute coup and the fact he’s already signed on for 2024 is a huge bonus.

He’s currently the only driver out of the four teams featured in this article to have scored more than ten points, with a seventh-place finish in Canada the ultimate highlight.

Rookie Logan Sargeant nearly scored his first point in F1 in Silverstone, recording an 11^th-place finish at the British Grand Prix.

The American has already admitted he has a lot to learn from Albon and although he’s regularly fighting with his rivals in the sport, he’s yet to earn that elusive first point.

Haas: C, Nico Hulkenberg: B-, Kevin Magnussen: C

Guenther Steiner made the tough call to replace Mick Schumacher with the much more experienced German Nico Hulkenberg during the winter.

After backing the 24-year-old for two seasons, experience was the name of the game for the American team this year.

It looked immediately like a move that had paid off, with Hulkenberg and Magnussen scoring points three times in the first five races.

However, that pace has dried up, with a sixth-place sprint race finish in Austria the only points the team has scored since Miami.

Hulkenberg has had the edge over his Danish teammate, particularly with his pace in qualifying.

There are some big decisions to be made in the next few months if performances don’t improve soon.

Plenty of young drivers are looking for a route into F1 and Haas may be their ticket into the sport if their current two drivers might be in trouble if they don’t trouble the top ten soon.

Alfa Romeo: C-, Valtteri Bottas: C-, Zhou Guanyu: C

Experienced Finn Valtteri Bottas would have hoped to build on his 49 points from 2022 alongside Zhou Guanyu who is no longer the least experienced driver on the grid.

An eighth place for Bottas and fastest lap for Zhou in Bahrain have proved to be a false dawn as new team representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi has been unable to oversee an improvement in their fortunes.

Bottas had to wait until Canada to trouble the points again as he scraped a tenth-place finish ahead of Oscar Piastri.

Zhou had scored two pairs of points in Australia and Spain, although on both occasions he benefitted from either trouble ahead of him on the grid, or a harsh penalty to Yuki Tsunoda.

Whether Bottas has the motivation to carry on next season at this stage given how poor the car underneath him is is yet to be seen.

He’s not covered himself in glory and despite only being in his second season in F1 Zhou Guanyu Zhou isn’t safe either.

Alfa Romeo need to hope they can find another gear after the mid-season break to avoid potentially finishing bottom of the Constructors’ Championship.

AlphaTauri: D, Yuki Tsunoda: B-, Daniel Ricciardo: N/A, Nyck de Vries: D

It’s never a good sign when Helmut Marko has to get involved at either Red Bull team midway through the season.

This time, Nyck de Vries was the unfortunate casualty, with his AlphaTauri career lasting just ten races.

Up stepped the popular Australian Daniel Ricciardo who will have been glad the mid-season break came when it did to give him a chance to further acclimatize to his new car.

Given his experience in F1, he’ll be expected to outpace Yuki Tsunoda sooner rather than later, although his 13^th and 16^th-place finishes suggest he may be limited by his machinery.

The young Japanese driver has been arguably the only positive for the team, scoring each of their four points so far.

He had to wait months to return to the top ten but did so in Belgium and will want to build on that success in the Netherlands.