Drivers of the year 2013 - Q2

For numbers 23 to 17 please click here

And so we continue our countdown from 16 to 11...

16. Valtteri Bottas (Williams)

The latest flying Finn flew under the radar for the majority of it. He actually had a pretty decent showing despite lacking some of the sparkle that was expected as he was often out raced by Maldonado despite being ahead on the grid. Still an exceptional showing in wet qualifying in Canada when he started third and an even better dry top 10 start in the USA followed by four points for eighth marked him out as one to watch. He’ll be even better next season, hopefully Williams will provide the car for him to shine as much as people thing he is capable of.

15. Jules Bianchi (Marussia)

Marussia had the jump on Caterham for the early stages of the season and Jules Bianchi took full advantage of that. While dominating his team mate, he also took on and beat the Caterham’s even when they overtook them in development. It wasn’t as noticeable once Caterham were more fully in control so he began to be a bit overlooked but it was a great display for the Ferrari young driver. Perhaps the only surprise is that his performances this year didn’t yield a move up the grid, so slightly disappointingly he’s at Marussia for another year.

14. Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso)

I thought it was a bit unfair of Red Bull to seemingly so easily dismiss Vergne as a replacement for Mark Webber. Vergne for much of the time is a perfectly competent driver with great potential, he may be out-qualified most of the time by his now ex-team mate Daniel Ricciardo, but often they’ll end up on track together with Vergne ahead. If Vergne can find an extra bit of speed in qualifying he can move up the grid. With GP3 champion Daniil Kvyat joining him he’ll have to up his game if he wants his career to move on up.

13. Paul di Resta (Force India)

It looks like di Resta is going to fall out of Formula 1 for next season, it’ll be a shame if he can find a way back because he deserves to be competing. Remember this is the guy who beat Sebastian Vettel when they were in Formula 3 together. But the thing is he does himself no favours with his I’m owed attitude that sometimes comes across in the press. His public perception isn’t great and it didn’t help that this season despite a positive start to the year there was a terrible middle of the year when Force India couldn’t get a handle on the tyres; for four consecutive races di Resta had incidents too.

Hopefully he’ll bounce back, there’s too many drivers competing that perhaps shouldn’t be there, but despite this when you’ve been in F1 for three years and you don’t look like you’re progressing, you’re lucky to have to been in F1 for three years.

12. Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)

Ricciardo got into Q3 nine times in the 2013 season. That’s five more times than his team mate Vergne did and that’s pretty much why he’s the one going to Red Bull. It’ll be interesting to see how he gets on against Vettel there, was he picked because they believe he’ll do a good enough back up job, or as some people suspect he can grow into a superstar himself. His qualifying indicates he’s fast enough, his race performances sometimes seem to show he can’t maintain that pace, but that could just be because he can manage to squeeze more out of the car over one lap than it’s capable of doing for 70. 

Whatever, there are still questions to be answer but it’s going to be fascinating to see if he can manage to put some pressure on Vettel in the German’s own team.

11.  Sergio Perez (McLaren)

To have a McLaren driver down in only 11th spot is an indication that the driver may have not performed to expectations but that also yet again McLaren have produced a dodgy car, except this one wasn’t just dodgy, it was a bit rubbish.

Perez started off quietly this year as he found his feet, but I thought he actually drove rather well. He had some problems but it was a learning year and he definitely displayed some fight and not an insignificant amount of pace too. 

Jenson Button may have out-scored him but Perez actually won qualifying 10-9. No points gained there but it showed that in many ways he was the equal and certainly in the latter few races of the campaign he was the go to man for McLaren’s points scoring. It’s a shame he won’t get another year in a better McLaren as exciting rookie and Renault 3.5 World Series Champion Kevin Magnussen takes over but at least he stays on with Force India.

For the top 10 please click here

all photo's taken from autosport.com