F1 News
Shifts in Power Rankings after perfect weekend Russell
- GPblog.com
The judges of the Power Rankings of the official website of Formula 1 will not have had an easy time arriving at a balanced judgement without a race. The panel managed to do so and it will not be a surprise to anyone that George Russell and Max Verstappen were the big winners.
Russell perfect
The man with the highest score after the rained-out Belgian Grand Prix is George Russell. "How Russell would have performed if the race had been run over the full distance is a moot point, but no one, not least our judges, can begrudge the Englishman his first-ever F1 podium," reads the assessment and there's probably nothing anyone can argue with. The Englishman was awarded a ten and moved up two places in the Power Rankings to fifth.
Verstappen had to concede very little to Russell and received a 9.3 from the judges. "Russell's performance was great, but let's not take anything away from Max Verstappen, who lapped more than three tenths faster than any other driver in Q3 in the soggy Spa-Francorchamps to take his sixth pole of the season - with a half-point victory on Sunday as a reward, as he narrowed the gap on Hamilton in the driver standings to just three points."
Shifts in the standings
As mentioned, Russell is doing the best business in the Power Rankings. He moves up from seventh to fifth place. He does so at the expense of Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz. The Frenchman was rated well at Spa, with an 8.4 in fourth place, but it was not enough to keep Russell behind him.
Sainz didn't make it into the top ten of the judging panel and therefore dropped from fifth to seventh place. Finally, Charles Leclerc also drops one spot in the standings with a reasonable 6.8. He is now in fourth place. The top three in the standings remain unchanged with Max Verstappen on top, followed by Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton.