About
Every F1 driver has a rating, like a chess player. It goes up when they beat their teammate and down when they lose, because a teammate is the only rival in the same car.
Inspired by Mr V's Garage
This site takes its idea from Mr V's Garage, who built an Elo engine for F1 and explained it in two great videos:
- I made an F1 ELO Engine. Who's highest rated?
- I made an EVEN BETTER Elo engine for F1. Who's highest rated?
Go watch them, then come back and argue about the leaderboard.
How it works
Everyone starts at 1000. Each session, a driver plays a match against their teammate: finish ahead and you win. How many points change hands depends on the gap in ratings. Beating a higher-rated teammate earns a lot; losing to a lower-rated one costs a lot. One match is worth at most 32 points.
Example
A 1200-rated driver is expected to beat a 1000-rated teammate about 76% of the time. If they do, they gain about 8 points. If the underdog wins instead, the underdog gains about 24.
- Qualifying counts each knockout segment (Q1, Q2, Q3) where both teammates set a time.
- Race and sprint matches only count when both teammates finish.
- In the Overall rating, a weekend's qualifying is worth the same as the race, and sprint sessions half.
- Every weekend carries the same total stake in the Overall rating, whatever data its era has. A 1988 race, with no qualifying data, counts double; a sprint weekend is scaled to match a normal one.
- The trend arrow shows the change over the last three race weekends, for drivers still racing.
- Teams with three cars split the stake, so no one risks more than a normal match.
Default vs re-centred
The default rating is a running total: points won from teammates add up over a career. It rewards long, dominant careers, and modern drivers, who play more matches a season.
The re-centred rating (the Scale switch on the leaderboards and driver pages) shifts each weekend's grid so its average is exactly 1000, and starts new drivers at that average. A rating then means “how far above the field of the day”, which compares eras more fairly. The cost: long careers slowly give back points won from drivers who later left.
That's also why it isn't the default: it has Lewis Hamilton, eight-time world champion, rated below the average driver on today's grid. We don't print lies on the front page.
What's covered
History starts in 1982, when teams first had to build their own cars. Before that, many “teammates” were privateers who had just bought the same chassis.
| Grand Prix | 1982 onward |
| Qualifying | 1994 onward (one session until 2005, Q1/Q2/Q3 since 2006) |
| Sprint | 2021 onward |
| Sprint Qualifying | 2023 onward (SQ1/SQ2/SQ3) |
Known limitations
- Most drivers have one teammate a season, so ratings move slowly and only connect when drivers switch teams.
- Retirements are skipped, so a driver who crashes out loses nothing for it.
- Modern drivers still play more matches a season (Q1/Q2/Q3, sprints, fewer retirements), so their ratings react faster.
- A great driver with a great teammate can look average. Teammates are the only yardstick.
Data
Results come from Jolpica-F1 and OpenF1 (sprint qualifying, photos and team colours, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Ratings are recalculated daily. This is an unofficial fan project and is not associated with Formula 1 or its companies.