Top five after 14 races according to Hinchcliffe

James Hinchcliffe, a former IndyCar driver, named in his column on the official World Championship website the five drivers who in his opinion deserve the most praise after the first fourteen stages of the season.

Lando Norris (2nd place in the individual competition)

Lando Norris is having the best season of his career and is the only driver who can challenge Max Verstappen for the world title, although that still seems a long way off.

McLaren has made impressive progress in modernizing the car, but Lando is also performing very well. Norris seems to have managed to iron out the small mistakes that hampered him in qualifying last year. It is true that he has not always had a good start this season, but there is no doubt that the team is doing everything it can to get this right in the second half of the season.

But he learned to manage the tyres well and maintain their efficiency over long runs of laps – we saw an example of this at Imola. Lando manages to use the tyre resource more efficiently than Oscar Piastri, which means he is included in the number of contenders for wins more often than his Australian partner.

Max Verstappen (personal championship leader)

At the beginning of the season, the RB20 car had an advantage, but after about five or six races the rivals were almost equal in speed to the champion team, and for Red Bull Racing this turn of events was almost a shock. But it is precisely in these circumstances that Max shows all his excellent skills.

It is a joy to watch him race, often performing almost perfectly on the track. Starts, pit stops, overtaking, defensive manoeuvres – he does it all very well, and only the stage in Austria was an exception that everyone remembered.

But at Imola, Montreal and Barcelona, ​​where his car was not the fastest, he managed to win on all three circuits thanks to his impeccable driving.

It is also striking that his superiority over his teammate Sergio Perez only increased as Red Bull Racing’s speed advantage over other top teams decreased. And if Verstapenn did not have to give 100% in the races last year anyway, it was extremely rare that anyone surpassed him, then he will have to do so all the time in 2024. All the more interesting to follow the battle on the championship circuits.

Nico Hulkenberg (11th place in the individual competition)

Nico Hulkenberg is enjoying something of a renaissance – you could say this remarkable story began when Haas F1 decided to take a gamble and sign a driver who is already over 30 and has missed three seasons.

Kevin Magnussen drove a number of races in 2022 with peace of mind and it was difficult to predict what results Nico would achieve as his partner. But the German not only kept up with Kevin, but often got ahead of him and scored more points at the end of the season.

Hulkenberg looks set to perform even better in 2024, despite Haas addressing the issue of increased tyre wear over race distance that plagued the team last season. And Nico is showing consistent pace in qualifying, and despite being 11th in the individual standings after 14 stages of the season, he has more than four times the points of Magnussen.

It should come as no surprise that it was he who was invited to join the Audi factory programme in Formula 1, and next year Nico will drive for Sauber, on the basis of which a new team is being created.

Yuki Tsunoda (12th place in the individual competition)

Last year, Red Bull management found it difficult to compare Yuki to their other drivers, as Nyck de Vries underperformed and was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo, who missed the first half of the season but was soon injured, and partnered Tsunoda with rookie Liam Lawson for five stages.

Yuki has been working hard over the winter to better prepare himself for the season, and his efforts have paid off: although the Visa RB car is not particularly fast, he regularly manages to finish close to the top ten or earn points.

While Yuki was recently “famous” for his lack of restraint and increased emotionality during radio exchanges with the team, he now works much calmer on the track, which also confirms his professional maturity.

At the end of the first part of the season he scored almost twice as many points as Ricciardo, and Yuki already has a contract with Visa RB for next year.

Lewis Hamilton (6th place in the individual competition)

The seven-time world champion started the season under unusual circumstances, as it was announced in February that he would be leaving Mercedes at the end of this year and moving to Ferrari.

You would expect this to have had some effect on his motivation as he counted down the remaining days until his contract with Mercedes expired, but it didn’t. Of course, Lewis can’t do that, it would belie his reputation as the most successful driver in Formula 1 history.

After two difficult seasons, in which he failed to win races for the first time in his career, he has already achieved two victories in 2024. Although he is sometimes inferior to teammate George Russell in qualifying (the score of their Saturday duels is 8:6), his starting position is on average higher than that of his partner.