F1 power rankings: Lewis Hamilton hits the top after Hungarian Grand Prix win as Sebastian Vettel recovers

With three races down in the 2020 Formula One season, Hamilton holds a five-point lead over teammate Valtteri Bottas as Red Bull and Ferrari play catch up

The first triple-header of the 2020 Formula One season wrapped up with the Hungarian Grand Prix taking place in changeable conditions, allowing Lewis Hamilton to deliver one of the most dominant displays of his career to seal back-to-back victories and take the lead in the drivers’ championship battle.

Having played second fiddle to Valtteri Bottas in the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix, six-time world champion Hamilton provided a timely reminder of his class with back-to-back wins in the Styrian Grand Prix and at the Hungaroring on Sunday.

The latter completed a formidable two weeks for the Mercedes driver, having delivered one of the best qualifying laps of his career in the wet at the Red Bull Ring before backing it up with a formidable drive in Hungary, and his reward is a slender five-point lead in the drivers’ standings.

Hungary also saw Racing Point start to deliver on their promise, though they are yet to fully convert their qualifying promise into race-day potential, while Red Bull certainly provided the entertainment thanks to Max Verstappen’s pre-race accident and the team’s incredible rebuild job to help deliver an unlikely podium finish.

After two strong weekend’s in Austria, McLaren came back to earth with a bump, while Ferrari’s bizarre season continued an unpredictable trend as they look to desperately claw back lost ground in the 2020 battle.

Taking into account the last two race weekends, here’s the updated F1 power rankings.

20. Nicolas Latifi (Williams) - down two

Last of the finishers in the Styrian Grand Prix, Latifi looked very much the rookie driver that he is in Hungary. A strong start after a good wet qualifying performance saw him running in the points on the opening lap as cars pitted for dry tyres, but a mistake by the team let him out straight into the path of Carlos Sainz and that pretty much wrecked his race from there, with a damaged left-rear wheel forcing him to limp back to the pits. An unforced spin late in the race summer up his race day.

19. Romain Grosjean (Haas) - no move

Made the smart decision to change tyres before the race start that looked to have paid off when he was running in fourth place, but the Haas simply has no pace this season and he quickly plummeted out of the points. That isn’t entirely his fault, but the fact that teammate Magnussen managed a significantly better finish and managed his tyres smarter doesn’t look good for Grosjean. However, the biggest damage came off the track as Grosjean found himself targeted with rather harsh criticism from Lewis Hamilton about his approach towards the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.

18. Kimi Raikkonen (Alfa Romeo) - down one

Raikkonen is enduring a pretty disappointing season, having missed out on points at the Styrian Grand Prix and again proving off the pace in Hungary. Their qualifying performance is largely to blame for Alfa Romeo’s struggles this season, but Raikkonen himself is looking a touch past it in 2020.

17. George Russell (Williams) - down one

Another strong qualifying display secured a 12th-place start in Hungary after finding himself 11th in Austria, but Russell is not able to capitalise on the platform at the moment and the opening lap is proving an issue for him. He soon found himself behind both Alfa Romeos, which is not where Williams want to be this season.

16. Pierre Gasly (Alpha Tauri) - down eight

The sooner Gasly gets out of Hungary the better. The positives of his points finish in the Austrian Grand Prix have been quickly forgotten, with Gasly well off the pace the following weekend as Alpha Tauri struggled to match their strong wet qualifying performance, before two engine failures in three days wrecked his weekend in Budapest. These are worrying times for the Alpha Tauri garage after such reliability issues.

15. Esteban Ocon (Renault) - down five

Another who has struggled since the opening weekend, Ocon could do nothing about the overheating problem that ended his race at the Red Bull Ring, but Hungary he found himself well off the pace and an alarming six positions behind teammate Daniel Ricciardo. 2020 is already looking like a steep learning curve.

Alfa Romeo are struggling for any pace whatsoever (EPA)

14. Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo) - down three

Like his Alfa Romeo teammate, Giovinazzi is struggling for any kind of pace and is having to make do with anything he can pick up among the scraps. He does of course have points to his name, but Raikkonen has now beaten him two weekends in a row and will start to shade their intra-team battle if Giovinazzi’s not careful.

13. Daniil Kvyat (Alpha Tauri) - down one

Kvyat is having a quietly consistent season so far. Tenth place in the Styrian Grand Prix backed up his claim that he could and should have scored points the week before, and he drove reliably to a 12th-place finish in Hungary without experiencing too many issues along the way.

12. Kevin Magnussen (Haas) - up three

Made the tactical call of the Hungarian Grand Prix by pitting on the formation lap for dry tyres, and gave it his all to try and keep the struggling Haas in the points, which he achieved to get them off the mark for the year. The move may have brought a one-place penalty, but it put Magnussen into the reckoning for points in the first place.

11. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) - down six

Leclerc has looked a different driver from the one who so impressively bagged himself second place in the opening Grand Prix. Leclerc inexplicably took himself and teammate Sebastian Vettel out of the race last week, before falling a victim of a poor tyre strategy call last time out that cost him dear. However, he was well off the pace for a second weekend in a row.

Vettel was absolved of any blame in the Styrian Grand Prix crash with Leclerc (Getty)

10. Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) - up 10

The last two weeks may have been excruciatingly hard for Ferrari, but Vettel has come out of the fortnight fairly unscathed. The German was a victim of Leclerc’s rashness in Austria, and outperformed Leclerc throughout the weekend in Hungary to secure sixth place and fend off the much faster Racing Point of Sergio Perez to collect points. The weekend also saw him potentially find a seat on the 2021 grid, which right now seems to be the priority.

9. Carlos Sainz (McLaren) - down two

Sainz’s season so far has promised much and delivered little beyond the third place on the grid in Austria as he mastered the wet conditions. Sainz just seems to lack race pace at the moment, which saw him have to make do with a ninth-place finish on Sunday only thanks to Magnussen’s demotion.

8. Daniel Ricciardo (Renault) - up four

The Australian has found his feet after the disappointing start to the season, and appears to be outperforming the Renault pace so far after a pair of eighth-place finishes. Ricciardo suffered somewhat for getting stuck behind Ocon in Austria that ultimately left him exposed to the fast-finishing Stroll and Norris, while in Hungary he quietly went about his business to secure more points for Renault.

7. Sergio Perez (Racing Point) - up two

He seems to have the faster pace than teammate Lance Stroll, but has made errors in qualifying and the race in the last two weeks that will not have gone unnoticed. The Mexican has more points in the Racing Point team so far, but he needlessly took his front wing off when battling with Alex Albon last week and cost Racing Point fifth place, before a poor Hungarian Grand Prix saw him having to make do with a fightback to seventh. If what we’ve seen from Racing Point is true, the car is capable of much more.

6. Lando Norris (McLaren) - down four

Backed up his heroics in the Austrian Grand Prix with another storming final lap at the Red Bull Ring to snatch fifth place from Stroll and Perez, despite having bruising to his torso that required treatment afterwards. But Hungary proved a bit of an eye-opener, with a poor start leaving him with too much work to do and a disappointing 13th.

Lance Stroll delivered his strongest performance of his career so far (Getty)

5. Lance Stroll (Racing Point) - up nine

Has found his place in the Racing Point team questioned even if he doesn’t appear to be at threat, and answered his critics superbly with a strong qualifying and impressive display in Hungary to secure a fourth place finish that went largely unchallenged. Stroll has found himself on the podium before, but Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix was arguably his strongest performance so far and with the last-gasp move on Ricciardo in Austria also a bold-if-not completely successful move, he shoots up the rankings as a result.

4. Alex Albon (Red Bull) - no move

Red Bull took the blame for his poor qualifying performance on Saturday, so to see Albon recover to a strong fifth place was good to see that it wasn’t just the team covering for a struggling driver. Albon found himself way off the pace in the second race in Austria and was also quite a way off the level of Max Verstappen in Hungary, but it’s worth remembering that his race-day drives are exactly what Red Bull are asking of him right now.

3. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) - down two

The opening race winner left Hungary in a downbeat mood after being completely outclassed by Lewis Hamilton for the second week running. Any hopes that the penny had dropped with victory in Austria have faded somewhat, and although the gap in the championship is only five points with nearly a third of the season complete, Bottas does not seem to be able to get the same out of the car than Hamilton currently is.

2. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) - up two

Verstappen could have easily plummeted down the rankings after skating off the track and into the barrier on his way to the grid, but his team came to his rescue with a phenomenal repair job that got him to the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix, and boy did Verstappen repay them. A brilliant start saw him move up from seventh to third and he used a superior race strategy to move up to and consolidate second, before displaying just enough pace to get to the chequered flag in front of Bottas.

1. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) - up two

Any questions of his focus that arose after the Austrian Grand Prix have been emphatically answered by two dominant drives. It’s difficult to say what was more impressive, the qualifying lap for the Styrian Grand Prix or his display in Hungary, and had he not pitted late on to bag himself the additional point for fastest lap on fresh tyres, he would have been the best part of 30 seconds down the road from Verstappen. A seventh world championship beckons.