– At the season opener of the reader rankings from Motorsport-Total.com, there was already the first surprise: It wasn’t the actual top 3 from the 2026 Australian Grand Prix that made it onto the virtual podium, but alongside George Russell as the winner and Charles Leclerc in second place, the driver who actually finished eighth – Formula 1 newcomer Arvid Lindblad.
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Lindblad impressed in Melbourne with a practically flawless weekend, had a good race start, and scored four championship points right at his Grand Prix debut. “A strong debut,” praises Formula 1 expert Marc Surer, who assigned grades for the individual drivers together with readers and editors. In Lindblad’s case, this resulted in an average of 1.93, the third-best rating behind Russell (1.53) and Leclerc (1.58).
Surer credited Leclerc with a “super show in the first laps” and explicitly wishes for “more of that.” According to the former Formula 1 driver, Russell “delivered the performance at the right moment.” Surer only gave the dream grade of 1 to Russell and Leclerc. Readers (1.60 and 1.74 respectively) and the editorial team (both 2) saw it slightly differently.
Opinions diverged even further regarding the actual third-place finisher: Andrea Kimi Antonelli received a 2 from Surer, and readers rated the Mercedes driver with an average of 2.12 grade points. However, the editorial team penalized Antonelli for the crash in the third free practice session and the resulting compromised qualifying: Grade 4. In the end, that made 2.71 grade points and tenth place in the driver rankings for Melbourne.
Photo gallery: Melbourne: The driver grades from Marc Surer and the editorial team
However, Oscar Piastri fared the worst: The title contender from the previous year got away with a 4 from Surer, but received a 5 from both the editorial team and the readers. With an average of 4.67 grade points, Piastri therefore ended up in last place. Surer commented: “Fast and convincing – until the crash. That must not happen!”
How transparent is the driver performance in 2026?
How the editorial team discussed the driver grades after the Australian Grand Prix will be a topic on Monday evening from 8:30 PM in the call-in show “Live bei Scheuren” on the Formel1.de Twitch channel. Host Kevin Scheuren invites users to join personally via Zoom and chat with him about the Australian Grand Prix and Formula 1.
Data analysis: Could Ferrari have won in Australia?
Because there is a lot to discuss after the race in Melbourne: Can driver performance in 2026 still be evaluated as objectively as in 2025? Or do the many technical aids make a realistic assessment impossible? The core question is: How much are the drivers restricted by the (hybrid) technology?
Click through: This is how Surer grades the 22 drivers!
How Marc Surer grades the other drivers can be read in detail in an expanded photo gallery. In this gallery, both the Formula 1 expert and the editorial team justify their grades for each of the 22 drivers individually. So that users can hopefully understand even better from now on how the driver grades were determined.
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By the way: Many users want more transparency from the editorial team in the awarding of grades. Which is why we have decided to also publish the individual grades of our editors in a separate table. For the overall editorial grade, which makes up Pillar 3 of the system, the editorial team agrees on a common full grade in a conference.
In this conference, which has become a fixed agenda item for us every Monday morning after Formula 1, things sometimes get heated when different opinions clash. And we collect arguments that speak for or against a better or worse grade.
How we award our grades
The idea behind our grading is to evaluate performances over a weekend and especially in the race with grades (1 = Very good, 6 = Insufficient). External influences that the drivers cannot control themselves should be excluded. And so that it’s not just the editorial team evaluating subjectively, as is the case with football magazines, we have created a total of three equal pillars with the readers and the expert.
And this is how we calculate:
We determine the average from the average grading of the Motorsport-Total.com users, the grading by expert Marc Surer, and the grading by our editorial team. Our driver ranking results from this average value. We only display one decimal place, but we use all decimal places for the calculation. The order of the ranking for two drivers in the event of a supposed grading tie results from these partially invisible decimal places.
The grades of the individual editors:
We are often asked how our editorial grades are determined. All editors of our Formula 1 team first submit their grades individually. In an editorial conference on the morning after the Grand Prix, we then exchange views and agree on common editorial grades, which usually (but not always) reflect the average of the individual editors’ grades. When determining the editorial grades, discussions sometimes get heated. The goal is to agree on common driver grades that every editor can live with.
Award for Driver of the Year:
Based on the overall grades of a race weekend, we distribute points for the 2026 annual standings. Analogous to the points system in the real Formula 1 World Championship, the winner receives 25 points, the second 18, the third 15 – down to one point for 10th place. There is no bonus point for the fastest lap. After the end of the season, the driver with the most points is honored with the Motorsport-Total.com Award for Driver of the Year 2026.
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