The New York Times recently put out its mid-season driver rankings, which haven’t sat well with most of Lewis Hamilton’s fans. The Briton has been placed behind drivers like Carlos Sainz and George Russell, which has irked many, including F1 YouTuber CameronF1.
Hamilton‘s season has not been top-notch, largely owing to his struggles to get up to speed with the car. But when Mercedes did get its act together, Hamilton came up to speed.
The Briton won two of the last three races before F1 headed to a summer break, but the NYT journalists saw it differently. Their reasoning behind the same was simple enough,
“This hasn’t been his finest season. Russell has remained the quicker of the two Mercedes drivers, leading their qualifying head-to-head 10-4.”
However, CameronF1, who amassed more than 11k views on his view, felt that the American publication disrespected Hamilton. He read out the list of drivers ranked ahead of him, and also explained why the NYT’s reasoning did not make sense.
He stared with Lando Norris, and pointed out the number of times the Briton threw away race-wins, despite driving the fastest car on the grid. Norris was in number two, one place ahead of his teammate Oscar Piastri.
Charles Leclerc was number four, and CameronF1 feels that he didn’t have any talking points other than his Monaco GP victory. It was special. Leclerc ended years of heartbreak in the Principality with his victory, but he accused the journalists of ‘romanticizing’ the sport.
However, he emphasized that two drivers got higher rankings than they deserved — Sainz and Russell. Sainz, after a good start to the campaign, went through a rocky patch, as did Russell. Above all, neither of them were as consistently good as Hamilton was, when driving a top car.