Lewis Hamilton beaten by George Russell in F1 chart Christian Horner won’t like
The F1 chart for damage costs in the 2023 season make for difficult reading for some team bosses with Logan Sargeant topping the list with an estimated cost of £3.4million, although Mercedes boss Toto Wolff will be happy. Max Verstappen was the only driver who raced in more than seven Grands Prix not to suffer a retirement in a testament to his incredible achievement this season.
According to reddit user basspro25chevy, that played a large role in helping Verstappen having the lowest damage costs in 2023 at just £273,000. Mercedes star George Russell surprisingly takes second on the list, despite his three retirements throughout the year.
The Briton suffered an engine failure in Australia, crashed out in Canada and was ordered to retire the car in Brazil due to rising oil temperatures in the power unit. But Russell is said to have racked up just £530,000 in damage costs with Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas just behind him.
Fernando Alonso is fourth on the list, just ahead of Lewis Hamilton who reportedly tallied up damages worth £696,000. That gave Mercedes as a collective the best record in terms of the least paid in damages with Russell and Hamilton combining for just £1.2m.
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That’s less than 14 drivers on the grid individually with Sargeant the worst culprit of the lot. However, he was in close company to Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who endured a difficult year.
A large chunk of Sainz’s repair costs will have likely come from the devastating damage he suffered from driving over a manhole in Las Vegas. He’s said to have racked up damage costs tallying up to around £2.8m with Red Bull star Sergio Perez close behind.
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The Mexican suffered heavy crashes in qualifying for races in Monaco and Australia before a disastrous race in Japan that resulted in two separate collisions with Lewis Hamilton and Kevin Magnussen. Perez is said to have cost Red Bull £2.5m, meaning they’ve had to pay more than double what Mercedes spent for damage costs in 2023.
AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo also had cheaper payouts for repairs this year than Red Bull. Every penny counts in F1, particularly with repair costs falling under a team’s respective budget cap.
Christian Horner will be hoping for more reliability from Perez next year, particularly with Red Bull facing another year with less wind tunnel time.
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