Round 22 F1 GFT AI Driver Rankings: Verstappen dominates Abu Dhabi for 15th win to end the 2022 F1 season

20 November 2022
By Bob Francis, Managing Editor
Go Full Throttle Racing News

YAS MARINA CIRCUIT, Abu Dhabi, UAE — Sunday's F1 season finale was another display of just how dominant Red Bull Racing and World Champion Max Verstappen performed in 2022. Verstappen went from Pole Position to a 15th Grand Prix victory in Abu Dhabi with little challenge to his position after turn 4 of the opening lap. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc sealed P2 in the Driver standings over Perez as they finished P2 and P3 respectively in the race.

Max Verstappen won the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in comfortable fashion (Image Credit: formula1.com)

FINAL GFT F1 AI DRIVER RANKINGS

Formula 1 GFT AI Driver Rankings after Round 22 — The Season Finale Abu Dhabi GP, YAS MARINA CIRCUIT, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Image: GFT Digital / gofullthrottle.net)

How did we do? The GFT AI Driver ranking model was 92% reflective of driver performance and our GFT Race Prediction model delivered 87% accuracy having accurately predicted Carlos Sainz win at Silverstone, Perez win at Singapore, and Russel’s win in Brazil.

Another Tough Race for Hamilton
A disappointing end to the 2022 F1 season for Lewis Hamilton. “There’s something up with the car,” the 7x F1 Champion reported to his Mercedes AMG F1 team at Lap 58. “I’m losing power, what’s going on?” Another DNF as Hamilton was forced to abandon the Abu Dhabi GP with a broken transmission. Lewis Hamilton goes a full season without winning a pole or an F1 race.

On Lap 56 of 58, Mercedes had their first mechanical failure of the season and Hamilton’s first winless season in F1 ended with him crawling to the pits stuck in seventh gear. (Image Credit: formula1.com)

“It was a good race — it was all about tyre management. I think we looked after the mediums quite well and then on hard tyres, I was literally managing from Lap 1 to the end. Incredible to win again here and the 15th win of the season is unbelievable. It’s been really enjoyable to work with the whole team and to be able to achieve something like this, this year. I know it’s going to be hard to replicate something like this, but it is also motivation to try and do well again next year” — Max Verstappen, Red Bull

Up Next:
Go Full Throttle Racing News will be in Las Vegas next week for coverage of Ferrari’s participation at the big AWS re:Invent conference.

That’s all from the 2022 season. 2023 pre-season testing is set to take place on February 23–25 in Sakhir, Bahrain. View the 2023 Formula 1 calendar here.