Every 2026 driver in every 2026 car: 24,200 seasons on how much the seat is worth
F1 Legend Sim · Staff · 22 August 2026 · 8 min read
Every season brings the same unsettleable argument: is that driver slow, or is the car? Nobody gets to run the same year twice with different machinery, so there is no way to know. Except here: we put the 22 drivers of 2026 into the 11 cars of 2026, one at a time, and ran the full championship 100 times for every combination. That is 242 cells and 24,200 seasons.
The result that sums it all up
Before the big table, two numbers. By his attributes, Max Verstappen is the strongest driver on this grid. Gabriel Bortoleto comes out 22nd of 22. Put them at opposite ends:
Best driver, worst car
P9.0
Verstappen in the Cadillac
Worst driver, best car
P7.1
Bortoleto in the Mercedes
The weakest driver on the grid in the best car finishes nearly two places ahead of the best driver in the worst car. This is not an opinion about anybody: it is what happens when you run the championship a hundred times and take the average. In Formula 1, the seat beats the steering wheel.
Verstappen, eleven times over
The clearest way to see it is to take one driver — the best one — and walk him through all eleven cars. His attributes never change. The only thing that changes is the machinery.
| Car | Performance | Avg. position | Wins | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercedes | 95 | P1.0 | 12.5 | 97% |
| McLaren | 90 | P1.2 | 9.0 | 88% |
| Ferrari | 89 | P1.2 | 8.3 | 86% |
| Red Bullhis car | 77 | P5.7 | 2.1 | 1% |
| Racing Bulls | 55 | P7.0 | 0.1 | — |
| Alpine | 55 | P7.1 | 0.1 | — |
| Haas | 45 | P7.7 | 0.0 | — |
| Williams | 40 | P8.8 | 0.0 | — |
| Audi | 39 | P8.5 | 0.0 | — |
| Aston Martin | 33 | P9.0 | 0.0 | — |
| Cadillac | 31 | P9.0 | 0.0 | — |
Verstappen wins the championship 97% of the time in the Mercedes, 88% in the McLaren and 86% in the Ferrari. In his own Red Bull: 1%. Same driver, same grid, same number of races. The difference between near-certain champion and never champion is which garage he walks into.
Look at the step, too: from the Ferrari to the Red Bull he drops from 8.3 wins a season to 2.1. Below the Red Bull, zero. This grid has three cars that win and eight that do not, and no driver alive crosses that line.
All 22 in all 11
Here is the complete table. You can switch between average position, title share and wins per season. Drivers are sorted by their average across the eleven cars — best to worst, according to the simulator.
| Driver | Mercedes95 | McLaren90 | Ferrari89 | Red Bull77 | Racing Bulls55 | Alpine55 | Haas45 | Williams40 | Audi39 | Aston Martin33 | Cadillac31 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max VerstappenRed Bull | P1.0 | P1.2 | P1.2 | P5.7 | P7.0 | P7.1 | P7.7 | P8.8 | P8.5 | P9.0 | P9.0 |
| Oscar PiastriMcLaren | P1.3 | P3.4 | P4.1 | P7.0 | P8.1 | P8.1 | P9.0 | P9.0 | P9.0 | P9.5 | P10.1 |
| Lewis HamiltonFerrari | P1.4 | P3.6 | P4.1 | P7.0 | P8.2 | P8.2 | P9.0 | P9.0 | P9.0 | P9.7 | P10.0 |
| Charles LeclercFerrari | P1.5 | P3.6 | P4.5 | P7.0 | P8.4 | P8.4 | P9.0 | P9.1 | P9.0 | P9.3 | P10.0 |
| Lando NorrisMcLaren | P1.4 | P3.5 | P4.5 | P7.0 | P8.4 | P8.5 | P9.0 | P9.1 | P9.1 | P9.4 | P10.2 |
| George RussellMercedes | P2.3 | P5.2 | P5.6 | P7.0 | P8.8 | P8.8 | P9.0 | P9.1 | P9.2 | P9.8 | P11.5 |
| Fernando AlonsoAston Martin | P2.6 | P5.9 | P6.1 | P7.0 | P8.8 | P8.8 | P9.0 | P9.2 | P9.3 | P10.4 | P11.3 |
| Kimi AntonelliMercedes | P2.6 | P5.8 | P6.2 | P7.6 | P8.9 | P8.9 | P9.0 | P9.3 | P9.3 | P10.8 | P12.2 |
| Carlos SainzWilliams | P6.7 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.1 | P9.0 | P9.0 | P9.9 | P11.6 | P12.2 | P14.6 | P15.7 |
| Sergio PerezCadillac | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.5 | P9.2 | P9.5 | P12.7 | P14.4 | P15.5 | P17.7 | P18.4 |
| Liam LawsonRacing Bulls | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P8.5 | P9.3 | P9.4 | P13.2 | P15.1 | P15.9 | P17.3 | P18.2 |
| Alexander AlbonWilliams | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P8.0 | P9.7 | P9.5 | P13.4 | P15.4 | P15.5 | P17.7 | P18.4 |
| Valtteri BottasCadillac | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P8.0 | P10.1 | P9.9 | P14.3 | P16.3 | P16.8 | P18.6 | P18.9 |
| Isack HadjarRed Bull | P7.6 | P8.0 | P8.0 | P8.0 | P10.1 | P9.9 | P14.0 | P15.9 | P16.7 | P18.2 | P18.6 |
| Esteban OconHaas | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P8.4 | P10.3 | P10.7 | P15.0 | P16.5 | P17.0 | P18.0 | P19.0 |
| Oliver BearmanHaas | P7.0 | P7.0 | P7.0 | P8.0 | P10.7 | P10.6 | P15.2 | P16.9 | P17.1 | P18.8 | P19.0 |
| Nico HulkenbergAudi | P7.0 | P7.1 | P7.1 | P8.2 | P10.6 | P10.7 | P15.8 | P17.4 | P17.9 | P18.5 | P19.1 |
| Pierre GaslyAlpine | P7.0 | P7.1 | P7.3 | P8.9 | P11.6 | P11.0 | P15.8 | P16.9 | P17.8 | P18.2 | P18.8 |
| Lance StrollAston Martin | P7.0 | P7.2 | P7.3 | P8.0 | P12.1 | P12.1 | P16.4 | P17.9 | P18.3 | P19.1 | P19.4 |
| Arvid LindbladRacing Bulls | P7.1 | P7.5 | P7.5 | P8.0 | P12.6 | P12.7 | P16.8 | P17.4 | P18.9 | P19.5 | P19.1 |
| Franco ColapintoAlpine | P7.1 | P7.5 | P7.6 | P8.0 | P12.7 | P12.6 | P17.1 | P17.8 | P18.6 | P19.4 | P19.5 |
| Gabriel BortoletoAudi | P7.1 | P7.3 | P7.5 | P8.0 | P12.8 | P13.0 | P17.3 | P18.2 | P18.6 | P19.4 | P19.5 |
Drivers are sorted by their average across all eleven cars. The red outline marks the seat they actually hold in 2026, and under each team, that car’s performance rating.
What matters here are not the rows: it is the columns. The table changes colour left to right, not top to bottom. It hardly matters who is driving: the Mercedes column is red all the way down and the Cadillac column grey all the way down. The car moves a driver 10.6 places on average between the best and worst seat; talent, inside a single car, moves far less.
The floor: there are six good seats, and that is that
Read the Mercedes column top to bottom. The first eight drivers land between P1.0 and P2.7. From the ninth down, the column flattens abruptly: Sainz P6.7, Pérez P6.97, Albon P6.98, Ocon P6.99, Lawson P7.00, Hülkenberg P7.00… all the way to Bortoleto, last of the 22, at P7.11.
That is not a cap in the simulator — every decimal is different — it is grid arithmetic. In 2026 there are only six seats in cars capable of winning: two Mercedes, two McLaren, two Ferrari. Drop a weak driver into the Mercedes and the people ahead of him are exactly the five remaining occupants of those cars, plus Verstappen wrestling the Red Bull. Six. So he finishes seventh, whoever he is.
Put the other way round, and this is the number that best sums up modern Formula 1: the best anyone manages in the worst car is P9.01 — and that is Verstappen. The worst anyone manages in the best car is P7.64. The two bands never overlap: there is a place and a half of clear air between the best driver in the world in a Cadillac and the worst possible outcome in a Mercedes. No amount of talent crosses that line.
Who is wasted and who is carried
Cross each driver’s level with the car he was given and the 2026 grid’s mismatches fall out:
Verstappen is the extreme case: first in talent, fourth-best car. That is why his real season comes out at P5.7 when in any of the top three he would be champion. Fernando Alonso is second: seventh in talent, tenth car, finishing P10.4. In the Mercedes he would be P2.6.
At the other end, Kimi Antonelli is eighth in talent and holds the best car on the grid: he finishes P2.6 and takes the title 22% of the time. That is not a criticism — it is exactly what would happen to anyone in that seat — but it explains why comparing raw numbers between drivers in different teams means almost nothing.
And with everyone in their real car, the 2026 title goes to the two Mercedes: Russell 35% and Antonelli 22%. The two McLarens take 12% each and both Ferraris come in below that.
What this does not say
It is not a 2026 prediction. It is a controlled experiment: same grid, same race count, no in-season car development, no injuries, no team strategy and no team orders. Reality has all of those.
And it does not measure talent — it measures our attributes. Bortoleto coming out 22nd is what his profile says in our database, not a verdict on a driver who has only just arrived. If his rating goes up, his row goes up. What the experiment does show — and this part does not depend on the rating you give anybody — is that the distance between columns is larger than the distance between rows.
If you want to build your own combinations, What If mode lets you pick the driver, the car and the season, and the driver profiles carry the attribute breakdown all of this comes from.