He may have finished second in the championship, but Sebastian Vettel showed sufficient weaknesses to slip to fourth in our rankings.
4. Sebastian Vettel
Championship position: 2nd (317 points)
There was some debate among the ESPN editorial team about putting Sebastian Vettel fourth on this list. He delivered the most Ferrari victories in a single season since 2010 and in the process gave Lewis Hamilton a run for his money in the title race, eventually finishing second. Yet there were mistakes -- at least one of which was unforgivable -- that we felt the three drivers above him in our rankings, Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton (but not necessarily in that order!), would not have made.
If we'd drawn up this list after the first six races, no-one would have come close to matching Vettel. Between the season-opener in March and the Monaco Grand Prix in May, he won three races and finished second at the other three. As Hamilton struggled at one-off races in Russia and Monaco, Vettel was consistently quick and made the most of Ferrari's strong all-round package. Had he maintained that form for the rest of the season he would have won the championship ... but he didn't.
Although Vettel's actions in Baku didn't lose him the title, they exposed a clear weakness in the Ferrari driver. No matter how irked he may have felt by Hamilton's speed management behind the Safety Car, there is no excuse for driving into a rival on purpose. It was a clear case of emotions clouding judgement and he was lucky his punishment was no more severe than a ten-second stop-go penalty. By his own admission it was his biggest mistake of the year and ultimately it cost him victory after Hamilton dropped down the order due to a loose headrest. In terms of our judgement of his season, the incident simply couldn't be overlooked.
His first corner accident in Singapore was less clear cut. But while there's an argument that he wasn't to blame for the collision, it's impossible to deny that he increased the risk of one by squeezing Kimi Raikkonen and Max Verstappen to the inside of the track. Given the delicate balance of the championship at that stage of the season and the wet conditions on track that evening, it was a move that seemed both unwise and unnecessary. Once again, it exposed a lack of judgement in a moment of increased pressure and once again Vettel was marked down in our judgement because of it.
Reliability issues at the next two rounds may have cost him the championship regardless of his own mistakes, but had he picked up those extra points in Baku and Singapore he would have kept more pressure on Mercedes and Hamilton for longer. Given the exact same Ferrari for an entire season, we came to the conclusion that Alonso, Hamilton and Verstappen would have all done a better job. And for that reason, Vettel is fourth in our 2017 driver rankings.