Lewis Hamilton snubbed as McLaren team principal picks his top 3 F1 drivers on the grid

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella snubbed Lewis Hamilton while picking his top three F1 drivers of the 2023 season.

The British driver got his mojo back and displayed some of his vintage performances this year as he finished P3 in the drivers' championship behind the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. However, the Brit could not find himself on the McLaren team principal's list of the top three drivers of the season.

Speaking with DAZN, Stella put Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, and Fernando Alonso as his top 3 drivers of the season and snubbed the seven-time world champion. He said:

"When we talk about being the most complete, I definitely think of Fernando Alonso. He basically has no weaknesses. I think this makes him unique. He is not the best in many things, but he is very strong in all of them."

"Lando, I think his development as a driver will make him so complete. He reminds me a little of Fernando. My top 3 drivers with the same cars would be Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso,"

Red Bull team boss explains how Mercedes cost Lewis Hamilton the title in 2021

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated that he believed that it was Mercedes that cost Lewis Hamilton his eighth world title in 2021.

While appearing on Sky Sports' A League Of Their Own gameshow, Horner claimed that the German team made a strategic error by not pitting Lewis Hamilton during the safety car restart. He said:

“Mercedes f*cked up. They left poor Lewis out there on tires that had done pretty much most of the race and we’d pitted with Max, so he was on a fresh set of tires. Max made the move and… The interesting thing is where Max passed him – it caught Lewis completely by surprise."

"After the race, Max told us he didn’t intend to overtake him there but he got cramped behind the safety car and he couldn’t feel his left foot properly, so he thought: ‘Oh, f*ck it, I’m going [for it] anyway.’ And then, when they were going down the straight, he was trying to wake his left foot up to hit the brakes for the next chicane.

It will be interesting to see if Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton respond to Christian Horner's assessment of what went wrong during the controversial ending of the 2021 season finale in Abu Dhabi.