LONDON: Formula One team bosses have voted Lewis Hamilton as the sport’s top driver for the fourth year in a row but Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas slipped to 10th place in the rankings. The poll, published by motorsport.com on Thursday, put four times world champion Hamilton far ahead of closest rival Max Verstappen. Bottas, winner of three races this year after joining as now-retired 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg’s replacement, was listed in 10th place after bosses awarded points according to the regular F1 scoring system. That represented a drop of one place on where Bottas had been with Williams in 2016. Hamilton scored 233 out of a maximum 250, with Red Bull’s Verstappen on 143. Ferrari’s 2017 championship runner-up Sebastian Vettel, also a four times champion, was third and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo fourth. Force India’s Mexican Sergio Perez dropped out of the top 10 entirely but his French team mate Esteban Ocon made his entry in fifth place, one ahead of McLaren’s double world champion Fernando Alonso. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Renault’s Carlos Sainz tied in seventh place with Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg a new entry at ninth. Published in Daily Times, December 8th 2017.