Formula 1’s new engine and chassis regulations promised to scramble the grid, and with the summer break now underway after the Hungarian Grand Prix, they have… almost delivered.
Mercedes has returned to the kind of dominance it last enjoyed under the previous set of rules, Ferrari has closed in as the only real championship threat, while reigning champion Lando Norris and defending champion team McLaren have had an inconsistent campaign, and Max Verstappen has gone the entire first half without a win. At the other end of the grid, brand-new eleventh team Cadillac is still waiting on its first point. Grades below are on the letter scale (A to F) and reflect performance relative to each team and driver’s own expectations, not just raw points.
Mercedes — Team grade: A-
Mercedes leads the constructors’ table with 379 points, more than a clear win’s worth ahead of Ferrari, and has taken the most wins of any team so far. The new regulations have suited the Brackley-based team better than anyone, but the campaign hasn’t been flawless: a bizarre wheel-shield failure sent the championship leader off the road repeatedly at Silverstone, and an unexplained engine glitch hit both cars at Spa. Toto Wolff already sounds braced for Ferrari to close the gap through the second half of the year.
Kimi Antonelli — A-. Still only 19, Antonelli leads the drivers’ championship with seven wins and 219 points, representing a dominant first proper title campaign from the prodigious teenager. The one blemish is reliability-adjacent bad luck rather than pace: the Silverstone failure and a subsequent track-limits penalty were the only time all year he’s left points on the table that his driving didn’t cost him.
George Russell — B. 160 points and two wins is a strong season by any normal measure, but Russell has spent the year in his teammate’s shadow, dealing with a puncture at Silverstone, a poor start in Hungary, and a top-speed deficit at Spa that Mercedes itself has admitted is hurting him. Solid, unspectacular, and clearly second-best in the car, the pre-season favorite will be hoping his bad luck will turn after a much-needed summer break.
Ferrari — Team grade: B+
Ferrari sits second with 307 points and has been the closest thing to a consistent threat to Mercedes, including a run of form around Spa and Hungary strong enough that rivals now flag the Scuderia as favourites on some weekends. Both drivers have already won a race this year, and the sense is of a team building real momentum for the second half.
Lewis Hamilton — B+. Hamilton finally got his first win in red at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, ending a personal 686-day victory drought and, at 41, becoming the oldest Grand Prix winner since Jack Brabham in 1970. He’s since beaten his entire 2025 points total in far fewer races, and second in the standings with 169 points is his best position since joining Ferrari. Set against that: four penalties in three races, including a costly pit lane speeding call in Hungary, suggest a driver pushing right up against the limit.
Charles Leclerc — B. 138 points and fourth in the standings, with the highlight a first win since 2024 at the British Grand Prix — Ferrari’s 250th in the sport. Leclerc’s Hungary weekend was scrappier than his usual output, and for now he’s playing second fiddle to Hamilton’s surge in form.
McLaren — Team grade: C+
The reigning champions are a distant third on 220 points, and while a Norris win in Hungary was a timely reminder of their pace, both drivers have publicly criticized the car’s upgrade path and unpredictability. This has been a season of defending a crown with a machine that no longer looks like the class of the field.
Lando Norris — B-. A Hungarian GP victory is a big result, but it came in a season where Norris has also called the car “undriveable” after a lack of upgrade progress. 128 points and fifth in the standings is underwhelming for a reigning champion at this stage.
Oscar Piastri — C+. 92 points and seventh place is a step back from title contention, compounded by a Hungary collision with Carlos Sainz and visible frustration at what he’s called F1 being at the mercy of “computers behaving or misbehaving” under the new regulations.
Red Bull Racing — Team grade: C
Red Bull‘s transition from Honda to its own Ford-badged power unit has been painful. Fourth in the constructors’ standings on 177 points, the team has also had to confirm findings on a “super dangerous” old-spec rear wing design, and is still lobbying the FIA on the controversial findings of the engine performance rankings. All of these factors point to a team that knows it’s behind on the technical fundamentals of the new era.
Max Verstappen — B+. Zero wins through eleven rounds is a genuinely stunning stat for a driver who dominated as recently as last season. 109 points and sixth in the championship reflect a driver still extracting results from a car he’s openly complained is “degrading” underneath him. This is Red Bull’s problem more than his, but it’s still a comedown.
Isack Hadjar — B-. A promotion from Racing Bulls has gone reasonably well: 68 points and eighth overall is a credible follow-up to a strong rookie year, and he’s generally been the more consistent of Red Bull’s pairing on given weekends.
Racing Bulls — Team grade: A-
The best-run midfield outfit at the halfway point, Racing Bulls sits fifth in the constructors’ table on 66 points, just ahead of Alpine, despite having by far the least experienced driver pairing on the grid.
Liam Lawson — B+. 43 points and ninth in the standings is Lawson’s best F1 form to date, leading a very young line-up with the kind of consistency that eluded him in previous seasons elsewhere.
Arvid Lindblad — B+. Remarkable for a rookie who was still 18 when the season started: 23 points and outscoring several established drivers marks him out as one of the year’s most impressive newcomers.
Alpine — Team grade: C
Sixth in the constructors’ championship on 61 points, Alpine remains a one-driver team in practice, still without a permanent team principal with Flavio Briatore and Steve Nielsen sharing the role between them.
Pierre Gasly — B-. 42 points and tenth in the drivers’ standings is carrying the team almost single-handedly, in a season where he’s had little help from the other side of the garage.
Franco Colapinto — C+. A big improvement on last year, when he went the whole season without scoring for Alpine.19 points this time round shows real progress, even if it’s still comfortably behind his more experienced teammate.
Haas — Team grade: C-
Seventh with 21 points, Haas has drifted from an encouraging start into midfield anonymity, with a clear and growing gap between its two drivers.
Oliver Bearman — B-. 18 points, comfortably the better-performing Haas driver in only his second full season, and doing enough to suggest the team’s future is with him rather than his more experienced teammate.
Esteban Ocon — D+. Just 3 points from a driver with a decade of F1 experience is a poor return, and being so clearly outperformed by a much less experienced teammate is the low point of Ocon’s season so far.
Williams — Team grade: D
A big step back from 2025’s best-in-years campaign, Williams have really struggled to get to grips with the new regulations. Eighth on 11 points, with James Vowles himself sounding alarmed about the team’s latest upgrade and Sainz publicly describing a “concerning” downward trend.
Carlos Sainz — D+. Just 6 points is a stark comedown from a season ago, and Sainz’s own frustration with the car’s direction has been obvious in recent race weekends.
Alex Albon — D. 5 points and a quiet, largely anonymous first half compared to his stronger 2025 form.
Audi — Team grade: D+
Audi‘s debut campaign has shown some promise. Given the scale of the task involved in integrating a brand-new power unit programme in year one, this is a reasonable return rather than a disappointing one. 12 points and eighth in the constructors’ table, ahead of Williams and well clear of Aston Martin, is roughly in line with what a first-year manufacturer squad could realistically hope for; nobody expected Audi to be challenging yet.
Gabriel Bortoleto — C+. 10 points and occasional rough weekends, but still the more productive half of the Audi garage, and continuing to look like a solid long-term prospect for a team still finding its feet.
Nico Hulkenberg — C-. A tough year by his standards. Going the first nine rounds without a point before finally opening his account in Hungary is a real drought for a driver who ended a 238-race wait for a podium only last season. Context matters, though: Hulkenberg was brought in as much for experience and development input on a new project as to rack up points, and a modest car has made scoring difficult for both drivers.
Aston Martin — Team grade: D-
The Adrian Newey era at Aston Martin has started disastrously. Tenth in the constructors’ standings with a single point, and rivals are already spotting potential weak points in what was supposed to be a title-calibre rebuild. At least the upgrades introduced in Hungary finally provided Alonso with a car he could get out of Q1 with.
Fernando Alonso — C-. One point across eleven races is one of the most modest returns of Alonso’s long career, in a car that has fallen well short of the hype around Newey’s arrival.
Lance Stroll — F. Zero points through the first half of the season, though at leat he finally ended his teammate’s astonishing run of 42 straight qualifying sessions ahead of the much-maligned Canadian.
Cadillac — Team grade: Incomplete (F on results)
F1’s newest team, and its eleventh, has yet to open its scoring account. That’s a tough but not unexpected outcome for a startup outfit in its debut season, running Ferrari power while General Motors develops its own engine for 2029. The early signs, including a Canada retirement from a suspension failure, point to a long road ahead for Cadillac.
Sergio Perez — C. Zero points in a second chance many didn’t expect him to get, with reliability issues compounding the challenge of a brand-new team. However, he has fought hard in poor machinery and doesn’t seem to have lost any of his racing nous in his year away.
Valtteri Bottas — F. Also yet to score, in a campaign that looks more about building Cadillac’s foundations than chasing results this year. Bottas has been second-best to Perez all season, and will be hoping to find some of his Mercedes form in the second half of the season
Standings and points current through the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix (round 11 of 23), the final race before the summer break.
