Grading every F1 team’s 2024 performance so far –

The only team without a point in 2024 is having a far tougher time than expected in the penultimate year of its Sauber guise before it morphs into a full-factory Audi effort in 2026.

“The expectations were that it was going to move itself off or away from the very back of the field, and get back more to what it was showing in 2022 when it was a regular points scorer, especially in the first half of the season,” Mitchell-Malm summarises.

“Everything about it – bar maybe the drivers, who kind of get a little bit of a free pass given how bad the car seems to be – just seems to be falling short.

“It still had pitstop problems at the start of the year. The car was decent but then immediately got outpaced by rivals. It hasn’t really convincingly shown it can develop.

“This is a team falling short across the board.”

Straw pointed to Sauber’s Zandvoort update straight after the break as pivotal to the team’s chances of turning it around in the last 10 races.

But there was widespread agreement among the trio that for now, F was the only possible grade Sauber could be given for a miserable first half of the season.

Williams: Grade D-

Williams sits ninth in the constructors’ championship with four points, 17 fewer than it had accumulated at this stage last year.

So 2024 so far has to be seen as a failure right? Well not quite…

“There are two ways of looking at the Williams performance. On the one hand, when you look at how often they were scoring points on the outlier tracks, they’ve fallen back from that but they’ve created a car that they were deliberately trying to make less of an outlier,” Hughes explains.

“They were trying to make a more conventional car in terms of corner speeds and the trade-off between drag and downforce. They’ve succeeded in doing that but in the process, it means that it’s no longer as good on those low-drag tracks.

“The underlying progress has continued in terms of what’s happening back at the factory and the team’s build-up of processes.

“Their vision for the future and how they’re moving towards it looks reasonable.”

There was a consensus among our trio that Williams is getting it right with its longer-term vision but its short-term performance still leaves a lot to be desired with an overweight car that it has spent most of the season tackling.

Team boss James Vowles admitted Williams has underdelivered in 2024 and it’s hard to disagree. So despite the mid to longer-term optimism – including convincing Carlos Sainz to join it from 2025 – a grade of D- makes sense for Williams.

Alpine: Grade E

Alpine’s had a typically chaotic F1 season so far.

Its drivers clashed in Monaco which was swiftly followed by the announcement Esteban Ocon was leaving the team, it controversially brought back Flavio Briatore, it drew up plans to swap factory Renault engines for customer Mercedes engines, and there was once again a team boss departure announced at Spa as Bruno Famin departed for Oliver Oakes.

Amid all of that, it’s had to fight hard to turn a car that occupied the back row of the grid in the season-opener into a semi-frequent points scorer.

“This is a manufacturer team [for now] that should always be trying to be better than all the customer teams, beating your McLarens and Aston Martins. And it is nowhere near that,” Mitchell-Malm says of Alpine’s season.

“It started this season with arguably the slowest car, it was certainly overweight. It was struggling like mad to get out of Q1, took an age to score points but has at least turned a corner.

“It’s gone from one point in the first seven races to 10 points in the next seven races.

“So signs of life at Alpine, more disruption off track because this is just what that team does.

“It just escapes a failing grade because of that mini-turnaround and the fact the car isn’t the worst anymore. It’s regularly fighting for top 10s in qualifying and the race.”

Haas: Grade A-

Haas began the year by sacking long-time team boss Guenther Steiner and promoting Ayao Komatsu, who quickly laid expectations for a tough season.

Pre-season, the team – and The Race – were expecting Haas to figure only at the back of the grid but it has exceeded all of those expectations with 27 points in 14 races, 20 of those points coming in successive weekends at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone.

Part of that success has come through fixing its tyre-chewing weakness that destroyed many of its points-scoring opportunities in 2023 and some genuine mid-season development progress, something that’s often eluded the team.

“They’ve had a terrific season,” Hughes says.

“Getting to Q2 has been the minimum expectation and Nico Hulkenberg in particular has put some great qualifying laps in. They’ve followed up with good operation, it’s not been flawless, but it’s been pretty good.

“I would say A-, given the level of expectations and what they’ve actually delivered. They’ve underpromised and over-delivered. Quite spectacular.”

Mitchell-Malm adds: “If they manage to beat a team like Alpine – and Haas is currently 16 points ahead – that is a massive scalp for them.

“They’ve not really got any business finishing sixth or seventh in the championship. But at this rate it would be a disappointment if they don’t.”

RB: Grade C

Red Bull’s rebranded second team heads F1’s midfield in sixth place in the constructors’ championship. That’s no surprise versus pre-season expectations but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

“The pattern of their season was they hit the ground running and then took a stumble, and it’s still in the process of recovering from that stumble,” is Hughes’ summary.

RB was nipping at the heels of Aston Martin before its Spanish GP upgrade threw it somewhat off course. It still has been a regular points scorer but it has had its advantage eroded by Haas to just seven points.

“It feels a little bit middle of the road, partly because it ended last season in such good form, with the elements they’re able to take from Red Bull and what they choose to do on their own,” adds Mitchell-Malm.

“The fact that there was going to be closer alignment, Daniel Ricciardo was coming in with a full pre-season, Yuki Tsunoda going from strength to strength. I did expect it to be leading the midfield frankly,” Mitchell-Malm says.

“It is sixth in the championship but it’s only sixth by a small margin. It blows a little more hot and cold than it would like.

“But to its credit, when it introduced a problematic floor update, it rolled back on it and found a better compromise. My gut feeling is a C.”

Aston Martin: Grade D+

Aston Martin has endured a far less fruitful start to 2024 than 2023, scoring fewer points in 14 races this year than it did in the first four races of last year.

Once again there’s a worrying lack of in-season development progress at the team and this time some unwanted car characteristic changes that have limited the drivers.

“A similar trajectory to last year but not quite as high up at the beginning of the season,” Hughes says.

“At the beginning of the season, in Bahrain, it was slightly quicker than Mercedes and McLaren, two teams which have improved a lot since, over one lap.But it also wasn’t that far from the front in percentage terms.

“It’s deviated a long way from that, mid-season it was miles away, made a mini-recovery and then it’s reverted again.

“When it’s bad, it’s quite a long way off and that’s very disappointing. It suggests just like last year, it’s missing some understanding of something as it develops the car.”

Aston Martin sits fifth in the constructors’ championship but Mitchell-Malm says it was “lucky Alpine has dropped the ball as badly as it has, a strong Alpine is fighting Aston for fifth in the championship this year”.

He added it “has to be considered below expectations” given it’s just about holding off the midfield but rarely troubling the top four teams.

Mercedes: Grade B

“A half-season of two halves” for Mercedes as Straw puts it. Mercedes started the season as the fourth-fastest team, having well and truly lost to Ferrari in the battle to be Red Bull’s closest challenger.

But steady progress followed thereafter and then the breakthrough came in Canada with pole position for George Russell and pace that made only finishing third and fourth on Sunday a major disappointment.

“After round two in Saudi, it was really worrying,” Mitchell-Malm says.

“It was objectively worse than the last two years if you judged it as a whole you thought it’s the third attempt at getting the car right in this rules cycle and it’s still this far off, what hope is there?

“I love the way it’s just chipped away at it. It’s not just spent four or five months working on something, brought a colossal upgrade package, McLaren-esque, bunged it on the car and it’s suddenly fighting for podiums.

“I like it’s been a gradual process, it shows an actual understanding. They’ve been able to address individual areas, as each weakness gets improved, and it’s worked itself into first podium contention, then victory contention.

“I never would have expected back at the start of the season after Jeddah that we’d go into the summer break with three Mercedes wins in four races. It feels absurd in this era to be talking about that.

“The fact it’s come from such a low base at the start of the year and the fact it isn’t really in championship contention – it’s still a distant fourth – is because it was so poor at the start of the year. So I don’t think we can afford them a top grade because they’re fourth in the championship, worse than last season.

“But the form it’s on going into the break massively pulls it back. I think this is B-grade territory at worst.”

It would be easy for recency bias to sway the grading of Mercedes’ half-season. But there’s a big difference between a couple of strong results before the summer break changing the grading versus evidence of a strong upward trend that’s been worked towards throughout these 14 races.

It’s only all the ground Mercedes has already lost to its rivals which started the season far better that prevents its grade from being an A.

Ferrari: Grade B-

Mitchell-Malm calls Ferrari the hardest to grade given how strongly it started the year, where it then faded to in car performance terms but how it’s still only 21 points off second in the constructors’ championship.

He said he expected more from the solid foundation Ferrari built at the end of 2023.

“It was the number two car for quite a long time, then it was the number three car, now it’s the number four car,” Hughes says of Ferrari’s 2024 so far.

“You can point to the upgrades that haven’t worked, the Barcelona one. You can say ‘as soon as it understands that and fix it, it should be back to somewhere more like what it had at the beginning of the season’.

“But during that time Mercedes and McLaren have made great strides so I don’t think that’s a given. Probably a C- for me, maybe even heading into D territory.”

Straw said it “all comes down to how you slice and dice the trajectory. You could make the case of, ‘well Ferrari has 345 points, Mercedes has 266 points. Mercedes finished ahead of Ferrari in the championship last year’. You can argue it both ways.”

The trio ultimately opted for a B- given its strong championship position and how it and Mercedes are essentially two sides of the same coin. But it comes with acknowledgement of a worrying trend that threatens to downgrade it by the end of the year.

McLaren: Grade A-

Red Bull’s closest challenger McLaren is in the kind of form that means it’s on course to overhaul Red Bull for the constructors’ championship title.

Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have won a race, with the former Max Verstappen’s closest challenger in the drivers’ championship. So does McLaren deserve the top grade?

“If you look at the first few races, it was maybe even slightly disappointing because of where it was at the end of last year,” Mitchell-Malm explains.

“But it had tempered that disappointment by some of the stuff it was saying around the launch of its car.

“That big upgrade in Miami, there were elements of that which could have been on the launch car but wouldn’t have been as well refined.

“Since we finally got a look at the proper 2024 car in Miami, it has gradually morphed into the best all-round car.

“Is it the best right outright? I’m not sure. You can argue the toss between Red Bull and McLaren on any given day, circuit or conditions.

“The fact is that it now has a Red Bull-beating car is a massive achievement. It’s won races with both cars, a massive achievement versus where McLaren has been previously.

“But the caveat against it: I don’t feel like it’s maximised that.

“It has let opportunities slip and if McLaren had completely aced the first half of the season it would be leading the constructors’ already.

“So my starting point is an A-. It deserves a top grade but you have to have something against it that says ‘this could have been even better’.”

Straw agreed saying “it’ll be a little bit disappointing to only have two wins and a lot of second places. If it’d won Silverstone and maybe picked off one or two of the other ones, that would be the sort of A+ season”.

Red Bull: Grade B+

F1’s former dominant force Red Bull started 2024 where it left off in 2023. But it has seen its advantage eroded since then and now it’s simply a victory contender each weekend rather than the favourite.

“With the level of domination we saw last year, it was always going to be down from there,” says Hughes.

“It was difficult to see that incredible season being sustained. It looked like it was going to be at the start of the year, and that was an achievement in itself.

“It kept delivering these dynamite performances on-track when behind the scenes there were all sorts of strains and difficulties. It was a mess and yet if you didn’t know any of that and you were just looking at what it was turning up and delivering on the circuit, you’d have never known any of that. It was quite extraordinary really.

“It’s continued to always be a factor even as Mercedes and McLaren have improved its car.

“That’s the distinction we should make, it’s not that Red Bull has done a bad job with its car or not developed its car, it’s just the fact it’s continuing at the level it was at, and McLaren in particular and Mercedes more recently, have really stepped up their game.

“As ever it’s all relative to the competition. Operationally it’s been rock solid. When you had that tricky moment at Silverstone, you knew it would be Gianpiero Lambiase and Max Verstappen who called it right and they did and everyone followed them. Red Bull makes all the right calls. Verstappen usually pulls them out of any difficulty they might get in.

“It’s still a frontrunning team but how do you assess that in terms of grading and expectations? For me, it’s probably B+ or A-.”

Straw advocated for a B+ on the basis of the sky-high expectations, Sergio Perez’s poor form dragging it down recently and the mess it has got itself into with its drivers who aren’t Verstappen.

Mitchell-Malm adds: “If I’m judging it from a purely sporting perspective, I don’t see how it can be anything less than an A.

“It’s leading both championships, therefore it’s in control of both of them. Verstappen has won half the races and it’s weathered the most almighty storm off-track to continue to be the class leading operation on it.

“With the fact that the trajectory is slipping, the fact that Verstappen is making it very clear there’s a lot that needs to be better in the second half of the year and the fact that some of the off-track stuff is totally unbecoming of a team and organisation of this stature. Getting embroiled in a silly spat with Jos Verstappen in Austria because someone may or may not have wanted him to drive an old car in a demo, that kind of thing.

“It knocks it into a B when you also factor in arguably winning seven out of 14 races isn’t good enough for a team like Red Bull when it’s been in the position it has and how it started the year. I wouldn’t object if it falls into a B when you bring everything into consideration.

“I would just stress sporting achievement alone, regardless of how it’s been achieved, it’s still an A-grade season.”