F1 2026 Mid-Season Analysis

Assessing the Top Teams So Far

The 2026 F1 season has been a little odd, mostly due to new regulations. This has shuffled the order with Mercedes excelling but having relatively weak reliability, Alonso entering a new Circle of Hell, and the rest of pack enjoying varying fortune in terms of pace and reliability.

Here’s how things stand for the top teams after the Hungarian Grand Prix, in broad terms, and how they might develop into the latter half of the season.

Mercedes

Top dog and competitive everywhere, Mercedes also have unusually poor reliability. Even accounting for that, to open with a pair of 1–2 finishes and then have none in the following nine races when pace is still great is rather weird. Antonelli’s had a single DNF and Russell two, but Russell’s had bad luck elsewhere, with the Monaco penalty nonsense standing out.

The Mercedes is maybe the only car in the mix at every circuit and clearly the fastest at most, but in Barcelona Hamilton was the fastest man in the race, and in Hungary it was Norris who excelled. The team has a 72 point advantage over Ferrari and a 159 point advantage over McLaren, so they should still cruise to both titles.

For the drivers, Antonelli’s 50 points ahead of Hamilton, and 59 points ahead of Russell. Even accounting for lopsided reliability, I think he’s got the measure of Russell this year. Hamilton’s mostly driven very well (but has been a penalty magnet of late) but his car isn’t consistently quick enough and I think a solid second is the best he can hope for. Not impossible he closes up to make it a battle, but Antonelli has been an impressive combination of fast and consistent, which makes him hard to see losing this title.

Ferrari

Continuing their longstanding trend of being quick but not quite quick enough, Ferrari are doing pretty well. Best of all is that the end of the ground effect era has seen Hamilton return to form, and is currently the top driver for the team. He’s also ahead of Russell in the title race, narrowly, but his performances have been looking better overall. The team even stunned the world by clever strategy in Barcelona which, coupled with Hamilton’s awesome pace, got them a well-deserved victory (although things have been going wrong for him ever since he got interviewed by Rosberg and suffered the jinx).

Incidentally, Hamilton’s the only driver to score in each and every race weekend this season, with a lowest of sixth in Japan and Miami. Next best of the top chaps is Antonelli, with one DNF and a fifteenth, both due to reliability rather than driver error. Every non-compromised finish for Antonelli has been on the podium.

Leclerc’s also had his moments. Silverstone has not been a good track for him historically, and has been fantastic for Hamilton, yet it was the Monegasque who got a much-deserved win. The Constructors’ title isn’t impossible for Ferrari this year but it is odds against. Mercedes having more breakdowns could tilt the balance, perhaps.

McLaren

From multiple DNFs and DNSs at the start of the year to winning in Hungary, the McLaren team has been iffy a lot of the time and occasionally very quick. Norris was class of the field in Budapest, and while Piastri (thanks partly to Sainz’s less than gracious driving,as a backmarker holding up a man competing for the win) could’ve made it a 1–2 that failed when his car broke down.

Photo by Justin Reichelt on Unsplash

Piastri himself might have won in Japan but for the safety car timing, although that was not guaranteed. The new regulations have undoubtedly suited the Briton more than the Aussie, and although the titles will leave McLaren this year they do seem to be improving in terms of both pace and reliability (despite the DNF at the last race). They’re pretty clear in third, unable to fight for the title but a bit ahead of Red Bull.

For McLaren, this marks a huge fall from their dominant 2025 car. But they rapidly developed in the last regulatory era to move from middling to champions. Already this season they’ve moved from multiple DNSs to winning a race, and doing so entirely fairly rather than being gifted it by a safety car or rivals suffering breakdowns. They’re too far back for this year, but it may bode well for McLaren in general and Norris in particular (who has been significantly better than Piastri over the course of the season) in 2027.

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Red Bull

The team apparently has the best engine. Ahem. Sure, Jan. This is going to hamper their relative pace as everybody else, including Mercedes (who do have the best engine) can develop during the season. And Verstappen is very vocally complaining about the car, tyres, lack of grip/balance (even in Hungary when he moaned his way to a second place finish).

The car has snapped on him a few times and taken him off-track. It’s clearly ahead of the midfield but he may end up winless this year. On the positive side, perhaps aided by the new regulations, Isack Hadjar has been doing very well in the second driver seat, to the extent there’s not even any chatter about who might replace him. If Red Bull get their act together for next year this could make him a valuable ally to Verstappen in another title challenge (assuming Verstappen’s still there, which he probably will be). No podium yet for Hadjar, but if he gets a good enough car then it’ll come.

Antonelli Unstoppable?

Getting a podium every time you finish without the car breaking is pretty fantastic, especially for someone in just second season. Yes, the Mercedes is the class of the field but I would’ve backed Russell to beat Antonelli all the way, on consistency grounds (see Norris and Piastri in 2025, or Antonelli’s very patchy performance that same year).

But the young Italian has the whip hand over his older British team mate, and the best car. Hamilton’s strong speed and consistency has put him just about in the running, but I think it’ll take a significant set of reliability failures and/or phenomenal Ferrari development for the elder statesman of F1 to have a real chance of an eighth title. It’s not quite impossible but it’s very much an outside chance.

And what of Russell? Many people’s favourites (including the betting market and me) pre-season, he’s being comprehensively outpaced by his team mate. And now he lies behind Hamilton despite having a better car (although it’s worth pointing out Russell has also had a horrendous run of bad luck this year). I’d be very surprised if Hamilton could claim yet another title, and pretty astonished if Russell could turn this oil tanker of poor reliability, terrible misfortune, and being outpaced by Antonelli around.

Richard

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