A Look Back at the First Half of the 2026 F1 Season During the Break

Formula 1 went into the summer break with Andrea Kimi Antonelli leading the drivers' championship, Mercedes at the top of the constructors' standings, and Max Verstappen outside the top five. After eleven Grands Prix, the 2026 World Championship has drawn an order that bears little resemblance to previous seasons and has left several fronts open for the second half of the calendar.

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Antonelli has 219 points and six wins, with a 50‑point lead over Lewis Hamilton, who is second with 169. George Russell is third with 160, followed by Charles Leclerc with 138 and Lando Norris with 128. Verstappen, champion in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, sits sixth with 109 points, ahead of Oscar Piastri (92) and Isack Hadjar (68). In the constructors' standings, Mercedes has 379 points, Ferrari 307, McLaren 220 and Red Bull 177. Racing Bulls and Alpine are tied on 66, Haas has 21, Audi 12, Williams 11 and Aston Martin 1. Cadillac has not scored.

Mercedes' performance and Antonelli's season

Mercedes interpreted the new regulations more precisely than the rest of the grid, and the results confirm it. The 2026 cars reduced wheelbase, width and weight, introduced active aerodynamics instead of DRS, and feature a hybrid system that delivers approximately half of the total power from the electrical side. Russell won in Australia and Austria, but the bulk of results came from Antonelli, who won in China, Japan, Miami, Canada, Monaco and Belgium. At 19 years old, he equalled Riccardo Patrese's six wins across an entire career, and only Alberto Ascari has more victories among Italian drivers. He also finished on the podium in nine of the eleven races and took six poles.

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The comparison between the two Mercedes drivers favours Antonelli in almost every category. The rookie leads Russell in points (219 to 160), in wins (6 to 2), in podiums (9 to 5), in poles (6 to 4) and in team points percentage (71.34% vs 52.12%). Russell beats him in sprint wins (2 to 1). Antonelli has recorded only one retirement; Russell has had two, and in several qualifying sessions he was outside the zone that would have allowed him to fight for victory. The average qualifying gap between them is 4.6 tenths in favour of the younger driver, a margin that has been most noticeable on circuits like Monaco and Canada, where starting position conditions the rest of the weekend. In terms of damage costs, Antonelli has accumulated $1,057,000, while Russell has been more restrained at $450,000.

Ferrari and Hamilton's win in Spain

Hamilton secured his first victory with Ferrari at the Spanish Grand Prix, ending an eighteen‑month winless streak dating back to the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix. In Barcelona, Ferrari used a three‑stop strategy and benefited from Antonelli's retirement due to a power unit failure while the Italian was running second. Hamilton took the lead and defended it against Russell and Norris. It was the 104th win of his career, the first by a driver over 40 since Nigel Mansell in 1994, and was accompanied by a visible reaction as he crossed the line. Days earlier, he had admitted that he had suggested to Ferrari that they look for another driver because he felt "useless" after a difficult first year in Maranello. Leclerc added another win at Silverstone, leaving the team with two victories in the first half.

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The internal battle at Ferrari is the closest on the grid. Hamilton leads Leclerc by 169 to 138 points, with five podiums to four and eleven consecutive points finishes, without any retirements. Leclerc has been superior in head‑to‑head race finishes (8 to 7), but two zeros on his scorecard have swung the balance in favour of the Briton. The average qualifying gap is 0.035 seconds in favour of Hamilton, the smallest between teammates this season. Both have reached Q3 in every round, something not all teams have achieved with both cars. In incident costs, Hamilton has only $290,000, compared to Leclerc's $978,000.

McLaren, third and with a gap between drivers

McLaren sits third in the constructors' championship with 220 points, and within the team the gap between its two drivers has been clear from the first rounds. Norris has scored 128 points and one win in Hungary, secured just before the break, in a race where Piastri remained on 92 without any wins. The Briton's advantage has been built mainly in qualifying, where he leads the head‑to‑head by 11 to 4. In races, the gap is 9 to 5, with an average of 0.063 seconds per lap in favour of Norris. Both drivers have three retirements. Piastri has reached Q3 in every qualifying session, but has not been able to convert that Saturday consistency into equivalent Sunday results, where tyre degradation has worked against him on circuits like Bahrain and Shanghai. Norris has spent $150,000 on repairs, well below Piastri's $791,000.

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Red Bull, a winless first half

Red Bull has won none of the first eleven races of 2026, with Verstappen scoring 109 points and a second place as his best result. Hadjar, in his first year, has 68 and has also not reached the podium. The Milton Keynes organisation lost Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley, and has been carrying wind‑tunnel correlation problems since the 2024 Miami Grand Prix, which has limited the evolution of the RB26. The car has proved narrow in its operating window and difficult to predict on circuits with abrasive asphalt or changing conditions.

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Verstappen has beaten Hadjar in both qualifying (12 to 2) and races (12 to 3), with an average gap of 0.281 seconds. Verstappen's three retirements and the rookie's two indicate that reliability has also not been on their side. The team has 177 points in the constructors' standings, keeping it in fourth, far from Mercedes's 379 and Ferrari's 307, and closer to McLaren (220) than to the front. To find a first half of the season for Red Bull without a win, one must go back to 2019, when the team was still running Honda engines and not fighting for championships. Hadjar, at $1,117,000, has been more expensive in damage than Verstappen, who has accumulated $746,000.

Alpine and Racing Bulls, tied in the midfield

The start of the season placed Alpine as the reference team in the midfield. The A526 allowed Pierre Gasly to reach the podium in Monaco without luck playing a part, and at that moment the French team seemed to have control of the midfield group. The advantage, however, faded as the races went by. Racing Bulls introduced upgrades that reduced the gap, and by the break both teams are tied on 66 points.

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Gasly has been clear in pointing out that the car lost competitiveness. In Belgium he commented that the fight for points had become difficult because others had progressed faster, and after Hungary he admitted that the team was not close to fighting for points, that they lack pace, and that the feeling inside the car is not good. His personal tally stands at 42 points, with a third place and control in direct duels with Franco Colapinto (10 to 5 in qualifying and 10 to 5 in races, with a 0.287‑second average gap). He has also accumulated $1,110,000 in repair costs.

Colapinto has needed an adaptation period that the team considers satisfactory. Steve Nielsen, Alpine's managing director, praised his continuous improvement and cited performances in Miami and China as examples, where the Argentine was close to his teammate's pace. His best result came with a sixth place in Canada, followed by solid races at Silverstone and Spa. The points gap (42 to 19) is more a reflection of Gasly's consistency and the car's decline than a lack of performance from the Argentine, who has completed all races without retirements and has cost $586,000 in damage. Flavio Briatore, after the defeat in Hungary, acknowledged that the team has not been up to standard recently and called the weekend disappointing. The second half of the year depends on recovering lost performance against Racing Bulls.

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At Racing Bulls, Lawson leads his teammate by 43 to 23, a margin that is not explained by pure speed but by what happens on Sundays. The New Zealander dominates the head‑to‑head in races by a commanding 11 to 4, but in qualifying the contest is the closest on the grid, with an 8 to 6 advantage for the New Zealander and an average gap of just 0.030 seconds. Lindblad found one‑lap pace very early in his debut year, though he has not yet managed to translate that Saturday equality into points on race day.

Part of Lawson's advantage is built on the personal moment he is going through. Alan Permane, the team principal, explained that when the New Zealander returned to Racing Bulls after being replaced at Red Bull during 2025, he was a different driver, with damaged confidence and needing several months to rebuild. Work in the simulator, a closer relationship with his engineers, and focusing exclusively on driving allowed him to recover his best level. Lindblad, meanwhile, was described by Permane as one of Red Bull's most promising talents, and the team has not shown any signs of discontent with his performance. The Briton even has one more Q3 appearance than Lawson. Lawson has spent $125,000 on repairs, while Lindblad has incurred no damage costs.

Haas and the VF‑26's consistency problem

The 21 points Haas has scored hide one of the most complex interpretations of the first half. Oliver Bearman has been the team's most effective driver, with 18 points to Esteban Ocon's 3, but both the drivers and the team principal agree that the scoreboard does not faithfully reflect the real gap between them. The VF‑26 started the season with the potential to sit fourth in the constructors' championship after the first two rounds, with Bearman scoring a fifth place in China and a seventh in Australia, but it progressively lost competitiveness against Alpine and Racing Bulls. Ayao Komatsu, the team principal, explained that the car's unpredictable behaviour has made any internal comparison difficult. He cited the Spa weekend as an example, where Ocon had good feelings on Friday and then, without relevant changes, lost all stability on Saturday to end up far from his teammate. Komatsu admitted that it is very difficult to obtain a precise performance evaluation.

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Ocon shared that view and pointed out that the biggest difficulty has been the car's consistency, sometimes suffering from top speed, other times from downforce, and that the team still does not understand the origin of those differences. Bearman himself acknowledged that the internal duel is not always fair because some parts of the car show behavioural variations between one chassis and the other. That statement does not exonerate Ocon, but it does nuance the gap shown by the numbers. Bearman leads the head‑to‑head in qualifying (11 to 4) with an average gap of 0.261 seconds and also in races (9 to 6), although Ocon has completed all rounds without retirements and his best result is a ninth place. Damage costs also separate the two: Bearman tops the overall cost chart with $1,243,000 in repairs, while Ocon has cost $470,000.

The VF‑26's drop in performance is related to development. Bearman pointed out that Haas introduced fewer upgrades than others and that some of the evolutions did not deliver the expected performance. Komatsu does not fully share that explanation and believes the underlying problem is that they still do not understand why the car changes behaviour so much between sessions, which prevents them from finding a consistent setup. The team heads into the break with the priority of solving that inconsistency.

Audi and the reliability that has punished Hülkenberg

Gabriel Bortoleto has 10 points to Nico Hülkenberg's 2, but the numbers from the first half tell a more nuanced story than the championship gap suggests. The German has maintained a high level over one lap and therefore leads the head‑to‑head in qualifying by a narrow 8 to 7, with an average advantage of 0.290 seconds. Several weekends with mechanical problems prevented him from converting those starting positions into results. At Silverstone he retired with a gearbox failure while running in the points, a weekend he himself described as character‑building after carrying issues from the installation lap. At Spa he again suffered with reliability during qualifying, with gearbox problems and a hydraulic failure that left him out of position. The points difference is not explained by a systematic lack of pace from the German, but by the accumulation of mechanical setbacks.

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Bortoleto has taken advantage of opportunities when the car has had the pace to score. His eighth place at Silverstone, the team's best result of the first half, rewarded weeks of work in which Audi had several times been on the verge of the top 10. Mattia Binotto has been clear about where the team stands, explaining that 2026 is the first year of a new project whose goal is to fight for the championship in 2030, and the current season is about building the engineering and sporting foundations needed to reach that level. Bortoleto has cost $225,000 in repairs, compared to Hülkenberg's $300,000.

Williams and Sainz's qualifying superiority

Williams has the smallest points gap on the grid, with Carlos Sainz ahead of Alex Albon by 6 to 5, but that table equality bears no resemblance to what has happened on track. Sainz has dominated qualifying with a commanding 12 to 1, an average gap of 0.276 seconds, and a 10 to 5 race record that confirms the Spaniard has been the one to convert more opportunities into results. The team has acknowledged that the FW48 was born with problems. James Vowles explained that Williams was late in preparing for the new 2026 regulations, that the car started the year with weight and correlation issues, and that even behavioural differences between left‑ and right‑hand corners were detected.

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That situation helps explain why Sainz's qualifying control is not explained by pure speed alone. The Spaniard adapted more quickly to a difficult car, while Albon has struggled more to find a competitive window. Williams even sent Albon's car back to the factory to investigate behavioural differences. Vowles has insisted he wants to keep both drivers because they are part of the long‑term project, and confirmed that major updates will arrive after the summer, focused on solving the chassis and balance issues. Albon has been much more expensive in damage, with $1,211,000 in repairs compared to Sainz's $250,000.

Aston Martin, one point and the biggest gap on the grid

Aston Martin went into the break with just one point in the constructors' column, a tally that sums up the most difficult start of the Adrian Newey era. Fernando Alonso has outperformed Lance Stroll in 11 of the 13 qualifying sessions held, with an average gap of 0.409 seconds, the largest teammate gap on the grid. The Spaniard also leads the head‑to‑head in races by 9 to 3, and his tenth place in the eighth round of the year is the team's only point of the season so far. Stroll has not scored and has six retirements, two more than Alonso, while damage costs stand at $425,000 for the Spaniard and $275,000 for the Canadian.

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The underlying problem is not just Stroll's performance. The AMR26 was born with correlation issues between simulation and track, a lack of downforce, and difficulty finding a consistent balance. The team decided to wait before introducing a large upgrade package rather than rolling out small continuous evolutions, a strategy that left the car largely unchanged for several races. Before the Hungarian Grand Prix, Alonso explained that on circuits like Spa the gap to the others was too large for a single update to fix it immediately. The upgrades introduced in Hungary, a package of 16 changes including aerodynamic and car component modifications, were the first positive sign of the year. Alonso said the feeling was much better and considered that the second half could be a fresh start, though he remained cautious, recalling that the accumulated deficit was too large to expect an instant transformation. Aston Martin and Honda are also working on power unit upgrades for the second half of the year.

Cadillac, a pointless debut season

Cadillac went into the break without points in its first Formula 1 season, a scenario the team leadership had anticipated as part of the process of building a completely new structure. Graeme Lowdon, the team principal, explained before the debut that the initial priority was to create a functional organisation rather than chase immediate results, and that progress could not be measured by points alone. The project started from scratch in areas such as the engineering department, manufacturing processes, track operations, simulation, strategy, and component manufacturing. In that context, each race of the first half functioned as an accelerated learning session.

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Sergio Pérez has maintained a realistic tone and insisted that Cadillac needs time. He has focused on helping to create a clear engineering direction, providing information for development, and avoiding the typical mistakes of a structure that is still learning. Bottas, meanwhile, has pointed out that the team has potential, but that building a competitive structure takes time. Pérez leads Bottas by 9 to 5 in qualifying and by 9 to 4 in races, with an average advantage of 0.107 seconds, but neither has finished a race inside the top ten. Bottas has five retirements to Pérez's four and has incurred no damage costs, while the Mexican has spent $685,000 on repairs. The second half is more important than the first for Cadillac, because new teams usually make their biggest strides once they start understanding which areas of the car need changes and how to better prepare weekends.

The Japan incident

The Japanese Grand Prix left the most concerning image of the first half. Oliver Bearman lost control of his Haas after encountering the Alpine of Franco Colapinto, which was running without electrical power. The speed differential exceeded 90 kilometres per hour, and the impact with the barriers exceeded 50G. Bearman suffered bruising to his knee, and the FIA announced that it would review the safety of the new regulations, after several drivers expressed concern over the speed differences generated by the new hybrid system when a car loses power.

That accident also explains why Bearman tops the damage chart with $1,243,000 in repairs. Alexander Albon ($1,211,000) and Isack Hadjar ($1,117,000) complete the top three, followed by Pierre Gasly ($1,110,000) and Andrea Kimi Antonelli ($1,057,000). At the lower end of that list are Arvid Lindblad and Valtteri Bottas, who have not incurred any damage costs so far this year.

The restart at Zandvoort

Ferrari found pace in the last races before the break, and if that momentum continues, the 72‑point gap to Mercedes in the constructors' championship could begin to shrink. Russell had two forgettable weekends just before the recess, with failures that leave Antonelli as the sole support of the team's advantage. Verstappen continues to push the RB26 beyond what the car can offer, with no room for errors.

The final‑stretch calendar could also change if the Middle East conflict persists. The final two rounds will likely not be held in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and the Bahrain Grand Prix has already been moved to October at the Sepang International Circuit, a track that Formula 1 has not visited since 2017. Teams with no recent data and conditions of heat and humidity very different from those at Sakhir will test a grid that still has its final word left to say.

Team‑by‑team driver statistics

Mercedes

Metric	Antonelli	Russell
Points	219	160
Wins	6	2
Podiums	9	5
Poles	6	4
Team points %	71.34%	52.12%
Q3 appearances	11/11	11/11
Retirements	1	2
Qualifying H2H	14	1
Race H2H	10	3
Damage cost	$1,057,000	$450,000

Ferrari

Metric	Hamilton	Leclerc
Points	169	138
Wins	1	1
Podiums	5	4
Poles	0	0
Team points %	55.05%	44.95%
Q3 appearances	11/11	11/11
Retirements	0	2
Qualifying H2H	8	7
Race H2H	7	8
Damage cost	$290,000	$978,000

McLaren

Metric	Norris	Piastri
Points	128	92
Wins	1	0
Podiums	3	2
Poles	1	0
Team points %	41.69%	29.97%
Q3 appearances	10/11	11/11
Retirements	3	3
Qualifying H2H	11	4
Race H2H	9	5
Damage cost	$150,000	$791,000

Red Bull Racing

Metric	Verstappen	Hadjar
Points	109	68
Wins	0	0
Podiums	4	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	35.50%	22.15%
Q3 appearances	9/11	9/11
Retirements	3	2
Qualifying H2H	12	2
Race H2H	12	3
Damage cost	$746,000	$1,117,000

Racing Bulls

Metric	Lawson	Lindblad
Points	43	23
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	14.01%	7.49%
Q3 appearances	6/11	7/11
Retirements	1	1
Qualifying H2H	8	6
Race H2H	11	4
Damage cost	$125,000	$0

Alpine

Metric	Gasly	Colapinto
Points	42	19
Wins	0	0
Podiums	1	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	13.68%	6.19%
Q3 appearances	5/11	2/11
Retirements	1	0
Qualifying H2H	10	5
Race H2H	10	5
Damage cost	$1,110,000	$586,000

Haas F1 Team

Metric	Bearman	Ocon
Points	18	3
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	5.86%	0.98%
Q3 appearances	1/11	0/11
Retirements	3	0
Qualifying H2H	11	4
Race H2H	9	6
Damage cost	$1,243,000	$470,000

Audi

Metric	Bortoleto	Hülkenberg
Points	10	2
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	3.26%	0.65%
Q3 appearances	3/11	3/11
Retirements	1	4
Qualifying H2H	7	8
Race H2H	10	5
Damage cost	$225,000	$300,000

Williams

Metric	Sainz	Albon
Points	6	5
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	1.95%	1.63%
Q3 appearances	0/11	0/11
Retirements	2	3
Qualifying H2H	12	1
Race H2H	10	5
Damage cost	$250,000	$1,211,000

Aston Martin

Metric	Alonso	Stroll
Points	1	0
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	0.33%	0%
Q3 appearances	0/11	0/11
Retirements	4	6
Qualifying H2H	11	2
Race H2H	9	3
Damage cost	$425,000	$275,000

Cadillac F1 Team

Metric	Pérez	Bottas
Points	0	0
Wins	0	0
Podiums	0	0
Poles	0	0
Team points %	0%	0%
Q3 appearances	0/11	0/11
Retirements	4	5
Qualifying H2H	9	5
Race H2H	9	4
Damage cost	$685,000	$0