The pecking order was always expected to shift under the new-for-2026 regulations, but as teams have fought to adapt to those changes by introducing upgrades, it’s shuffled around even more.
Mercedes looked unstoppable at the start of the season, and while Kimi Antonelli still has a commanding lead in the Drivers’ Championship, the competition has closed in around him to the stage where we’ve seen race winners from three other teams.
Nevertheless, the Silver Arrows remain the benchmark – you’d be bold to say otherwise considering their 134-point advantage over Ferrari – so we’ve crunched the numbers to assess just how much their rivals have improved.
From Red Bull’s admirable turnaround to the near-complete overhaul of Aston Martin’s challenger, let’s dive into the data…
Qualifying pace
Mercedes have claimed 11 of the 17 Grand Prix pole positions so far, with Antonelli taking six of those – just one up on his team mate George Russell. As such, they were determined to be the fastest on ultimate Qualifying pace (i.e. their ideal lap if they were to put their best sectors together) in 13 rounds.
That was the case even when they were beaten to the top spot, like when Lando Norris qualified P1 in the Netherlands. They’ve actually dropped down the order in recent events, which saw Max Verstappen build the biggest advantage over Mercedes than at any point so far this season through his pole lap in Malaysia – where Antonelli and Russell could only manage P4 and P8 respectively.
Red Bull have enjoyed one of the greatest improvements, going from the low of a >1% gap to Mercedes in Japan to beating not only the Constructors’ Championship leaders, but also Ferrari and McLaren in Round 16.
Speaking of the Scuderia, their ultimate pace reveals that they’ve missed some opportunities for better results in Qualifying. In Singapore, for instance, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc had almost 0.2s on the rest of the field, so could’ve dominated had they added up their fastest sectors.
However, they struggled to put it all together and Verstappen subsequently qualified on pole, but his ideal lap still wasn’t as good as Ferrari’s. The chart also shows that they’ve been fairly consistent over the course of the season despite missing out on having the outright fastest pace at all events bar Singapore, making it even more painful that they missed out on their first pole of the year.
Of the top four teams, McLaren have arguably been more up-and-down than the others as they’ve struggled for consistency across different tracks. The MCL40 had its best Qualifying pace when Norris returned to P1 in Hungary and the Netherlands, but it has suffered from a straight-line speed deficiency that somewhat explains the team’s rather sudden decline following the Briton’s Madring success.
The quartet is grouped relatively close together, reflecting the current standings, but the disparity increases as you look down the order. Let’s start with Racing Bulls – they may be ‘best of the rest’ at the moment, but it’s not been a smooth journey for them in Qualifying.
Their high points are clear and include Barcelona, Belgium and Italy, where one of their drivers progressed to Q3. Interestingly, their hard-fought double Q3 appearance in Austria signifies a dip on the chart due to just how dominant the Silver Arrows were, with Russell qualifying on pole by more than two-tenths over everyone else.
As the midfield battle developed, Racing Bulls had a significant downturn in Qualifying pace in Spain and Baku – Alpine did too, but that was anticipated after Pierre Gasly’s surprise success at Monza. There, the Frenchman was perfectly placed amongst the traffic in Q3, allowing him to receive a double slipstream effect on every straight.
Combined with the low downforce conditions that Alpine tend to thrive in, everything fell into place for Gasly to secure his first career pole position. Mercedes still beat them on outright pace, but both of their drivers were caught out by Verstappen’s mistake heading into Turn 1.
Next up are Audi, a team that peaked in Barcelona (where Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto wound up P9 and P12) and Italy – more proof that Monza was a notable highlight for the midfield, with Haas similarly extracting close to their best Qualifying pace of the season.
But that’s largely where the positives end for the American outfit, unless you go all the way back to Round 2 in China where they had the sixth-best Qualifying pace of anyone and Ollie Bearman squeezed into Q3. Their erratic line on the chart mirrors the “inconsistencies” their drivers have complained of from weekend to weekend, with Monaco, Hungary and Bahrain their worst showings when it comes to a single lap.
Another team that’s failed to see regular improvement is Williams. After a gradual slump in the first half of the year, they plummeted in Hungary – when competitors Aston Martin brought a colossal 16 upgrades – before rediscovering some pace with their own updates in Baku.
Aston Martin’s upgrades were sorely needed, the team having dropped significantly below everyone for five rounds in Europe. They lost some performance once again in Italy, but have generally been on the up since then to get back ahead of Cadillac.
While it might have been comforting for the newcomers to have company at the back of the field, Cadillac have made their own progress too. They originally had a >5% deficit to Mercedes at the season opener and reduced it to under 3% in Belgium, but are still considerably adrift.
Race pace
NB: The Monaco Grand Prix was omitted from the information below as it isn’t an ideal event where teams’ full pace is exploited.
We’ve been through the Qualifying data, but what about the all-important race pace? It won’t be a shock to see that Mercedes have predominantly been at the top, although not as much as on the previous graph.
That’s because McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull have all demonstrated that they can beat the leaders in this metric, but haven’t always executed to their full potential. If they had, Mercedes’ win tally would be on nine rather than the 11 they’ve clinched so far.
While that might not sound like the biggest difference, it shows what could’ve been for their rivals. Take McLaren – their highest-scoring round of the season came in Miami, but it was still Antonelli who held on to win the Grand Prix despite McLaren’s superior optimal race pace.
Unlike some of their Qualifying results, Ferrari did capitalise in this regard to secure two victories in Barcelona and Great Britain before falling behind, aligning with Leclerc’s comments about losing ground to the others.
They did, however, bounce back in Singapore and were level with Red Bull’s race pace, indicating just how impressive it was that Verstappen won by 7s over the Monegasque. On that, the Milton Keynes-based outfit have been the fastest team since Round 15 in Azerbaijan, where Verstappen missed out on victory by the smallest of margins.
The only other time they were top was in Austria as they had quicker free air pace than Mercedes after introducing a major upgrade package. Nevertheless, the required pace to overtake was around 0.5s per lap for a 50% chance, so with Verstappen’s advantage lingering around 0.4s, he simply lacked the speed to pass Russell.
Elsewhere, Alpine have been on quite the rollercoaster. They scored points in the first seven rounds despite a decline in their race pace from Japan onwards, which hit a low in Barcelona. From then, Racing Bulls found some crucial performance to edge ahead, so much so that Alpine’s own improvement wasn’t enough to prevent the gap from opening up.
Another notable dip came for almost everyone in the Netherlands thanks to Norris’ immense dominance of the Grand Prix – he beat Mercedes to the chequered flag by 11.536s following McLaren’s aerodynamic-focused upgrades.
Going back to Alpine, they joined the rest of the midfield in improving massively just two weeks later, finishing behind the top teams after Gasly dropped from pole to P7. They also left Singapore with the fifth-best race pace, which should give them some optimism in their fight for P5 in the Constructors’ Championship.
You might expect Racing Bulls to be close considering their 32-point lead over Alpine, but it’s actually Audi that have done the best job in closing the gap. Although all three have been on a similar trajectory, Racing Bulls stagnated in recent events whilst Audi surged forward, reflected in Hulkenberg’s double-score in the Singapore Sprint and Grand Prix.
Haas have recovered to be there or thereabouts too following a big drop that saw them competing against Williams rather than the higher midfield outfits, with recent points-scoring finishes in Baku and Singapore coinciding with their improvement.
On the other hand, the difference in Williams’ pace for each event makes for tough viewing. Up to Round 5 in Canada, they were heading in a great direction that came crashing down in Barcelona; P12 for Carlos Sainz doesn’t sound too bad, but he was two laps down on the winner and ordered the team to “go back to the drawing board” after his dire weekend.
More drastic highs and lows unfolded before their highly-anticipated Baku upgrades, which didn’t deliver enough to seriously reduce their deficit. Instead, their race pace has decreased in the rounds since, which could suggest that the package was too little, too late considering the development of teams around them.
There’s more bad news for Williams too, as they converged with Aston Martin and Cadillac in Singapore, which would be a cause for celebration for the latter two. Aston Martin went down the same path of putting their resources into one big upgrade package, which paid off as they saw a big spike in race pace when it debuted in Hungary.
They haven’t been as consistent as they had likely hoped in the weeks since, but it has largely kept them clear of Cadillac – with the exception of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. To that end, the American team have made tangible progress, especially after the extreme low in Austria where they failed to log enough laps to determine their race pace.
Car development
As we’ve mentioned, the development push from each team has played a crucial role in influencing the pecking order. Their respective approaches have varied wildly, with some implementing regular changes (like Ferrari and Red Bull) whilst others have depended on a sole boost to move forwards, such as Aston Martin.
But none of them have progressed quite as much as Alpine – they found 1.03s between the Australian and Singapore Grands Prix, trimming their disadvantage to the fastest team from over 1.5s to almost 0.5s.
With Mercedes remaining the reference point, Red Bull are second when it comes to season development, having unlocked 0.62s to nearly equal the Silver Arrows. Ferrari and McLaren have also improved by 0.43s apiece, but while the former are now marginally ahead on the chart, that doesn’t mean that they’re the outright fastest.
It only shows the gaps covered, so the conclusion is that there are now three teams (Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull) in close contention on any given weekend. The figures rely on everyone delivering their ideal lap when it matters, which means we can’t state that the Scuderia are definitively quicker, particularly as performance fluctuates depending on the circuit.
Although Aston Martin and Cadillac have also gained 0.50s and 0.37s respectively, they remain at the bottom of the pile behind Williams, who have only recovered 0.18s despite bringing in major upgrades.
Audi are around two-tenths faster than they were at the beginning of 2026, but are still over a second adrift of Mercedes, as are Racing Bulls.
All of that progress makes Haas’ loss of 0.21s even harsher as they’re the only team that have gone backwards. Their strong start to the season may have rapidly faded away, but better results in the last few rounds could give some hope that they can turn things around and hold off Audi for P7.
