Papaya the colour of the year so far
The first third of the championship is now behind us, so let's take another look at the numbers. At this point, the calendar is a repeat of last year's, so any comparison is even more objective than it was after the first four races. In addition, the first eight races provide a picture taken at every type of track, with all tyre compounds and in pretty much every sort of weather, from hot to cold to wet, thus giving a clearer picture of the pecking order among the teams.
McLaren is still very much the dominant force, even more so in fact. The average number of points scored per race by the team run by Andrea Stella and Zak Brown has gone up from 37.75 over the first four Grands Prix to 39.87. The team's total is now 135 points up on what it was at this time last year, with Oscar Piastri 90 points ahead, while team-mate Lando Norris is 45 ahead of where he was last year. Behind McLaren, three teams are very closely matched. In fact, only five points separate Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, none of them having much to smile about after this first part of the season. Mercedes is the only squad of the three to have improved on 2024, 51 points up, but since the championship moved to Europe, it has fared badly, scoring only six points across the Imola and Monaco races. Red Bull can only dream of the dominance it showed at the start of last year and it has dropped the most, now 133 points down compared to this time last year. It can take some consolation that Verstappen has at least won two races, making it to the podium a further three times, so his personal total is only 33 down on 2024. Ferrari is 133 points down, while Charles Leclerc, with 59 less, has dropped the most of those drivers still with the same team as last year.
The “Biggest Loser” so far this year is Carlos Sainz (-96 points) the Spaniard paying the price for having moved from a top team, Ferrari, to Williams who, while on the up, was down at the back end of the standings at this time last year. Today, the team has made even more progress than Mercedes (+52 points) which is pretty impressive, when securing a place in the sun, meaning the top ten, is even harder for the middle order teams.
Of the drivers, apart from the McLaren duo, George Russell (+45) and Alexander Albon (+42) have made the biggest step forward, while the fact that Fernando Alonso is down by 33 points, is all the more significant, given that the two-time world champion has yet to score a single point, something the Spaniard hasn't had to endure since the first eight races of his maiden 2001 season. He never scored that year, but he was with eternal minnows Minardi and back then, points were only attributed to the first eight finishers. Today, Aston Martin can only hope that the arrival of Adrian Newey can actually deliver something in the current season and not just as from next year. There were a few signs of hope in Imola and Monaco, with Fernando qualifying on the third row of the grid for both those racers, but bad luck seems to haunt him still with a badly timed safety car and then with reliability woes putting him out of the running. With Liam Lawson coming home eighth in Monaco, Fernando only has rookies for company on zero points: his own protégé Gabriel Bortoleto, Mick Doohan, who has already been stood down and his replacement, Franco Colapinto. It's not what one would expect from Alonso and his 409 Grands Prix starts.
