There are six weekends remaining in the 2024 Formula 1 season, and perhaps the best battle on the grid is the battle for not first but sixth in the constructors’ standings.
At the end of the season, the 10 F1 teams are paid based on the constructors’ standings. It is not a situation like other championships, such as NASCAR, where payments are doled out to owners by where each individual car finishes in points.
The common adage is that there are only two positions in drivers’ standings: first and everybody else. Constructors’ standings are where everything matters for 80%-90% of the grid in any given season.
At the start of the season, F1 had a bit of an issue. There were, and are, four upper-tier teams that are expected to have both drivers finish in points every race: Red Bull Racing, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes. Add in an Aston Martin team that is the only true mid-tier team this season, and points are very hard to come by.
Theoretically, all five of those teams should occupy the 10 points-paying positions every weekend. In practice, Aston Martin has been too inconsistent, with Fernando Alonso finishing out of points from time to time, depending on the track, and Lance Stroll having only six finishes in the points-paying positions on the year.
Add in retirements or other issues, and the lower field has actually had a chance or two to accumulate points. Let’s take a look at all four of them and preview this final push on the season.
Sauber: No points, no hope
The biggest joke in F1 right now, by far. The team is essentially in a holding pattern as it waits for 2026, when it can be reborn as a works Audi team. Until then, it’s a green clown show.
Neither Valtteri Bottas nor Zhou Guanyu have gotten anywhere near points this year. This team has been so bad, they have a former double-digit race winner in Bottas, who is dead last in the drivers’ standings, meaning he is 22nd in a series with 20 drivers in every race. He will almost certainly finish below F2 driver Oliver Bearman, former F2 driver Franco Colapinto and fired Williams driver Logan Sargeant.
They are not as far off as, say, Haas was in 2021, but don’t expect them to be a factor in any way for the rest of the season.
The Battle for Eighth
Alpine is also a mess, but unlike Sauber, they’ve found enough speed not to be in the basement. Esteban Ocon is firmly in lame-duck mode, but he’s at least managed to put five points on the board. Pierre Gasly‘s eight gives the French team 13 points and ninth in the standings.
It has been an off season for Williams as they continue to try and push their way back into the championship fight. Colapinto has proven himself as a breath of fresh air and has served as the first real challenge to Alexander Albon in his tenure a the team based out of Grove, England.
Williams only recently passed Alpine in the standings. Albon finished seventh, and Colapinto followed in eighth at Baku last month, scoring 10 points and moving ahead of Alpine with 16 on the year.
It’s unlikely that Williams will continue hitting that mark through the rest of the season, as their Baku success came due to the car’s low aero drag performing well on those long city straights. But with that being said, they do have Las Vegas on the schedule, which is another high, top-speed track a la Baku. That, combined with Ocon having no incentive to perform for Alpine, should give Williams the upper hand in this battle.
The Battle for Sixth
This battle has had two big developments between both teams in this race, with one having a very direct effect.
Daniel Ricciardo has been replaced at RB in favor of Liam Lawson. Lawson is being thrown into the fire here, as RB only has a three-point lead on Haas (34 to 31) for the position.
Haas, meanwhile, just announced a new technical alliance with Toyota. Although it almost certainly will not come into play in this battle, it has shown a bit of a spotlight on it. Also, Toyota will never be opposed to beating any team powered by their arch-rival Honda.
Yuki Tsunoda has once again been hinted for a seat on the main Red Bull team by Helmut Marko. How realistic a possibility that is remains to be seen, but leading RB to victory in this points battle is absolutely going to be a point in his favor. Beating Tsunoda after Ricciardo failed to do so would also help Lawson’s case for eventually moving up to the main team.
The two young drivers at RB will be squaring up with two of the oldest on the grid. Nico Hulkenberg‘s return with Haas has been such an unqualified success that he’s now in a works team seat at Audi after next year.
Kevin Magnussen just served a one-race ban at Baku due to accumulating too many penalty points. The Dane now has no penalty points entering what will likely be the last six races of his F1 career. He’ll be more free to push the limit like he has plenty of other times this season — Saudi Arabia being the most egregious — to secure more points for Haas.
It should also be mentioned that RB won’t be particularly popular, having just fired the most popular driver in America and going up against the American-owned team in America. The only way to describe RB’s position is “awkward.”
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.