(Motorsport-Total.com) – Looking at the raw point numbers, it is not surprising that world championship leader Mercedes is the biggest winner of the new Formula 1 regulations. At this point in the season, the Silver Arrows have a whopping 170 points more on the board than in 2025.
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No other team has improved as much in the past twelve months. The other two big winners, measured purely by absolute numbers, are Ferrari (97 points more than after eleven races of the 2025 season) and Alpine (50 points more).
The biggest loser in this statistic is McLaren. While the Woking team still won both world championship titles in 2025, they collected a whopping 197 points less in 2026 than at the same time last year. The McLaren crash is thus significantly larger than that of Williams (44 points less) and Aston Martin (27 points less).
The McLaren example shows how difficult it is to work with absolute numbers in this case. Because the fall height was naturally much higher for the world champion team than, for example, for Williams or Aston Martin. Nevertheless, McLaren is currently in P3 in the world championship.
Percentage numbers: Mercedes only in P3
Therefore, a look at the percentage numbers is exciting, because here Williams and Aston Martin are expectedly at the very back. Williams currently has only 20 percent of the points from the previous year on the board, and Aston Martin has only 3.57 percent with a single point. In 2025, there were still 28 points after eleven races.
In terms of the championship position, Williams actually went further down than the Silverstone team. While Aston Martin, like McLaren, lost “only” two places compared to 2025, Williams is the biggest loser in this statistic with a loss of four positions.
The other end of the table also looks different than with the absolute numbers, because Mercedes collected 181.34 percent of the points from the previous year, thus almost doubling their haul. Nevertheless, this only puts them in P3, just behind the Racing Bulls (183.33 percent).
By far the biggest jump was made by Alpine. The French collected a whopping 554.55 percent of their 2025 points after eleven races and were thus able to more than quintuple their haul. Alpine also made the biggest leap forward in the championship (four places).
Surprise: Red Bull better than 2025
Other teams that have more points on the board than at this point in 2025 also include Ferrari (146.19 percent) and Red Bull (109.26 percent). In the case of the Bulls, this is somewhat surprising because the team actually seems to be in a much bigger crisis in 2026.
The difference in this case is made by the second driver. While Max Verstappen indeed has 46 fewer world championship points than a year ago, his new teammate Isack Hadjar has already collected 68 points.
For comparison: Yuki Tsunoda scored only seven points for the Bulls in this period last year, and Liam Lawson contributed no points at all. This explains why Red Bull overall has more points than in 2025, but a still winless Verstappen plays no role in the championship fight.
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In the world championship, the few extra points also make no difference for the Bulls. As in 2025, they are in P4 and thus at the end of the top group. Alongside Alpine, Mercedes is the biggest winner here with a jump of two places upwards.
Audi better than 2025, but with fewer points
A small special case in the evaluation of the first half of the season is also Audi, which still started as Sauber in 2025. At first glance, an upward trend is visible here, as they are currently eighth in the world championship, while in 2025 they were ninth and second to last.
At the same time, however, they have lost more than half of their points from the previous year, making them one of the biggest losers alongside Williams and Aston Martin. In 2025, there were still 26 points after eleven races; in 2026, there are only twelve.
The reason why Audi is still better placed in the championship is the crashes of Williams and Aston Martin. It is also important to note that Nico Hülkenberg’s third place in Silverstone is not yet included here. That came in 2025 only in the twelfth race of the season.
Therefore, it will probably be difficult for Audi to reach the total of 70 Sauber points from 2025 by the end of the season. Whether they can still finish better in the championship will likely depend on whether Williams and Aston Martin improve during the second half of the season.
Even fewer points for the midfield
Overall, the new regulations have not been a success from the perspective of the smaller teams so far. In the first eleven races in 2025, around 84 percent of all points went to the four top teams McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull; this value has even risen to around 86 percent in 2026.
Although the top teams also repeatedly struggled with technical problems during the first half of the season, the midfield ended up with even less of the pie. While the top teams increased their combined points haul from 998 to 1,083 points, the rest were left with only 172 instead of 185 points.
The fact that a few more points were distributed overall in 2026 is due to the fact that there have already been four sprints at this point in the season, two more than a year ago. This resulted in 72 more points being awarded than a year ago.
Formula 1 newcomer Cadillac plays no role in the comparison to 2025. The team is in eleventh and last place in the championship without points, so statistically there is no difference to the previous year when Cadillac was not yet competing.
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