Can Red Bull lose the Constructors' Championship with a drifting Sergio Pérez?

Are we going to experience the closest championship in recent years... among the Manufacturers? If Max Verstappen is on course to win a fourth consecutive title this season, the suspense is much greater concerning the teams.

After the British Grand Prix, Red Bull leads the championship (373 points) with 71 units ahead of Ferrari (302 points), 78 out of McLaren (295 points) and 152 on Mercedes (221 points). Differences that seem significant... but let's not forget that we have only just reached the halfway point of the season, and that each weekend, a team can score up to 44 points (and up to 59 during a Sprint weekend!). In a Grand Prix, everything can be turned upside down…

...and based on the current dynamic, Red Bull is not the best team in the field from an accounting point of view. Over the last six meetings (Emilia-Romagna, Monaco, Canada, Spain, Austria and Great Britain), the Austrian team scored 134 points, less than McLaren (171 points) and Mercedes (157 points) and one little more than Ferrari (115 points)! The reason for such a downgrade for Red Bull: the bad luck of Sergio Pérez, who only collected 15 units in this same period (compared to 119 for Max Verstappen…).

The Mexican's repeated poor performances offer other teams the possibility of believing in a world title this season. Ahead of the English round at Silverstone, Oscar piastri thus declared that the low score of Sergio Pérez “certainly helps McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship”, while the Oranges currently have the best dynamic on the board. “It was only Max [Verstappen], really. Anytime you have two cars at the front versus one, it opens up opportunities and that's always good for scoring points. I think it's always a good thing to do. »

McLaren would fail just behind Red Bull in Abu Dhabi

But is the Australian right to display such optimism for the rest of the championship? Will the delay taken by McLaren at the start of the season be fatal for them for the Constructors' Championship? To answer these questions, we produced a projection for the end of the season on the dynamics of the last five Grands Prix. This also includes the Sprint race held in Austria.

Reading this graph, if the dynamics of the last five meetings continues at the same pace, Red Bull would narrowly maintain the lead in the championship until Abu Dhabi (640,6 points) with a very slight lead over McLaren (637 points), while Ferrari (532,4 points) would also lose a place to Mercedes (535,4 points) in the Constructors' championship. A projection made with the average points of the last six Grands Prix, largely in favor of the men from Woking (28,5 pts/GP since Imola) against Red Bull (22,3 pts/GP).

Note that since the Italian round, McLaren has scored 58,0% of its total points over the entire season (171 points scored since Imola out of 295 scored since the start of the season), compared to 35,9% for Red Bull. (134/373). Mercedes is the team with the strongest progress, with 71,0% of its points scored from Emilia-Romagna (157/221).

Obviously, the statistics and forecasts made above will not precisely predict the outcome of this Manufacturers' championship. Let's first take advantage of having four teams capable of striving for victory in each Grand Prix, a fact too rare in recent seasons not to be appreciated at its true value!

(article updated on July 9 after the British GP)

ALSO READ > Alpine, Mercedes, Williams… Sainz in the middle of a fool’s game!