Formula 1 is back and it has given teams and drivers the traditional summer break, to relax, recalibrate and almost certainly prepare for the warfare that is the second-leg of the season.
As with the ups and downs of any F1 season, there are over and under-performers, but for this latest piece The Race’s Formula 1 writing team – Mark Hughes, Scott Mitchell and Edd Straw – have zeroed in on the drivers and teams which really need to step things up from August onwards.
They are grouped into categories. Those in the ‘good’ category are doing well but need to be a bit more consistent or find marginal gains. Those in the ‘middling’ category have failed to impress as expected and need to elevate, and the ‘bad’ category is for the unlucky entrants that could be fighting for their futures or at the very least their reputations.
The good
LEWIS HAMILTON
Telling the championship leader to up his game is an odd look and we’re not about to try to teach Hamilton to suck eggs.
But with major errors at Imola and Baku, plus that clash with title rival Max Verstappen at Silverstone, it’s very fortunate that Hamilton is leading the points. The standings presently don’t reflect who has had the better – or at least the more consistent – season.
Hamilton has gone many years without making this many mistakes and that is probably a legacy of the tight championship battle and the prevailing opinion that he has a slightly weaker car. All three errors above have come when he had been on the back foot.
The seven-time world champion’s peaks have been great this year and he would be a deserving title winner if he prevails. Hamilton doesn’t have to raise his ceiling to do that but he does need to raise the basement by reducing – if not eliminating entirely – worse ‘off days’ relative to Verstappen. – Scott Mitchell
CARLOS SAINZ
On the one hand, Ferrari’s new signing has been one of the most impressive performers of the first half of the season. On the other, we know how good Sainz can be, and so does he. So we know there’s untapped potential here.
By his own admission Sainz needs more consistent and complete weekends. He has adapted to Ferrari well and his pace really hasn’t been an issue, especially when compared to other drivers switching teams like Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez.
The ‘problem’ is that Sainz has made a few errors – Imola (tricky conditions, admittedly) and Azerbaijan are the big ones in races – and he even says he is not quite the driver we saw at McLaren, doing such a mega job every weekend.
Given he’s still ahead of Charles Leclerc in the championship, this might seem like splitting hairs. But Sainz didn’t get his Ferrari chance by being the sort of driver to settle for doing a decent job.
Just because he’s doing well doesn’t mean there isn’t a need to improve. – SM
AlphaTauri
AlphaTauri has consistently qualified in the top six in the hands of Pierre Gasly and on average has not been far off the pace of Ferrari and McLaren. So it’s a little disappointing that the team lies only sixth in the constructors’ championship.
While that is partly down to ill-luck, with Alpine pocketing 37 points at the Hungaroring, AlphaTauri should still comfortably be fifth in the constructors’ championship and well clear of both Alpine and Aston Martin. That it isn’t is down to a combination of factors.
First and foremost, rookie Yuki Tsunoda hasn’t contributed enough points. Although he’s scored more than the man he replaced, Daniil Kvyat, managed in the first 11 races last year, AlphaTauri needs him to deliver more consistently. He scored points three times in the four races before the break, so needs to keep that up while improving his pace deficit to Gasly.
As for Gasly, he’s had a few errors – notably clipping Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren in Bahrain and slightly overshooting his grid box – and later pit box – in Spain, but he’s generally performed very well. Luck hasn’t always been on his side. – Edd Straw
The middling
Sebastian Vettel
Judged by his high points – fifth in Monaco, second in Baku and second on-the-road at the Hungaroring prior to his exclusion – Vettel has been superb. Judged by his low points, notably hitting Esteban Ocon in Bahrain and spinning on the first lap of the British Grand Prix, he’s been disappointing. That averages out as a solid season, but one that could still get much better.
There’s been a healthy amount of the good from Vettel to offset the bad, but having had half a season to settle in, in the second half of 2021 he needs to be more consistently at the upper end of that spectrum. And the signs are, he can be.
If he delivers, we know how good he can be. While the Aston Martin is a limited car, a Vettel on top form can drag consistently good results out of it and show why the team was absolutely right to sign a driver who some saw as a busted flush at the end of his Ferrari career. – ES
Mercedes
In probably the most intense championship fight the team has been involved in, there have been pressure mistakes and not just from Lewis Hamilton. There have been pitwall calls that proved wrong, most recently not bringing Hamilton in to change to slicks on the restart formation lap in Hungary.
There have also been tactical masterstrokes, such as springing Hamilton ahead in Bahrain, an essential component of his winning against a faster car on the day. But the Red Bull calls have so far been more consistent, and Mercedes needs to match this just as much as it needs to match the RB16B’s pace if it is to win the title.
Someone who could have been their own entry on this list – Valtteri Bottas – also needs to step up if Mercedes is to win the constructors’ championship. Bottas may have been consigned to the Mercedes scrapheap by many, but a strong end to the year would at least provide bargaining power for the driver likely looking to fit in somewhere else next season. – Mark Hughes
THE ROOKIES
Any rookie could make this list almost by default but this isn’t a lazy inclusion. It’s clear that all three F1 debutants in 2021 have faced a baptism of fire at times.
Yuki Tsunoda’s ‘will he star or will he shunt?’ rookie season has been the most up-and-down as the AlphaTauri driver looks about as likely to qualify in the top 10 and score points as he his crunch his car into a barrier. He also had a stealth error in the Hungarian Grand Prix when he spun in the closing stages but fortunately got away with it.
Red Bull backs Tsunoda so his place in F1 is far from under threat but he is on the biggest learning curve of anybody given his lack of overall experience – one year in F3 and F2 respectively – and it’s only right to expect more polished performances as that bank of experience fills up.
Arguably the most impressive of the three, Mick Schumacher, had a slightly concerning spate of crashes after a cautious first few events and is at a team that can ill-afford such constant repair work.
Schumacher has been doing a fine job in terms of pace but his shunts in Monaco, France and Hungary have given Haas a mounting repair bill. He needs to cut out the major errors over the rest of the season.
Team-mate Nikita Mazepin is still looking to lift his all-round game. There have been flashes of the ability that made Mazepin a race winner in Formula 2 and championship runner-up in GP3, now FIA Formula 3.
But they have all-too-often been lost among massive deficits to Schumacher and a tendency to handle being lapped in the races poorly. Losing less time under blue flags has to be a priority for him. – SM
The bad
Alfa Romeo
The Alfa Romeo isn’t a bad car. It’s not super-quick, but it’s consistent across a wide range of circuits and given the way the races have gone should have emerged from the first half of the season with more than three points for a trio of 10th places.
But in the ultra-competitive midfield, to rack up those eighth, ninth and 10th places that are on offer requires the team and drivers Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Raikkonen to be consistently getting the most out of the car. That too often hasn’t been the case.
There have been operational errors, notably during but not restricted to pitstop errors. This includes Kimi Raikkonen being released and hitting Nikita Mazepin in the crowded Hungaroring pitlane thanks to the lights flicking from red to green and back again and the pitcrew only noticing Giovinazzi’s new front-left in Spain had no air pressure as it was brought out of the garage to be fitted to the car.
Then there was the error at Imola when Raikkonen failed to take the restart from the pitlane as required having spun on what was effectively the formation lap – as even though that highlighted rule inconsistencies Alfa Romeo didn’t get it right by any reading of the rules.
The Alfa Romeo is the eighth-best car in F1 and will never score heavy points, but it should have more than three. – ES
Daniel Ricciardo
Ricciardo’s bewildering inability to unlock the code of driving the McLaren has been perhaps the biggest surprise of the first half of the season. More worrying still is that there does not seem to be a trend towards a narrowing of the deficit to team mate Lando Norris.
At circuits requiring lots of slow corner direction change, where getting the car rotated early and quickly is of paramount importance, he seems locked into the same pattern. Any improvements race to race tend to just be variations in circuit types.
As such, just for his own sanity almost, he desperately needs to begin making progress on this difficulty into the second half of the season. Even if his problem turns out to be unique to the ’21 car and the new car doesn’t carry that trait which he’s finding so difficult it’s important for his own confidence – and that of McLaren in him – that he makes real progress. – MH
Sergio Perez
On the one hand Christian Horner says he’s happy with Perez’s performance and that he’s providing a great back-up to Max Verstappen’s title campaign, but on the other Helmut Marko has spoken of the qualifying deficit to Verstappen as being bigger than he expected (it’s significantly bigger than Ricciardo’s to Norris, for example), indicating a level of dissatisfaction which could yet lose him the drive.
Too often his below-par qualifying efforts have left him spending much or all of his first stint getting past slower cars – by which time the leaders have pulled out of his reach.
No-one – not even Marko – is seriously expecting Checo to get onto Verstappen’s qualifying pace, but in the remainder of the season he really needs to ensure he is always starting ahead of all the Ferraris/McLarens/AlphaTauris etc so that he can be of more consistent use to the team. That would make him much harder to replace. – MH
