F1 2026: Winners and workers from the first half of the season

The first half of the 2026 Formula 1 season is in the books.

And it is time to take stock of what we saw.

It has been a year of upheaval on the grid, as the spot introduced the biggest set of regulation changes in F1 history. That has led to some surprises both on, and off, the track.

Here are five winners from the first half of the 2026 F1 season, and four teams or drivers that have some work to do in the second half.

Winners

Here are some teams and drivers that certainly enjoyed the first half of the season.

Kimi Antonelli

The year began with Mercedes tapped as the preseason favorites for the Constructors’ title, and indeed they sit atop the standings at the August break.

And it is one of their drivers at the top of the heap as well on the Drivers’ Championship side, but instead of George Russell, it is the young phenom Kimi Antonelli leading the way.

After a roller coaster rookie season, Antonelli has shined this year, winning six Grands Prix and taking pole position at six races as well. He enters the break with a 50-point lead over Lewis Hamilton, and a 59-point lead over his teammate Russell.

While the game to Russell is in part due to some bad luck the veteran driver has endured this year, Antonelli has also shown the ability to win races on merit and pace, and his form has been flawless at times this year, such as the Monaco Grand Prix where he took both pole position, and the race itself.

Ferrari

While the Silver Arrows sit atop the Constructors’ Championship standings, Ferrari managed to keep Mercedes within reach over the first half of the season, thanks to wins from Lewis Hamilton at the Spanish Grand Prix and Charles Leclerc at the British Grand Prix.

For Hamilton, his win in Barcelona was his first Grand Prix victory with Ferrari, and put him into the mix for the Drivers’ Championship fight. He remains 50 points behind Antonelli at the break — thanks in part to a string of penalties in recent weeks — but seems to have settled into life at the Scuderia, regaining the form that made him a seven-time champion.

The 72-point gap to Mercedes is certainly not insurmountable, and with the Silver Arrows enduring some reliability issues this season anything can happen in the second half of the season. But if the Ferrari fan in your life seems a little brighter these days, the first half is why.

Because they can dream again, if only for a little longer.

Alpine

Alpine was one of the first teams to punt on the 2025 season, shifting the focus to the 2026 campaign and the incoming regulation set.

The bet has paid off, at least so far.

While the team dropped to sixth in the Constructors’ Championship standings at the Hungarian Grand Prix, for the bulk of the season Alpine was in fifth, right at the front of the midfield. The team has enjoyed four double-points weekends, including most recently the British Grand Prix, and Pierre Gasly returned to the podium for the first time since the 2024 São Paulo Grand Prix, when he finished third at the Monaco Grand Prix.

While that needed a bit of post-race intervention from the stewards, who granted the team’s Right of Review regarding a penalty given to Gasly for speeding in pit lane, the third-place trophy is his.

Whether Alpine can keep up the pace in the second half remains to be seen, but so far, so good.

VCARB

The team that nipped Alpine for fifth in the Constructors’ Championship standings just ahead of the break?

That would be Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, who rode a double-points finish of their own at the Hungarian Grand Prix to 66 points, and a five-point edge over Alpine.

Two things stand out about the first half from VCARB. First, the consistency. They have only been shut out of the points at one race this year, the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May. VCARB scored at every race weekend before then, and every race since, including an impressive 14 points from the Monaco Grand Prix where Liam Lawson finished sixth, and Arvid Lindblad seventh.

That leads us to the second point: VCARB’s driver lineup. While Lawson entered 2026 with a few seasons under his belt, the promotion of Isack Hadjar to Red Bull opened up a spot for young Lindblad, who has acclimated to life in F1 rather well. After enduring four races without a finish in the points, stretching from the Chinese Grand Prix to the Canadian Grand Prix, Lindblad has rebounded with a top-ten result at each race weekend since.

Cadillac

At first blush, a team at the bottom of the table without a point on the season might be tough to classify as a winner.

But 2026 was always about more than points for Cadillac, F1’s newest team. It was a year for growth and development, as the new entry adjusted to life on the grid. And Cadillac has shown that, bringing developmental upgrades to the track at various times this season, and getting both Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas to the checkered flag multiple times this year.

And until Aston Martin’s big upgrade arrived at the Hungarian Grand Prix, they were running ahead of the more experienced outfit on the track.

While a finish in the points would punctuate their first season on the grid — they came close at the Monaco Grand Prix until a penalty dropped Pérez out of tenth — they’ve already proved they belong on the grid.

Workers

Here are some teams and drivers that have some work to do in the second half of the year, whether to win a title, improve in the standings, or to simply keep their seat on the grid.

George Russell

At this point, George Russell’s first-half disappointments are well documented.

He began the year as the odds-on favorite for the Drivers’ Championship, due to the expectation that Mercedes would begin the year on the front foot as the new regulations arrived. A win in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix only heightened those expectations.

Then the struggles began.

It was perhaps the Canadian Grand Prix where the bad luck beggared belief, when Russell was forced to retire from the lead due to a battery failure, his first retirement since the 2024 British Grand Prix. But last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix was another example, as his W17 went into anti-stall as the lights went out, dropping Russell from P6 down to P21 on the opening lap. While he managed to fight back into the points, ultimately finishing seventh, it was another day where luck broke against him in a first half filled with such moments.

Williams

Similar to Alpine, Williams set their sights on 2026 and the new regulation set. It was all part of the plan formed by team principal James Vowles, as he tries to get. the team back to the front of the grid.

But while Alpine finished at the bottom of the table a year ago, Williams finished a surprising fifth, even with the eye to the future, leading many to believe bigger things were in store this year.

That has not been the case.

As the first half drew to a close, Williams sits down in ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship standings, one point behind Audi and ten points behind Haas. Forget points, simply advancing in qualifying has been a problem for the team. The last time both drivers saw Q2 came at the British Grand Prix — where Alexander Albon qualified 16th, one spot behind Carlos Sainz — and Williams advanced both drivers into Q2 only two other times this season, first at Miami and then at Monaco.

The boss addressed those first-half struggles in a message posted to social media following the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“It’s been an incredibly tough first half of the year,” began Vowles. “First and foremost a thank you to everyone back at base that has been diligently working tirelessly in order to get ourselves back above water after the difficult start.

“This really has set us back and we’re doing what we can across this season but the reality is, what we need to do is make sure we get everything in the right place for 2027 and beyond. That’s a tremendous amount of work.

“This winter really exposed everything that isn’t in the right place to a level that wasn’t expected.”

Vowles then thanked his drivers, who he admitted “deserve” more.

“Than you and well done. They’ve been by our side all the way through and stood headstrong despite the difficulties that we’re putting them in on track. They’re two incredible drivers, they deserve to be fighting for points at the minimum every weekend and we haven’t provided that,” added Vowles.

“We go into the summer break with frustration but also the desire to make everything right in our future.”

Vowles continues to have his eyes on the future, but the present is the bigger concern.

Esteban Ocon

The F1 driver transfer market could best be described as a slow simmer at the moment, even if the annual speculation over Max Verstappen’s future threatened to push it over to a full boil.

But one driver who could be feeling the heat in particular is Esteban Ocon at Haas.

The veteran has just three points on the season, and currently sits 17th in the Drivers’ Championship standings, two points behind Albon and three points behind Sainz. And given what was just said about Williams that feels … significant.

More significant is the gap to teammate Oliver Bearman, as Ocon trails the young driver by 15 points. Ocon could take some solace in the fact that Bearman banked 11 of those points over one weekend, the Chinese Grand Prix, and if you strip that away the gap is not 18-to-3, but 7-to-3.

Still, Ocon’s performance this year has led to speculation about his future.

From the team’s perspective, the inconsistency with the VF-26 clouds the picture. Team principal Ayao Komatsu highlighted the ups-and-downs of the season when he met with the media ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, while also pointing to some bad luck Ocon has dealt with this year.

“It’s very difficult from outside to see the gap between teammates,” Komatsu said at the Hungaroring. “For instance, Silverstone, it’s got nothing to do with the team, for instance, or the drivers. Esteban was actually two tenths up on Ollie before he hit that yellow flag. Just pure unluck.

“If you look at the points difference, some of the points difference happened because of the safety car as well – Shanghai, Ollie with full benefit of the safety car, Esteban didn’t. And then last weekend [at the Belgian Grand Prix], on Friday, when he was happy with the car, he was reasonably close to Ollie, he was within two tenths. Then Saturday onwards, he just wasn’t happy with the car. But honestly, we didn’t change much at all. Then we still don’t understand it.

“But clearly, when he was happy, it’s not about lap time. He’s obviously got a good feel to the car. So, without looking at his lap time, he said, ‘Yeah, I’m happy with this car’. Guess what? He’s close to Ollie. But FP3 goes out, straight away he said stability is gone. We don’t understand why. And he’s absolutely nowhere close to Ollie. So it’s very, very difficult to get the true picture.”

Given that, Ocon’s situation does require a bit of context. But if the veteran driver wants to feel more secure heading into 2027, some improved results would go a long way.

Aston Martin

We close out with Aston Martin.

Similar to Russell, the team’s struggles over the first half of the season have been well documented. They showed up to the season-opening Australian Grand Prix with a host of problems with the AMR26, starting with vibrations from the Honda power unit so severe that parts were literally falling off their challenger, vibrations that prevented Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll from running a full race distance.

The team did not see a checkered flag until the Japanese Grand Prix, and it was not until the Miami Grand Prix that both drivers crossed the finish line. A host of penalties handed out at the Monaco Grand Prix promoted Alonso to P10, securing the first point for the team this year, but the struggles continued as Aston Martin worked on a huge upgrade package that debuted at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

That is where the first signs of life emerged, as Alonso advanced to Q2, the first time an Aston Martin driver moved on in qualifying this season. He finished P14, one spot behind Stroll, as both drivers finished in the top 15 for the first time all season.

And with an upgraded power unit set to debut after the break, at the Dutch Grand Prix, brighter days may yet be ahead.

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