While McLaren has romped to a dominant constructors championship victory and Max Verstappen is earnestly attempting to make the drivers title a three-way fight with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, further down the field there’s an even closer battle brewing in the final rounds of the year.
The fight for supremacy among the midfield teams may not get the heart racing like a true championship battle, but the stakes are nonetheless considerable.
Victory in the lower reaches of the field is about pride, sure, but it’s also about bankable currency — millions of it.
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Formula 1 is a lucrative championship, and even those near the bottom of the championship are in line for considerable earnings worth tens of millions of dollars.
For the F1 perennial midfielders hoping to take the leap into the top tier in 2026, that money could make a significant difference to their results in the next rules cycle set to start next season.
That’s what Williams, Racing Bulls Aston Martin, Haas, Sauber/Audi and Alpine are fighting for.
PIT TALK PODCAST: Oscar Piastri has lost the title lead for the first time in 15 rounds after a recovery drive from seventh to fifth wasn’t enough to counter a dominant victory by teammate Lando Norris. Where has it gone wrong for the Aussie, and can he fight back from here?
POINTS MAKE PRIZES
Just how much is up for grabs?
The precise formula used to divvy up the bounty is a secret only found in the commercial negotiations between the teams and Formula 1, but with the latest deal now several years old, plenty of the details have leaked out over time.
It helps that Liberty Media, which owns F1, is a publicly listed company that gives us a crucial starting number.
In 2024 it spent US$1.266 billion (A$1.93 billion) on team prize money. We’ll use only Australian dollars from here.
You probably won’t be surprised to know that’s not divided equally.
Ferrari reportedly gets around 5 per cent off the top as the only team to have contested every championship season. Reports also suggest a further 20 per cent is divided up among any team that’s finished inside the top three on the title standings in the last decade.
That leaves 75 per cent of the total prize pool — around $1.450 billion — to be doled out to the teams based on their current-season results.
Half of it is distributed equally, with each team getting around $72.5 million automatically.
The other half is based on championship finish, with each place on the title table worth almost $13 million. McLaren, the 2024 title winner, received approximately $202.8 million before bonuses and will be in line for similar again this season.
The difference between fifth — the head of the midfield — and last is estimated to be a staggering $64.5 million.
Let’s see how that would play out based on the current title table.
Estimated 2024 prize money (2025 standings in brackets) in AUD
P5 (Williams): $151.4 million
P6 (Racing Bulls): $138.5 million
P7 (Aston Martin): $125.6 million
P8 (Haas): $112.7 million
P9 (Sauber): $99.8 million
P10 (Alpine): $87.0 million
For teams that have toiled for years near the back, every dollar counts.
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HOW CLOSE IS IT?
Given the top four teams should, on any given weekend, lock out the top eight finishing positions, points are always hard to come by for these midfield teams.
It means the title table is pretty much always closely contested, with only a few points ever in it.
Championship table, midfield
5. Williams: 111 points
6. Racing Bulls: 72 points
7. Aston Martin: 69 points
8. Haas: 62 points
9. Sauber: 60 points
10. Alpine: 20 points
Williams has made a break, clearing off to a 39-point lead thanks to its strong start and Carlos Sainz’s lucrative podium in Azerbaijan. It’s all but locked it into fifth bar a catastrophic final four rounds.
The opposite is true for Alpine, for whom a dreadful season comprising only five scoring weekends leaves it last on the table with a 40-point deficit.
The French-owned squad would need a miracle to move up from last place.
But there’s a but — and it’s a big but.
When a team does break away to a big result, it can completely turn the championship on its head.
Think back to last year’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix, run exactly 12 months ago today.
Heading into the weekend Alpine was ninth in the championship standings with a paltry 14 points to its name.
A wet Sunday changed all that, with a superb double podium from Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly adding 33 points to the team’s tally in a fell swoop.
Combined with another two points from the sprint a day earlier, it instantly rocketed Alpine to sixth, where it stayed for the rest of the season.
One race totally changed the complexion of the big-bucks minor places.
Could the same happen in the final four rounds of this season?
And if it doesn’t, which team is best placed to grind out top spot — and the prize money with it?
‘F***** idiot!’ – Sainz & Kimi clash | 00:55
WILLIAMS: SURELY IT CAN’T LOSE IT FROM HERE
With a 39-point lead, Williams is a shoo-in for fifth and its best finish since 2017, in the dying days of the performance bump it got from the last change in power unit rules.
The team’s commanding hold on fifth is owed equally to its strong start to the year, which saw it rapidly open an early lead, and a much-needed and steadying podium result in Azerbaijan, where a centimetre-perfect drive from Carlos Sainz delivered on his potential.
Even a Brazil-style double podium for Racing Bulls, the next closest team, wouldn’t be enough to close the gap on a single weekend, so healthy is the margin, and with Las Vegas coming up, a circuit that should perfectly suit this year’s Williams car, the team has a chance to put fifth place totally beyond doubt in the next few weeks.
RACING BULLS: QUICK OVER ONE LAP
Gap to Williams: 39 points
Racing Bulls — including in its previous Red Bull-owned guises — has never finished higher than sixth in the standings.
For a time this season looked like its best shot yet. Though it never sat in fifth place, it got the margin to Williams down to 20 points after the Dutch Grand Prix thanks to Isack Hadjar’s breakthrough podium — exactly the sort of result the midfield teams need to clinch a high place on the title table.
The team has the one-lap pace to do it. All year it’s been a close match for Williams, and that margin has only shrunk on this side of the break.
Gap to fastest midfield car since mid-season break
1. Williams: 0.192 seconds
2. Racing Bulls: 0.232 seconds
3. Aston Martin: 0.304 seconds
4. Sauber: 0.382 seconds
5. Haas: 0.507 seconds
6. Alpine: 0.967 seconds
The only problem is that the Racing Bulls car — ironically considering the name — isn’t as competitive in race trim.
Hadjar, for example, couldn’t help but slip to 13th in Mexico after having started the race eighth. It was his and the team’s third consecutive non-scoring weekend of the year. Williams has scored 10 points from the last three rounds.
It’s left Racing Bulls needing another giant-slaying result to close the gap — but with Aston Martin following by only three points, it might do better to keep its eyes on its mirrors.
Hadjar had his third consecutive non-scoring weekend of the year. (Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
ASTON MARTIN: IN NEED OF SOME LUCK
Gap to Williams: 42 points; gap to Racing Bulls: 3 points
Aston Martin has suffered all season from having devoted practically no resources to its 2025 challenger, putting instead all its efforts into its 2026 car, the design for which is being led by the legendary Adrian Newey.
Scoring has therefore been patchy, but arguably the green team is unlucky not to be higher.
Fernando Alonso’s bad luck this season, particularly early in the campaign, has been prolific. Just consider, for example, that until the Singapore Grand Prix he was trailing teammate Lance Stroll in the standings. The Canadian amassed 14 points before Alonso scored his first.
With all due respect to Stroll, he hasn’t been in Alonso’s league. He’s currently on the receiving end of a rare qualifying whitewash, having been obliterated by his teammate in every qualifying session so far this year. His average deficit of 0.336 seconds is the biggest in the sport after only Yuki Tsunoda’s gap to Max Verstappen.
The team’s deeply inefficient car will leave it with only two reasonable chances to score: Brazil this weekend and the penultimate round in Qatar. If it can’t outscore Racing Bulls at those circuits, it’ll presumably be vulnerable to being passed from behind.
‘Far too close’ – Oscar calls for parity | 03:25
HAAS: CUTTING OUT THE WASTE
Gap to Williams: 49 points; gap to Racing Bulls 10 points
Haas has been one of the season’s most erratic teams, from its dire season-opening weekend to its meritorious fourth place in Mexico last time out, where Oliver Beraman finished ahead of both Mercedes drivers and a McLaren with a perfectly judged race.
But so many times this season the team has failed to capitalise on a car capable of doing the business. Sometimes it’s been down to driver error, like Bearman’s 10-place penalty in Silverstone for ignoring red flags that had him start the race from pit lane rather than eighth.
Other times, however, erroneous set-up options have left its cars without the firepower to fight — like in Belgium, where both cars scored in the sprint but set-up mistakes left both scoreless in the grand prix.
Its upgrade brought to the United States Grand Prix has helped to level things slightly. The team is now on a three-weekend scoring streak that’s taken it up to eighth ahead of Sauber.
Keeping up that consistency could make the difference between eighth and sixth.
SAUBER: FINISHING FAST
Gap to Williams: 51 points; gap to Racing Bulls 12 points
Last year’s last-placed team is a genuine chance of finishing sixth this season, but it’ll need at least one big result to get there.
The team start the year painfully slowly, but it’s by far been the best development squad in the sport this year.
The below development metric calculates the gap between each team’s fastest lap of a weekend relative to the fastest among the midfield teams and then draws a trendline through the season to date.
It shows no-one has come close to finding Sauber’s gains this year.
Development trend, rounds 1 to 20
1. Sauber: improved by 0.824
2. Haas: improved by 0.539
3. Aston Martin: improved by 0.376
4. Racing Bulls: degraded by 0.026
5. Williams: degraded by 0.065
6. Alpine: degraded by 0.857
But the team’s biggest struggle remains qualifying. It’s now gone four races without a Q3 appearance, which is leaving the drivers with too much to do on Sunday. Together they’ve scored just five points from the last four weekends.
Getting a handle on single-lap pace could give the team a chance of ending its Sauber era with its best championship finish since 2022 before becoming the Audi works team next season.
It has been a tough year for Sauber. (Photo by Peter Fox/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
ALPINE: A SEASON BETTER FORGOTTEN
Gap to Williams: 91 points; gap to Racing Bulls 52 points
This time last year Ocon and Gasly finished second and third in treacherous conditions to not only take Alpine/Renault’s first double podium since 2006 but to rocket the team from ninth to sixth in last year’s title standings, a position it held to the end of the season.
The result totally up-ended the midfield championship and transformed what was on track to be a dire season for the French-owned team.
But while it’s true to say no-one saw that result coming, it’s harder to envisage the same happening again this season.
Alpine has been woefully off the pace and has been getting only worse — as evident in the above development trend table.
It hasn’t had a driver start inside the top 10 since July’s British Grand Prix. Its car has been the outright slowest at six of the last seven rounds.
It hasn’t scored a point since the following round in Belgium, and it hasn’t had a car finish within a minute of the leader since the Dutch Grand Prix.
A repeat of Brazil 2024 wouldn’t be enough to lift Alpine off bottom spot, and even if it did take home the same points again this year, there’s little hope it would be able to close the rest of the gap in the remaining rounds.
Understandably and rightfully the team is fully focused on next year given the scant rewards on offer this season.
Just four rounds to go until its interminable season is finally finished.