🇧🇷 F1 2021 - R19: Stratification Sunday

There are battles all over the Formula 1 grid, and nowhere is that more apparent than the constructors’ championship going into - and coming out of - the São Paulo race.

(c) FFSportAuto on TwitterWith 18 races of the season gone, the teams had stratified themselves into tiers. At the top, Mercedes vs Red Bull, with Valtteri Bottas and Checo Perez supplementing the points earned by their more illustrious team mates. Everyone focuses on that battle, but the duels going on lower down the order are just as - if not - more intriguing. McLaren vs Ferrari is shaping up to be a brilliant battle for third, with the Italian team in the driving seat. Both historic manufacturers at different stages in their long F1 lives. Ferrari, back on the way up after a sixth-placed finish, their worst since 1980, and McLaren, pushing to maintain third place after surging from the doldrums in the past few seasons.

Below them are Alpha Tauri and Alpine who are locked in battle. Two of the newer names on the grid, with intriguing driver lineups and momentary glimpses of greatness. There’s a two-time world champion in Fernando Alonso, two one-time race winners in Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly and an intriguing wildcard in Japanese rookie Yuki Tsunoda, who, even after 19 races, is still something of an unknown quantity. 

Aston Martin should be in that middle-order battle at a minimum, but they’re not in the picture yet, and they’re as close to Williams below as they are to the middle order. And then you have Alfa Romeo and Haas, who are both screaming for relevance and the 2022 regulations. 

I thought it would be a good time to look at the mid-card battle between Red Bull’s sister team and the artists formerly known as Renault. They came into Interlagos equal on 106 points, but through vastly different compositions. For Alpha Tauri, Gasly has outscored his teammate by more than four points to one, while Alonso has outscored Ocon by a lower margin, 62-50, with half of Ocon's points courtesy of his win in Hungary.

There are a couple of conclusions that jump out. Firstly, Gasly is putting the team on his back, and no more was that apparent in laps 62 and 63 in Brazil, where he overtook Ocon and then on the next lap, passed Alonso. His Japanese teammate was driving around in 15th after an “ambitious” attempt on Lance Stroll. 

In fact, Tsunoda has only finished above Gasly three times this season, whereas at Alpine, Ocon has seen the chequered flag before his teammate nine times, including at the Hungaroring when Alonso played a starring defensive role, giving his teammate a buffer from a charging Hamilton. 

The other conclusion is that Alpha Tauri should be really pleased, whatever happens here. Forget they are Red Bull’s junior team for a second. They’ve outscored what they did in 2020, and this is their most successful season for points since joining as Toro Rosso. In Gasly, they have a settled star, who doesn’t see a reason to revisit his time with Red Bull and they have the ability to challenge and frustrate cars further up. 

For Alpine, finishing lower than fifth would represent a regression from the place they finished in 2020, perhaps mitigated by losing Daniel Ricciardo, who scored 119 points last season. It seems improbable that either Alpine driver will get to triple-figures this year, partly because the other teams around them are better than they were 12 months ago. Despite feeling like a team that’s on the up, Renault/Alpine have actually regressed from a fourth-placed finish in 2018, a pair of fifths and now, possibly a sixth this season. 

Sunday in Interlagos didn’t separate Alpine or Alpha Tauri with a seventh-place finish for Gasly, netting him six points, but the same haul from the two Alpines for an eighth and ninth-place double points finish. While Tsunoda has been more composed in his car, he will be the driver that will make the difference - whether that’s positive or negative.

The question is, why does any of this matter? As always, el problema es el capitalismo. Money. F1 doesn’t give out its prize money in a completely meritocratic way, but in general, the higher the finish, the more money you’re given, allowing all the advantages that extra money brings. For historic teams like Williams, McLaren and especially Ferrari, just being part of the championship brings in revenue, and with a high enough finish, Ferrari will likely earn more money than the title contenders.

And it isn’t just the prize money. 

If you’re a brand looking for global exposure, would you rather be on the cars getting lapped or the ones with a semi-realistic shot at getting points each week. I previously wrote about Haas and the struggles of back-markers, extending to the number and quality of sponsors you’re able to bring in, making those pay drivers even more important in Haas’ case. 

It’s the flight to the relative unknown that is Qatar for the third stop of this unprecedented global triple-header and the first of three night races to end the season. It has never hosted an F1 race before, and won’t do again until 2023, taking a year off for the men’s football World Cup. 

With a 14-point lead and three races to go, all eyes are likely to be on the front. But it’s worth looking further back too at those battles for 4-8 championship points each weekend. What these teams do in those final three weekends might have a really strong knock on effect.

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