F1 second-half risers and fallers: Norris good! Hamilton not?
Let's read some tea leaves and get 60% of these wrong!
F1’s summer break is in full swing, which leaves us (who don’t get the month off) to take stock of the first half of the year and look ahead to the second.
Rather than just telling you what’s happened in the first 11 races, we’re going to try to complete the picture - to look at the half-finished puzzle and try to project that forward to the end of the year.
Who’s in the best position coming out of the break? Who’s going to finish strong, and who’s running out of control down the hill, about to tumble into the brambles?
Let us tell you...and remember, this is all relative. Someone being in the risers section doesn’t necessarily mean they’re title contenders (as you’ll see), and an entry in the fallers section doesn’t mean they’re never scoring a point again. There are ‘rising’ drivers who will be outperformed by ‘falling’ drivers. Context is important. If you’ve read this and still want to shout at us on Twitter or in the comments, that is fine.
Where were we? Oh, yes...
Second-half risers
Lando Norris
This pick isn’t about being a prisoner of the moment. Well alright, this isn’t entirely about being a prisoner of the moment. The McLarens looked like the fastest cars outright in Hungary, for probably the first time this season.
This is a team with a recent history of burgling a championship with a second-half surge - the constructors’ in 2024 - so a development race isn’t new to them. It’s practically their comfort zone.
But why Norris specifically and not just the team in general? Pretty simple. When the team has run well this year, he’s usually looked better than Oscar Piastri. Hungary was a stark reminder of that, with the reigning world champion just light years ahead of his team-mate on pace.
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari, good? It seems to depend on whether they got a smile from their barista that morning, or on what side a cosmic coin toss came down. High-speed Silverstone, where their engine deficit should be a problem? Would’ve landed first and second but for the safety car finish. Hungary, tailor-made for the SF-26? Fourth and fifth, of course.
They still look like the team best positioned to take the fight to the Silver Arrows though, and Leclerc should be their poster boy. He’s finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton at the last three grands prix, in no small part because he’s avoided making the sort of basic errors which have crept into Hamilton’s racing of late.
He also just feels (and saying this might be more of an indictment on Hamilton than praise for Leclerc) like the more reliable and consistent Ferrari driver right now. Look for him to close the gap in the coming weeks and months.
Arvid Lindblad
Did you know that Arvid Lindblad has the most consecutive points finishes in Racing Bulls(/AlphaTauri/Toro Rosso) history, joint with Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly at six? And a good finish at Zandvoort would have him take the outright record?
Some technical issues complicated the start of the young Brit’s first season in a full-time F1 race seat, but when his car’s stayed on the track he’s been excellent. He is comfortably behind team-mate Liam Lawson in the points standings, but this is the Kiwi’s fourth year racing in F1. It’s Lindblad’s first. Red Bull might have another gem.
Isack Hadjar
Even better news for Lindblad is that he isn’t likely to be thrown into the Red Bull seat opposite Max Verstappen before he’s ready, thanks to this man.
In just his second season, Isack Hadjar has been everything that the team could’ve hoped for - most crucially, reliable. After the team’s struggles in the first month or so, Hadjar has been impressively consistent. Not as fast as Verstappen, of course, but seven races in a row finishing sixth or better in a season as topsy-turvy as this one is commendable, especially for someone driving for perhaps the fourth fastest team on the grid.
Expect a second F1 podium, and first for Red Bull, before the end of the year.
Aston Martin???
Again, this is all relative. Aston Martin aren’t going to go on some kind of Newey-inspired dash up the leaderboard and be challenging to win the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix of Imola, but the needle is moving in the first direction.
You know what usually happens when a team brings a vast raft of upgrades that they’ve been ‘hoping will add two, two and a half seconds of pace’? They bring them, and then spend the next two weeks trying to figure out why they didn’t get the pace they expected. Engine upgrades, not dissimilar.
Say what you want about Aston in 2026 (and we have, and will continue to do so) but they seem to be delivering on their developmental upgrades. Expect more Q2 appearances after the break, and the odd scavenged point to boot.
Second half fallers
Ollie Bearman
This is who we’re saying is being blocked at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton, is it?
The Haas is bad, and getting worse. Bearman hasn’t been able to extract an ounce of extra pace out of it for months, and only the fact that he’s beating Esteban Ocon two out of every three attempts is keeping some of the scrutiny from landing on him. He’s in a tricky spot, and it’s on him now to make sure that he doesn’t go down with the ship.
Lewis Hamilton
It’s very, very hard to look at the things the seven-time world champion did in the month before the summer break and see an eighth title incoming.
It feels as though every time the Brit takes a step forward and looks poised for a real run of momentum, he takes one back. Hungary was meant to be he and Ferrari’s big pre-summer break statement race, and he finished a pretty lamentable fifth.
This might just be who he is at this point in his career, capable of producing flashes of his old brilliance without being able to repeat it week after week. That’s the career trajectory of many an aging great - but it’s not a title trajectory.
Cadillac
If your car has developed a problem which keeps setting its brakes on fire, you are going backwards. If you’ve had more retirements than finishes in the last seven races (8-6), you are going backwards. Cadillac stink. They’re new, they’re meant to.
Kimi Antonelli
Not a knock on Antonelli, but a warning about Mercedes in general...it’s just hard to say that things are going to get worse for George Russell at this point.
We’ve long lamented on these pages that teams have stopped having to choose between performance and reliability and, while that’s still broadly true, Mercedes do appear to have a very flawed rocketship. Their problem is that other teams are making their less-flawed cars faster.
A margin of 50 points is a big margin, but one that another untimely power unit failure can see halved in a stroke. After that, do you trust Mercedes and Antonelli to have the performance gap to hold onto a 25-point lead for another 10 races?
They certainly can do it, but it’s going to get very, very nervy at some point in the not-too distant future.
Pierre Gasly
Being snidey little rules lawyers to snatch back Gasly’s podium at Monaco has cursed Alpine.
He’s scored seven points in five races since that whole mess, having scored 20 in the five before it (and, obviously, 15 more in Monaco). Pace is disappearing. Cursed.