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All eyes in the racing world are on the two drivers battling for an F1 championship this weekend, but they are not the only competitors with something at stake in Abu Dhabi. This is the last F1 race of a competitive season, so the rest of the field still has many honors ahead of them.
In contrast to the drivers ‘championship, first place in the constructors’ championship is already closely related to Mercedes. You lead with 18 points. While there are technically 44 points to be won for a manufacturer on a given race weekend (25 for the first, 18 for the second, 1 for the fastest lap) in a race where the opposing team scores 0 points, the reality is that a 1-2 and double DNF are a rare pair of two competing teams. Instead, the margin to be sought is the result of a 1-2 finish with the fastest lap while the opposing team takes third and fourth place. That is a plus of only 17 points, which means that Red Bull still needs the help of a Mercedes driver who ends up outside the top 4 and can no longer determine his own fate in the fight for the world champion of designers.
Oddly enough, this fight might actually be more important for the teams competing for a championship. The glory goes to the driver’s champion, but the constructor’s title will determine who will award the prize money. Ferrari has already effectively finished third ahead of McLaren in a race that has been decided in the past two months, but AlphaTauri (27 points behind) could still get Alpine in fifth with a marvelous race in which they finished third and fourth with the fastest lap Overtaking place in the constructors’ championship while Alpine didn’t score a point. The only other viable constructors’ championship battle is the eighth, where Williams leads F1 by ten over Alfa Romeo and 23 over Haas. Every change is mathematically involved, but the reality is that at any point this season all three teams have struggled to finish sixth and up, where the points flow more.
The other fights in the drivers’ championship are more competitive. Valtteri Bottas finished third ahead of Sergio Perez when Perez was eliminated from the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix last weekend, but Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr. are still in the middle of a close battle for fifth place and claim on the best of the rest. Leclerc leads McLaren’s Norris with 158 points with four points and his Ferrari team-mate Sainz with 8.5 points. The gap from third to seventh, all realistic results for all three, is nine points.
Daniel Ricciardo can be overtaken by Pierre Gasly, who is 15 points behind the McLaren driver and Monza winner, but it requires a podium from Gasly and a race with no points for Ricciardo. The Alpine duo Fernando Alonso and Hungary’s winner Esteban Ocon separate clearly more manageable five points, with Alonso taking the lead. The group from 14th to 21st, from Yuki Tsunoda with 20 points to the Haas couple Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin without points, could theoretically all end up in a different place at the end of the race, but it would require an unexpectedly strong finish from anyone in a group who has struggled to score points all season.
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