Come the end of another Formula 1 season and the end of the ground-effect era, which team shaped up the best across 2025 and who needs revitalising in 2026?
Alpine – E
Best Result: 6th (x1)
Alpine ended the ground-effect era with a whimper, finishing a distant last in the Constructors’ Championship.
With 22 points, a record for a last-placed team, 2025 is not the farewell for the Renault engine that the Anglo-French marque would have hoped.
Pierre Gasly dragged the A525 into Q3 on 10 occasions, while scoring all the team’s points, but turmoil surrounded the seat alongside him.
Neither Jack Doohan’s short stint nor Franco Colapinto’s efforts saw a points finish, with both earning more damage costs than anything else.
With the switch to Mercedes power for 2026, F1’s new era can’t come soon enough for the continually troubled Alpine outfit.
Ferrari – D
Best Result: 2nd (x2)
Having begun the ground-effect era with the benchmark package on the grid, Ferrari closed it out with a whimper, recording a third winless season in the last six.
Charles Leclerc produced miracles with Ferrari’s capricious SF-25 challenger, recording seven podium finishes alongside the team’s only Grand Prix pole of 2025.
The Monegasque thrashed new team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who struggled to adapt to his new home, despite taking Ferrari’s sole win in the Sprint Race in China.
The seven-time champion finished the season without a podium, the first time in his near two-decade-long F1 career, as well as recording three straight Q1 exits.
With 2026 marking 18 years since the team’s last title, another costly design failure like 2025 could see the departure of one of Ferrari’s greatest talents in Leclerc.
Sauber – C
Best Result: 3rd (x1)
Despite registering its best points total since 2012, Sauber could not do better than ninth place as it now embarks on a new era as an Audi works team from 2026.
Sauber’s highlight moment came at Silverstone as Nico Hulkenberg claimed an elusive podium, but outside that, 2025 also represented a noticeable improvement.
An upgrade package at the Spanish Grand Prix saw the C45 become more competitive, allowing Hulkenberg to bring home several points finishes through the year.
Meanwhile, 2024 Formula 2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto also soon got up to speed during his rookie season, capped with a standout run to sixth place in Hungary.
The Brazilian had the better of Hulkenberg in qualifying, winning the head-to-head 12-11, yet will need to improve his race pace to outscore his veteran team-mate.
Aston Martin – C
Best Result: 5th (x2)
The past campaign encapsulated Aston Martin’s recent struggles as, having been unable to build on a tremendous 2023 in 2024, it elected to invest little in 2025.
Aston Martin, at least with Fernando Alonso at the wheel, would be dependent on the track characteristics, peaking with top fives in Hungary and the Netherlands.
The two-time champion ensured the Silverstone-based squad beat Haas to seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship as Lance Stroll toiled with the AMR25
With a new partnership with Honda on the horizon and Adrian Newey at the helm, both Alonso and Stroll will be hoping to have a more competitive car next season.
Haas – C+
Best Result: 4th (x1)
Having spent much of 2025 not consistently putting it all together, Haas ended the season as arguably one of 2025’s best performers.
The odd points finish after a big haul in China, courtesy of some disqualifications, Haas returned from the summer break on song, particularly in the hands of Oliver Bearman.
Combined with a late-season upgrade package for the team’s home Grand Prix in Austin saw the American outfit score in seven of the last 10 race weekends.
This all culminated in a stunning drive by Bearman at the Mexican Grand Prix, where the Brit survived the chaos to equal the team’s best-ever finish with fourth.
While the team ultimately missed out on matching its 2024 season finish of seventh, the 79 accrued across 2025 is Haas’ second-highest-ever total in its 10th season.
Racing Bulls – B-
Best Result: 3rd (x1)
Racing Bulls produced its highest points haul since 2021 as it continued to nurture talents destined to make the coveted step up to the senior Red Bull setup.
With 2024 Formula 2 runner-up Isack Hadjar, the Faenza-based team had a star on its hands who comfortably adapted to F1 despite a shaky start on debut.
The Frenchman’s podium in Zandvoort all but cemented his place alongside Max Verstappen in 2026, while Liam Lawson recovered from his initial demotion.
Come the end of the season, both drivers were regulars in the points as Racing Bulls held off the late charges from Aston Martin and Haas to seal sixth place.
Mercedes – B
Best Result: 1st (x2)
Mercedes has had a troubled time in the ground-effect era of F1, but 2025 saw it end on a higher note, albeit not the same heights that it had been used to hitting.
With George Russell spearheading the side, the Silver Arrows took home two victories, 10 podiums and two pole positions, accumulating 469 points in the process.
With Russell neatly slipping into the role of team leader, and Andrea Kimi Antonelli showing his raw talent that saw him fast-tracked to F1, Mercedes often had a part to play across the weekend, yet the diva nature of its ground-effect cars still slipped through the cracks, though with a much less dramatic outcome throughout the recent campaign.
Red Bull – B
Best Result: 1st (x8)
Ending an F1 season without either title for the first time since 2020, 2025 was another year of controversy for Red Bull as it relinquished its dominant hold on F1.
With a driver swap two rounds into the season and the sacking of Christian Horner, 2025 would mark a rocky end of the road for Red Bull in the ground-effect era.
Having started the year as clear second best to McLaren, the Milton-Keynes squad slowly grew back into contention, though not without some slip-ups from its rivals.
With an upgrade package working wonders as Verstappen won six of the last nine races, it appeared Red Bull, under the steady hand of new Team Principal Laurent Mekies, may actually do the impossible and see Verstappen overturn Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Combined with McLaren’s double disqualification in Las Vegas and a strategy blunder in Qatar, Verstappen would see himself in the unlikely mix for the title come Abu Dhabi, despite spending much of 2025 ruling himself out of contention, ultimately missing out on a fifth consecutive crown by just two points.
However, on the other side of the garage, Lawson’s replacement, Yuki Tsunoda, continued the trend of drivers to struggle alongside the Dutchman, picking up just 30 points for Red Bull.
With the transition of a whole new management structure, as well as a new engine partnership with Ford, 2026 will be a new era for Red Bull as much as it is for F1.
Williams – A-
Best Result: 3rd (x2)
Williams ended a rather troubled ground-effect era with its best finish in the Championship since 2017, securing fifth place and its first triple-digit haul since 2016.
The addition of race winner Carlos Sainz worked wonders for the Grove outfit as the Spaniard secured the team’s first podium finishes since 2021 with stunning drives in Baku and Qatar.
With Sainz and Alex Albon, Williams was comfortably the best of the rest behind the top four teams, and often upset the form book with its performances, recording seven top-five finishes.
McLaren – A
Best Result: 1st (X14)
McLaren’s meteoric rise throughout the ground-effect era reached its crescendo in 2025 as the team took its first championship double since 1998.
The McLaren was the clear fastest package from the get-go, and despite a few operational slip-ups surrounding the sometimes hard-to-understand ‘papaya rules’, the Woking-based squad was almost untouchable at times through 2025, wrapping up the Constructors Championship as early as the Singapore Grand Prix in early October.
Without a slump in performance from Oscar Piastri and a few baffling technical and strategic decisions to end the season that allowed Verstappen back into unexpected title contention, McLaren could and arguably should have walked away with the season a lot easier than it did.
However, with having to keep one eye on 2026 regarding development, the papaya machines were still the class of the field and the clear top performers of 2025.
READ MORE – Motorsport Week’s F1 2025 Top 10 Driver Rankings
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