2026 pecking order speculation

[bananapeel23]

11. Cadillac - Will fail to qualify for multiple early races and finish the season over a second off the next worst car.

I highly doubt the 107% rule will actually be enforced. It's meant to discourage unserious teams akin to the backmarkers of the early 2010s.

Cadillac is a high budget, serious team that is aiming to become at least a midfielder, as well as a works team in the future. Should they fail to hit 107%, they will be granted exceptions and will be allowed to race regardless. F1 wants to keep Cadillac and not embarrass them. They also need the track time to improve operationally and to get enough data.

I also doubt that they will fail to qualify. I see them being last by a fair margin, probably similar to Williams in 2019 or ever so slightly worse, but they will not be so slow that they can't qualify. Unlike the early 2010s backmarkers, they have a real engine and a real budget to work with. If they are truly THAT slow, despite how unlikely I think that is, they will have enough resources to recoup seconds worth of pace deficit in a matter of a few races by taking "inspiration" from other cars.

[Badger]

The Race driver pairing rankings.
1. McLaren
2. RBR
3. Mercedes
4. Williams
5. Ferrari
6. Haas
7. AMR
8. Audi
9. Cadillac
10. Alpine
11. RB

I'd swap Williams and Ferrari, otherwise it's fine with what we currently know.

[FittingMechanics]

For a pairing I'd say Ferrari should be higher. I know they are judging on Hamiltons 2025 but this is a new formula, closer to what he was great at, it wouldn't surprise me to see a big rebound in performance, especially if Ferrari is fast.

The rest is probably fine, very hard to judge teams as most have only one really good driver.

[nitrotech]

For a pairing I'd say Ferrari should be higher. I know they are judging on Hamiltons 2025 but this is a new formula, closer to what he was great at, it wouldn't surprise me to see a big rebound in performance, especially if Ferrari is fast.

The rest is probably fine, very hard to judge teams as most have only one really good driver.

It was never about the formula for Lewis. It was having sub par cars. Whenever the Mercedes was capable winning in ground effect era, he was right there. He just didn't both trying too hard. That would be the case again with the new gen cars. If the car is capable of winning, he would be right there. Hopefully these new gen cars are easy to setup and not like the previous gen where if you didn't come with a good setup on Friday, the weekend was mostly a write off.

[Bill]

The Race driver pairing rankings.
1. McLaren
2. RBR
3. Mercedes
4. Williams
5. Ferrari
6. Haas
7. AMR
8. Audi
9. Cadillac
10. Alpine
11. RB

I'd swap Williams and Ferrari, otherwise it's fine with what we currently know.

Ferrari has the best driver duo these rankings are just bs,mclaren drives made way to many mistakes while driving the fastest car.if you gave lewis the best he usually delivers

[dialtone]

The Race driver pairing rankings.
1. McLaren
2. RBR
3. Mercedes
4. Williams
5. Ferrari
6. Haas
7. AMR
8. Audi
9. Cadillac
10. Alpine
11. RB

I'd swap Williams and Ferrari, otherwise it's fine with what we currently know.

McLaren should be out of the top 5. Take a WDC to the last race with a car that won the WCC with half a season to spare. They'll mature but right now they're not that good, let alone best in the grid lmao.

[proteus]

The Race driver pairing rankings.
1. McLaren
2. RBR
3. Mercedes
4. Williams
5. Ferrari
6. Haas
7. AMR
8. Audi
9. Cadillac
10. Alpine
11. RB

I'd swap Williams and Ferrari, otherwise it's fine with what we currently know.

McLaren should be out of the top 5. Take a WDC to the last race with a car that won the WCC with half a season to spare. They'll mature but right now they're not that good, let alone best in the grid lmao.

Aha, right

[Fred]

The Race driver pairing rankings.
1. McLaren
2. RBR
3. Mercedes
4. Williams
5. Ferrari
6. Haas
7. AMR
8. Audi
9. Cadillac
10. Alpine
11. RB

I'd swap Williams and Ferrari, otherwise it's fine with what we currently know.

That is such a terrible ranking. I’m not fond of Ferrari, but they’re roughly inline with Mercedes at worst. Russell and Leclerc are roughly equal, so it roughly depends on how you compare Hamilton and Kimi. Personally, I still think it’s pretty rough to be arguing for Kimi here even if his got more potential going forward at this point.

RBR is a hard one to rank too. It’s effectively just a 1 driver team, and while that 1 driver might be great, not having a competitive 2nd driver is a huge handicap. As good as Max is, a 1 driver team can’t realistically be considered to have a better lineup than other teams with 2 top drivers. Being a 1 driver team not only cost them the WCC in 2024, but dropped them to 3rd in the fight in both 2024 and 2025 against a far worse team. That’s the cost of being a 1 driver team, and while Max is great, that cost needs to be considered when ranking their driver lineups. I struggle to think of a reason why they deserve to be ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes in this ranking, when their lineup was exactly the reason why they lost to them in 2024 and 2025 respectively despite having a much better car. Even Williams is iffy, and while, unlike Mercedes/Ferrari, neither of their drivers are close to Max, they do still have 2 strong drivers. I think Red Bull and Williams is a much harder to discussion to have, and I can see why people would strongly be in either camp, but I can’t see a single good reason to put Red Bull so high and Ferrari so low.

The other one that’s hard to rank is Cadillac. It’s the perfect line up for them, given them not only a wealth of experience, but also 2 drivers who know how a dominant team operates. That said, as much as I love them, particularly Bottas, I think it’d easily be the worst lineup for any other team. But they aren’t in any other team, and I’d argue they’re a far better lineup for Cadillac, than pretty much every other lineup is for their respective team from AMR down. So to me, they could easily be ranked both 7th and last at the same time. Not sure how I’d put it.

[Jambier]

Regarding pecking order, rumors are saying that:

- Alpine managed to be at the minimum weight. + Mercedes engine, I expect them to be the surprise of the early season, best of the rest, challenging some top teams maybe.

- Williams rumors to be 20-30kg overweight, I think this will be a bad season for them

- Aston 10kg overweight, not so bad. But Honda engine. So the exact opposite of Alpine, I expect them to start poor and finish strong.

[madridista]

less than 10kg for Aston is what the rumour is saying

[Ashwinv16]

i felt bad for racing bulls and haas so i voted for them

[Jambier]

less than 10kg for Aston is what the rumour is saying

Mercedes and Ferrari close to the minimum weight it seems also

[Badger]

Reviving the one true pecking order thread.

[TMLM]

So AMR closer to the bottom at this point then

[Paa]

Testing times are bit inconclusive so far and general durability seemed good for all big teams, so I just tried to summarize general picture for myself.

Merc
Pro
+ Engine with full integration
+ No more ground effect
+ Correlation issues have been solved
Con
- Not much, maybe just the relative weak performance from last few years

McLaren
Pro
+ Possibly best technical team and facilities
+ Best chassis of last 1-2 years
+ Merc engine
Cons
- Least amount of wind tunnel time
- Only customer team for the engine

Red Bull
Pro
+ Still 2nd best chassis last year even after their difficulties
+ Max
+ Bit more wind tunnel time vs previous years
+ Integrated engine
Cons
- They developed last year's car late into the season
- First engine with possible teething issues
- First brand new concept without Horner/Newey
- Old wind tunnel and possible correlation issues

Ferrari
Pro
+ it's Ferrari
Con
- it's Ferrari