British GP: The Fight to Be the Best of the Rest
Battle for the 4th spot in the Constructors Championship is tight.
In the Canada Grand Prix, we saw a recovery from Alfa Romeo — just the second time both cars finished in the points after the opener in Bahrein — and Alpine having a good pace, despite the penalty that Fernando Alonso received and dropped him to ninth place.
And, before that, in Azerbaijan, we saw different results like both McLarens finishing in the points, Sebastian Vettel with a magnificent performance that took him to sixth, and Gasly also with a good job in fifth. So, the tendency is not clear yet, and this is what makes this fight so interesting.
We will probably see a better fight than the one we saw last season between McLaren and Ferrari.
That time it was for the third place. It was exciting and lasted until the last race of the season, but it was between two teams, same for Alpine against AlphaTauri, both had a good fight for the fifth place that ended with the French team as victors.
And now, we will probably see up to four teams trying to claim the fourth place in the Championship.
McLaren and Alpine are the main candidates
Alpine has been solid since the start of the season, and despite some ups and downs, they have managed to finish in the points with at least one driver in every race except for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix where McLaren with Lando Norris took their first podium in the season (and the only one so far).
The British team came across an unexpected panorama with hopes to fight for wins and podiums. They are now ruled out of the fight for third place and don't even have the fourth place secured.
Lando Norris is holding them in the fourth place, accumulating 50 points, while his teammate, Daniel Ricciardo is in the eye of the storm because of his future in Formula 1, and his last performances have not been good enough to calm the situation.
The Australian is only responsible for the 23 percent of the points of his team, and if he wants to continue with them next season, he needs to start getting better results, also if McLaren wants to retain the fourth place they need the best Danny Ric to do it.
Coming back to Alpine, they managed to get into a good form since the Spanish GP, there, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon finished in the points, and with the exception of Monaco where Ocon had a difficult time advancing after a collision with Lewis Hamilton in Azerbaijan and Canada both earned points for the team, putting under pressure, the already mentioned, McLaren team.
They are just eight points behind them, and if they keep this good form they can easily take the fourth place, something that hasn't happened since 2018.
But here comes Alfa Romeo!
Alfa Romeo has surprised everyone, probably even themselves because in the tests of Barcelona they had several issues, but then in Bahrain, they surprised with Valtteri Bottas finishing in sixth place, and the rookie, Zhou Guanyu in tenth. This wasn't an illusion, this was confirmed in later races of the season, and these results have put them just 14 points away from McLaren.
Probably, the only thing they need to solve is making sure that Bottas receives enough help from his teammate because the things are similar to McLaren, the Finnish has scored a lot more points, had fewer reliability issues, and looks more comfortable with the car than Zhou.
The Chinese driver needs a little more luck and starts to build good momentum, this can be possible in Silverstone since he finished in the points in Canada, just for the second time after the first race in Bahrain, probably another good result in Great Britain will help him with his confidence, and he can start to be the support that Valtteri and the team need to escalate in the table.
Don't sleep on AlphaTauri, Aston Martin, and Haas
Last year, the main problem for AlphaTauri was the little support that Pierre Gasly received from Yuki Tsunoda to help him to take the team to a P5 finish.
Now, the Japanese driver has delivered good results and is showing his talent in the car, when it lets him.
AlphaTauri's main issue this season is reliability, they can't finish races which is costing them to remain close to the fight for the fourth place.
Gasly got a great result in Azerbaijan with a fifth-place making us remember last season, but then in Canada, he had no pace, and with Yuki crashing on the pit exit, it wasn't their weekend…
Behind AlphaTauri on the table, there are Aston Martin, a team that since the Emilia-Romagna GP, where both drivers, Sebastian Vettel, and Lance Stroll finished in the points, have shown some improvement in the last races with a brilliant sixth place from Seb in Azerbaijan and Stroll with an amazing comeback from P17 to P10 in his home race.
They still remain far, but now their pace is better and the next three races suited them well last season: Silverstone, Red Bull Ring, and Paul Ricard, so if they start to grab some points in the next races they can aspire to fight for more than seventh.
Then, we have Haas, which started the season on fire thanks to Kevin Magnussen, but they have been deflating the last races without even being able to finish in Monaco, and with a car that is not showing to be reliable like in the first races.
Now, they must keep their heads down to work and try to get the results that they know they can get, we saw the good performance in Canada in the qualifying session, and now Silverstone could be the place for their redemption (and hopefully the place where Mick Schumacher scores his first point/s).
And, yeah, had to leave Williams out because they're clearly in their own fight for the last place…
There we have it! Let me know, who do you think will finish in the fourth place? Do you believe AlphaTauri, Aston Martin, or Haas have a chance?
Thank you for reading! I leave other stories here, feel free to give them a read:
