Who is heading F1’s midfield battle?

RB had looked to be on a lonely road to sixth in the 2024 Formula 1 constructors’ championship, but its midfield rivals have improved as its own fortunes declined with a Barcelona upgrade package.

There are now just four points between RB and Haas in the standings, while the American team’s grasp on seventh had been challenged only a few races ago through Alpine’s brief resurgence after a tough start to the year.

In the meantime, Williams has also scored a handful of points as it seeks to make further gains over the second half of the season; although its FW46 has been a clear improvement over its predecessors with greater all-round performance, the team has not made the same strides as its rivals with upgrades.

For the time being, Sauber looks rooted to the bottom of the constructors’ championship. A solid if unspectacular car had not been capitalised upon at the start of the year amid a litany of pitstop gaffes and, now that the other teams are improving, the C44 has looked increasingly limited. 

Regardless, the battle between the five teams is closely fought, and Aston Martin has been pulled into it on occasion by dint of its Imola updates not working as the team had expected.

Aston Martin has a healthy buffer to the bottom five teams in general, even if its path ends up intertwining with some of the teams below it on occasion, so the Silverstone squad serves as a decent benchmark when it comes to assessing which of the five teams are in the best position heading into the season’s second act.

At the Bahrain opener, Haas had been the stronger of the bottom five teams, although the distribution of the field at the time had made it increasingly difficult for these to score; without a retirement or misfortune to take effect, there was little chance for anyone other than Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, or Aston Martin to score. 

This had come amid suggestions after testing that RB was poised to close in on the top five teams, while Haas played down its own expectations and expected to be “towards the back of the grid”. Expectations were further subverted when Alpine turned up for the new year with an overweight car and struggled to perform, while Williams had the same issue – but didn’t reveal that fact until later into the season.

Sauber’s qualifying pace had not looked…