Competition is heating up in the F1 midfield, with the record for the highest points total achieved by the team last in the Constructors’ Championship already being broken.
Formula 1 heads into summer break, with 14 races completed and 10 to go in the 2025 season. Here’s Fastest Formula News’ mid-season team review, focusing on P5, P6, and P7.
P5: Williams Racing
Williams top the midfield teams, sitting fifth in the Constructor’s Championship. Whilst they are over 120 points behind Red Bull in P4, they have improved on their 2024 performance by an incredibly impressive margin.
Before summer break last year, the Grove-based team had scored just 4 points. In 2025 they matched their total points haul from all of last year by round 2 at the Chinese GP.
Alex Albon has scored most of Williams’ points so far, which is unsurprising given that this is the Brit-Thai driver’s fourth season with the team.
New addition Carlos Sainz Jr. has struggled more this season, adjusting to the new car after moving from Ferrari. Speaking to the media at the Hungarian GP, Sainz described his season so far as “incredibly frustrating and very disappointing“.
Williams have had a number of reliability issues, making it difficult for the Spaniard to “gain momentum” in terms of adapting to the car and providing results. Sainz was unable to start the Austrian GP after getting stuck in first gear on the formation lap.
And then a brake issue caused his car to set on fire in the pit lane. Albon had two consecutive retirements in Canada and Austria due to an ongoing power unit issue.
Despite the reliability problems, Williams have still shown significant pace in the first half of the season. Their best grid position has been P5 for Albon in Belgium, and two P5 finishes for the Thai driver are the team’s best results so far.
Williams have undeniably improved their form since last year. And there is room for even more improvement in the second part of the season.
P6: Aston Martin
The Hungarian GP was an extremely positive weekend for Aston Martin. A double points finish in P5 and P7 brought home 16 points for the Silverstone-based team.
Drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have interestingly scored the exact same number of points so far this year. They have 26 points each, placing them 11th and 12th in the Driver’s Standings.
However, the AMR25 has lacked consistency in both qualifying and race pace. At some tracks, both drivers have failed to make it out of Q1 only to both get into Q3 at the next race.
In Hungary, Stroll and Alonso both expressed that the team didn’t understand what had made the car competitive at the Hungaroring when the week before they had qualified dead last.
Speaking to the media after the race, Alonso said “We need to learn what is the difference between the two tracks. What we did different to the car and try to apply those learnings into the next race,” and Stroll said “I think we don’t fully understand why we’re competitive this week and we were last last week.”
Keeping in theme with their similarities this season, both Aston Martin drivers have also been affected by injuries. Alonso missed FP1 in Hungary due to back issues. Stroll missed the Spanish GP due to ongoing problems with his wrist injury from a cycling accident in 2023.
The first part of the season has been a mixed bag for Aston Martin. But, the car has plenty of potential to score more points after the summer break.
P7: Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber
As with Williams, Sauber have significantly upped their performance in 2025. They currently sit seventh in the Constructor’s Championship with 51 points.
Whereas in 2024 they failed to score a single point until the penultimate round of the season where Zhou Guanyu finished P8. With a completely different driver line-up in veteran midfielder Nico Hulkenberg and rookie Gabriel Bortoleto, the Swiss team have had a great first half of the year.
Hulkenberg secured his long-awaited maiden podium at Silverstone, Sauber’s first podium in 13 years. Bortoleto has finished in the points on 3 occasions so far in his rookie year.
His best finish has been P6 at the Hungarian GP. However, the Brazilian has also had 3 DNFs. Mechanical issues caused one of these, but the other 2 were driver error- which is to be expected in a driver’s first year in F1.
Overall, Sauber have gone from a back marker to a solid midfield team this season. They seem to be gearing up for even more positive change as the team transitions into Audi in 2026 headed by Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley.
Like most teams on the grid, Sauber’s development is focused on the upcoming regulation changes next season. But for the rest of 2025, the team have a decently fast car, two drivers that bring results, and just 1 point separating them from Aston Martin and P6 in the Constructor’s Championship.
