Ranking Formula 1’s ten teams on 2022 season: Red Bull, Ferrari and more compared

It is a truism of sport that the points table never lies – or does it? The 2022 Formula 1 season was one of those occasions when we may beg to differ.

The official story of 2022 is set in stone with Max Verstappen and Red Bull storming to the World Championship, Ferrari fading after a strong start and Mercedes spending most of the time chasing their tails with an uncooperative car.

But how did F1’s 10 teams really compare across the season?

Here’s our alternative ranking based on the performance of each team, whether or not they made the most of their equipment and some of the decisions they made along the way…

10: AlphaTauri

Having punched well above their weight across 2020/21 – Pierre Gasly’s glorious victory at Monza the obvious highlight – AlphaTauri returned to earth with a considerable bump this season, scoring just 35 points compared to 142 last year.

There were very few redeeming features about the Red Bull B-team in 2022, with Gasly restricted to just six top 10 finishes after recording 15 the previous campaign.

In his final season under Red Bull’s hood, Gasly frustrations with his surroundings became increasingly obvious as the year developed and occasionally manifested themselves on track.

As for Yuki Tsunoda? Many drivers have been dropped by Red Bull for less than what he did in 2022, driving straight into the wall at the pit exit in Canada and colliding with his team-mate at Silverstone, leaving behind the debris that wrecked Verstappen’s race.

With Gasly replaced by rookie Nyck de Vries, there seems to be an expectation that Tsunoda – entering the all-important third year – will assume the role of team leader in 2023. Time will tell if he is up to the task.

9: Williams

If the new regulations resembled an opportunity for F1’s lesser teams, the car with which Williams started the season – half a step down from Mercedes’ zero-pod idea – was too ambitious for their own good.

Unable to access consistent performance, the team were reliant on peeling off the paintwork and weird and wonderful strategies – Alex Albon ran almost the entirety of the Australian GP on a single set of tyres – to score whatever points they could.

A mid-season switch to the Red Bull concept heralded an improvement in qualifying performance and the FW44 predictably flew at Spa and Monza, yet as ever a strong showing at the high-speed circuits was symptomatic of a fundamental lack of downforce hurting them elsewhere.

Williams at least finally brought the bottom up by moving on Nicholas Latifi, but having previously been linked to De Vries and Oscar Piastri they have settled on promoting Logan Sargeant.

That may prove to a masterstroke, but their rush to sign the first full-time American driver of the Liberty age – Sargeant was announced at his home race in Austin before he even had the required superlicence points to race in F1 –  suggests the motive behind his graduation was not limited to performance.

8: Aston Martin

For Aston Martin, read Williams – only with a happier ending and a whole lot more green.

Like their fellow Mercedes customers Aston started the season with a unique interpretation of the new rules but, after waiting until the fourth race to score their first points, were the first to abandon it in favour of following the crowd.

The B-spec AMR22 was noted for its remarkable similarity to the Red Bull when it broke cover at Barcelona, but it took the team some time to optimise it with Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll still prone to falling at the first stage of qualifying.

It all finally started to make sense after Vettel announced his retirement in Hungary, with the four-time World Champion scoring points in six of the last 10 races of his career to haul Aston from second-bottom to within touching distance of sixth.

Luring Fernando Alonso to replace Vettel re-emphasised the long-term potential of the team, but after two full seasons of the Aston Martin project is it unfair to have expected more at this stage?

7: McLaren

After their best season in years in 2021, this was a reminder of how much road McLaren are still to travel if they are to reclaim their place among F1’s elite.

Despite joining back in 2019, the MCL36 was the first car technical director James Key could truly call his own but it ultimately proved to be a huge disappointment, halting the progress the team had made since their Honda-powered nadir.

As early as winter testing Lando Norris was warning that 2022 would be more challenging and – despite being the only driver outside of the top three teams to stand on the podium at Imola – by the end of the season he was cracking jokes at the team’s expense.

Alpine, he claimed at one stage, must have done “pretty bad job” to leave McLaren in with a shot of finishing fourth in the Championship.

McLaren would have surely retained P4 had they had two drivers performing at a high level with Zak Brown criticised in some quarters for his treatment of Daniel Ricciardo, who reiterated his commitment to the team in July unaware Piastri had already been signed as his replacement.

But business, as they say, is business and having two of the most exciting talents will ensure any McLaren underachievement going forward is unlikely be blamed on the drivers.

6: Haas

So after willingly writing off two full seasons of development to make a stunning start under the new regulations, Haas’s reward in 2022 was… eighth. By two points. From AlphaTauri, pound-for-pound the worst team on the grid according to this ranking.

Was the decision to sacrifice 2020/21 really worth it?

In fairness, Haas did have a number of high points this season including Kevin Magnussen’s P5 in Bahrain, his pole position in Brazil and a third-row lockout in Canada qualifying.

Yet having held seventh in the standings ahead of the summer break, only just avoiding finishing ninth owed much to their poor performance in the second half of the season as Magnussen added only three points to their tally.

Their struggles following the arrival of the B-spec car were potentially a reflection of Haas’s unique structure, F1’s smallest team lacking the manpower and agility to optimise a major upgrade package.

It is worth remembering that Haas arrived in F1 at a time McLaren were slowly re-emerging from the wreckage of the Honda years, Renault were mortally wounded by the excesses of the Lotus era and Force India were coming to the end of their cycle under Vijay Mallya’s ownership.

With all three teams – plus the future Audi-Sauber operation – all reinventing themselves in recent years to target the front of the grid, could it be that Haas have now simply found their natural level?

Points also deducted for Guenther Steiner’s counterproductive treatment of Mick Schumacher, who despite brief flashes of potential spent his sophomore season with the haunted look of a little boy lost after his team principal’s public and strangely unrelenting criticism.

5: Ferrari

With Mattia Binotto’s resignation on the table as the sport enters its post-season period of reflection, already there is some revisionism on the subject of Ferrari’s 2022.

The F1-75 car, according to a respected technical analyst, was never quite as good as it looked at times this year. A record of 12 pole positions across the season, from race one in Bahrain until round 19 in Texas, would strongly suggest otherwise.

The catastrophic collapse of Ferrari’s season after a near-perfect start, with Charles Leclerc leading Max Verstappen by 46 points after three races, has been well documented.

But as memories recede of the blown engines and the strategic mishaps, perhaps the attention should turn to what Ferrari gained rather than what they lost and the manner in which they lost it.

If nothing less than perfection was required for Red Bull to overcome Mercedes in 2021, the same was demanded of Ferrari in 2022. For a team just re-emerging from two years in the competitive wilderness, was that always too tough an ask?

There is something to be said, of course, for doing the basics right and Ferrari’s worst mistakes almost certainly revealed fundamental issues within the team’s structure and organisation.

Yet having already scapegoated the team principal and lost one of the most talented and innovative engineers in F1 in the process, now is the time for some perspective.

4: Alpine

For a team who targeted this year’s rule changes from the moment they rejoined the grid in 2016, Alpine’s failure to make a serious breakthrough in 2022 was a function of the disorganisation and mismanagement that characterised the Renault years.

Deep down – having return to F1 last year with the specific aim of winning in 2022, his hunger only intensified by a podium in Qatar – did Alonso expect so much more from this season?

Alpine may be no closer to competing for regular wins, but nevertheless P4 in the Championship represented by far their most convincing campaign since the Enstone team regained manufacturer status.

With the A522, chief technical officer Pat Fry did for Alpine what he previously did for McLaren – producing a very capable car to restore some momentum to a team previously going nowhere fast.

It was almost chronically unreliable as Alonso and Esteban Ocon suffered a combined seven mid-race technical failures – as well as costly problems in Australia qualifying and the Austria sprint – making Alpine’s fight with McLaren more anxious than it ought to have been.

If losing one hugely talented racing driver was an accident, losing two in quick succession as Alonso and Piastri both turned down a 2023 seat was close to unforgivable and cast a shadow over Alpine’s season.

Having persuaded Red Bull to release Gasly for 2023, however, Laurent Rossi and Co emerged relatively unscathed from a sticky situation.

3: Alfa Romeo

If you want a team who made a little go a long way in 2022 look no further than Alfa Romeo, who partnered a grizzly old pro with a promising youngster and provided the latter with the guidance and support to aid his development.

Alfa’s 2022 was very much a season of two halves with the team adding just four points across the last 13 races, yet with the teams below out of sorts to varying degrees their strong start to the year was decisive in the final reckoning.

Central to that solid start was Valtteri Bottas – looking, if anything, a little too happy to be no longer driving a race-winning Mercedes – who scored points in all but two of the opening nine races to set the foundation for the team’s best Championship placing in a decade.

Alfa’s success was not limited to the track either as the former Sauber operation saw off the competition to be selected as Audi’s strategic partner for their 2026 entry.

For a team who have spent most of their existence merely making up the numbers, attracting a manufacturer of Audi’s stature is akin to winning the lottery.

2: Mercedes

At the end of another long, hard, porpoising-prone weekend – albeit one from which George Russell somehow emerged with another podium to add to the collection in Baku – came a quote to define Mercedes’ season from Toto Wolff.

“After running on Friday, we knew we had big limitations with the car in Baku so it was a case of maximising our strategy, driving and our operations,” said the team boss.

“The team did a great job on all three to ensure we were in the mix and ready to take advantage of any opportunity that came our way.”

If Red Bull had Adrian Newey on their side and Ferrari could call Rory Byrne at a moment’s notice, Mercedes had nobody from a bygone era to warn them of the potential side effects of ground effect.

And so with the problems lurking deep within the badly born W13 car, Mercedes’ task for the season – with the Championship out of reach for the first time in almost a decade – was simply to make the most of what they had on each given weekend.

That the W13 remained in contention for second place in the Constructors’ standings until the final round – against the multiple race-winning F1-75 – reveals as much about Mercedes’ inner resolve as it does about Ferrari’s knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Considering how they started Mercedes’ work in harnessing the W13 into a winner in Brazil stood as one of the great achievements of 2022, even if their one-two finish was flattered by Red Bull’s failure to find a workable setup in the limited practice time on a sprint weekend.

If this was meant to be Mercedes at their worst, beware of the Silver Arrows returning to something close to their best in 2023.

1: Red Bull

After pouring everything into their first title challenge in years last season, was there a danger that Red Bull had left themselves exposed ahead of the 2022 regulations reset?

Not with Newey’s interest piqued following his initial scepticism over the new rules, the RB18 standing as the most successful design of his glittering career.

It was not always destined to be that way as the car started the year unreliable, overweight and occasionally temperamental, but Verstappen’s cracking of the whip – no doubt sensing a golden opportunity in light of Mercedes’ struggles and Ferrari’s frailties – snapped Red Bull into a lean, mean winning machine.

With 17 victories from 22 races – a record 15 for Verstappen and two for Sergio Perez – Red Bull achieved a level of dominance few teams have ever attained.

Having hoped to have knocked Red Bull off course with the Spa technical directive, their competitors were not shy in throwing around accusations of cheating when the team were found to have exceeded the 2021 cost cap.

Team principal Christian Horner did not exactly cover himself in glory as the sharks circled, but with a minor overspend confirmed the affair is likely to be recalled as another of those classic F1 sagas in the years to come.

Even in the years of Mercedes domination there was a strong and widespread suspicion that Red Bull remained the best team in F1 – a group of racers making good and sensible racing decisions, only lacking the machinery to match those instincts.

With the car of their dreams finally at their disposal, in 2022 they confirmed it.

Read more: The biggest, best and mind-blowing moments from the 2022 Formula 1 season