There’s a seductive lie hiding inside every Constructors’ Championship table: that a team’s points total is a single story. It isn’t. It’s two parallel seasons forced to share one garage—two qualifying ceilings, two tyre lives, two traffic realities, two decision chains on the pit wall—and then one number at the end that pretends all of that complexity averaged out cleanly. In 2025, it didn’t. The year McLaren won big and Norris won tight wasn’t decided only by raw pace; it was decided by how often each team got both cars into the points-paying part of the weekend, and how brutally a “normal” teammate gap turns into a points sink once DNFs, DSQs, and sprint swings get layered on top.
2025 data notes (what we’re actually measuring)
The goal here isn’t to crown “best teammate pairing” with vibes—it’s to isolate where constructors won or lost points inside their own lineup using three lenses: points split, qualifying head-to-head, and race execution (including DNFs/DSQs). Remember the scoring context: 2025 awarded points to the top 10 in Grands Prix and the top 8 in Sprints, and the fastest lap bonus point was removed from 2025 onward, which matters because it reduces the value of late-race “free air” and soft-tyre flyers as a points recovery mechanism—if you’re P11, the only thing that saves you is moving forward, not a purple sector.
The points concentration problem (and why it’s the real constructors killer)
If you want one diagnostic that explains most of the 2025 Constructors’ order, it’s points concentration: how much of a team’s score came from its top scorer. A title-level team wants two cars that can cash in on good weekends and damage-limit bad ones; a one-car team needs perfect execution just to stay in the conversation, because any external shock (Safety Car timing, a DSQ, a single retirement) hits twice as hard when only one driver is reliably harvesting points.
| Team | Constructors points | Driver points split | Top-scorer share | Teammate points gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| McLaren | 833 | Norris 423 / Piastri 410 | 50.8% | 13 |
| Mercedes | 469 | Russell 319 / Antonelli 150 | 68.0% | 169 |
| Red Bull | 451 | Verstappen 421 / second car 30* | 93.3% | 391 |
| Ferrari | 398 | Leclerc 242 / Hamilton 156 | 60.8% | 86 |
| Williams | 137 | Albon 73 / Sainz 64 | 53.3% | 9 |
| Racing Bulls | 92 | Hadjar 51 / Lawson 38 (+3 from Tsunoda early) | 55.4% | 13 |
| Aston Martin | 89 | Alonso 56 / Stroll 33 | 62.9% | 23 |
| Haas | 79 | Bearman 41 / Ocon 38 | 51.9% | 3 |
| Kick Sauber | 70 | Hülkenberg 51 / Bortoleto 19 | 72.9% | 32 |
| Alpine | 22 | Gasly 22 / Doohan+Colapinto 0 | 100% | 22 |
*Red Bull’s “second car” total reflects constructors points scored by Verstappen’s teammates across the season, not a single driver’s full-year tally.
Those splits aren’t just trivia—they’re strategy constraints. When your second car is regularly outside the top-8 “easy points” window, every pit stop becomes higher-risk, every Safety Car becomes more punishing, and every small execution error turns into a weekend-ending result. And when both cars are scoring, you can afford to lose a little in traffic, survive a slightly wrong tyre call, or eat a five-second penalty without turning a P4 into a P12—something we’ve explored before in The Hidden Cost of Traffic.
McLaren: near-equal pace… and the season’s biggest single zero
McLaren’s 833-point constructors haul is what dominance looks like under modern scoring: not perfection, but relentless double scoring. Norris (423) edged Piastri (410) by just 13 points, which is exactly why McLaren’s internal battle is the cleanest example of how teammate gaps should look when both drivers are operating in the same performance universe. Qualifying was tight all year—close enough that minor set-up bias, wind direction, or a single Q3 tow can flip the weekend—and the race head-to-head leaned Norris, but not by the kind of margin that turns the second car into dead weight.
And then Las Vegas happened: both McLarens were disqualified post-race for skid wear infringement, erasing what would have been a heavy points day and forcing a late-season title decider that never should’ve been that close. The key constructors lesson isn’t “DSQs are bad” (obvious); it’s that a two-car team can absorb a catastrophic weekend better than a one-car team if it banked enough double scores earlier. McLaren still won the Constructors’, but the Drivers’ title went down to Abu Dhabi because that DSQ deleted the kind of buffer that normally turns the final rounds into arithmetic rather than psychology. If you want a reminder of how quickly “model-correct” weekends fail once regulations and risk collide, revisit The Strategy Risk Index.
Mercedes: Russell set the reference, Antonelli protected the floor
Mercedes finished second on 469 points, and the internal story is blunt: Russell’s 319-point season was doing the heavy lifting, while Antonelli’s 150 points were the difference between “best of the rest” and “vulnerable.” That’s not an insult to a rookie; it’s the math of a team that wasn’t consistently fastest but could reliably place one car in the podium fight and the other in the points, even when the weekend went weird.
The qualifying head-to-head was one-sided (Russell ahead in the vast majority of Saturdays), and that matters because Mercedes didn’t have McLaren’s luxury of recovering positions purely on Sunday pace. When Russell started ahead, Mercedes could play the undercut/overcut game with cleaner air and stronger tyre life; when Antonelli started behind, his job was often to avoid turning a P9 into a P14 through traffic and thermal degradation. In a season with no fastest lap bonus, those “quiet” P7–P10 finishes are exactly what keep you ahead of the midfield surge—and exactly what you lose when your second car is routinely qualifying out of position.
Red Bull: a title-level lead car trapped in a one-car constructors reality
Red Bull’s 451 points look almost like a typo when you remember Verstappen finished the season on 421—meaning the second car contributed just 30 constructors points all year. That’s the season in one line. In drivers’ terms, Verstappen lost the championship by 2 points; in constructors’ terms, Red Bull lost second to Mercedes by 18 points while carrying a points concentration of over 93%. You can’t build a constructors campaign like that unless your lead driver is effectively perfect and your rivals have problems.
The intra-team deltas explain how it happened: Verstappen’s qualifying and race head-to-head versus Tsunoda was a rout, and the early-season driver shuffle effectively reset Red Bull’s second seat as a damage-limitation exercise rather than a scoring weapon. Once that happens, the team’s strategy toolkit shrinks: you lose the ability to split tyre strategies, you lose Safety Car coverage, and you lose the option to “sacrifice” one car to force rivals into an uncomfortable stop. The result is a team that can win races and still feel strategically outnumbered on Sundays—a dynamic that shows up most brutally at high-deg tracks where tyre life is purchased in traffic, not just in lap time.
Ferrari: Leclerc’s control, Hamilton’s adaptation, and the cost of zeros
Ferrari ended on 398 points, and the internal split (Leclerc 242 to Hamilton 156) is what a real performance gap looks like without it becoming a total collapse. Leclerc won qualifying decisively across the year, which gave him first rights to clean-air strategy and the “model-first” pit windows; Hamilton’s season was more often about recovery drives, compromised tyre offsets, and living in the part of the race where dirty air taxes the front tyres and makes your degradation curve lie to you.
But Ferrari’s biggest constructor pain wasn’t only relative pace—it was weekends that became zeros after the flag. In China, both Ferraris were disqualified in post-race checks after finishing in points positions, which instantly turned a normal “limit damage” Sunday into a double points loss that reshaped the mid-season picture. In a tight constructors fight, DSQs behave like DNFs with extra bitterness: you did the stints, you did the stops, you did the passes—and the spreadsheet still says 0.
The midfield: where qualifying ‘wins’ don’t always pay
The midfield is where teammate gaps become most deceptive, because the points cutoff is a cliff: a small pace delta can decide whether you’re P9 with 2 points or P11 with nothing, and race execution (pit timing, traffic management, Safety Car response) often matters more than raw one-lap speed.
Williams: Sainz owned Saturdays, Albon monetized Sundays
Williams’ 137 points were unusually balanced (Albon 73, Sainz 64), but the texture matters: Sainz tended to win qualifying head-to-head, while Albon finished the season ahead on points. That pattern typically signals race execution advantage—better tyre life, fewer errors, cleaner first laps, and fewer “position leaks” in the pit phase. In other words: Williams didn’t just buy points with pace; they earned them by not dropping them.
Racing Bulls: Hadjar’s upside, Lawson’s volatility
Racing Bulls scored 92 points with Hadjar (51) and Lawson (38), plus a small early-season contribution before the Red Bull swap. The qualifying head-to-head leaned heavily Hadjar, which is exactly what you’d expect from a driver who repeatedly put the car where it didn’t belong, and then turned that track position into points. Lawson’s season reads more “swingy”: when the weekend clicked, points arrived; when it didn’t, the floor fell out.
Kick Sauber: equal qualifying, unequal outcomes
Hülkenberg (51) versus Bortoleto (19) is the cleanest example of why “qualifying is everything” is only half true. Even with a fairly even intra-team Saturday picture, Hülkenberg converted more Sundays into points—through decision-making, stint management, and fewer weekends that spiraled into non-results. For a lower midfield team, that conversion rate is the difference between fighting Haas/Racing Bulls and getting dragged into Alpine territory.
Haas and Aston Martin: two different kinds of gaps
Haas (79) was almost perfectly split (Bearman 41, Ocon 38), which is rare and valuable: it means the team didn’t need a miracle from one car to outscore rivals; it just needed both cars to keep arriving in the points window. Aston Martin (89), by contrast, had a more classic “lead driver carries” pattern: Alonso’s 56 points and a spotless qualifying head-to-head profile against Stroll produced the bulk of the team’s upside, while the second car’s inconsistency limited how often Aston could play two-car strategy.
Alpine: the cost of not having a second scorer
Alpine’s 22 points—all from Gasly—is what happens when a team’s weekends regularly end with one car outside the points and the other fighting reliability or incident fallout. With no fastest lap point to steal and no “easy” sprint recovery unless you’re already in the top eight, a team in that position doesn’t just need upgrades; it needs weekends without zeros.
Turn teammate gaps into championship scenarios (RaceMate tools)
If you want to feel how sensitive the 2025 Constructors’ fight was to intra-team performance, run the simplest counterfactual: give Red Bull’s second car even “midfield-plus” scoring consistency, or erase one DSQ weekend for Ferrari or McLaren, and the table shifts fast. That’s exactly what RaceMate Simulate is built for: plug in alternate finishes, remove a retirement, or restore deleted points—and watch how quickly “small” intra-team deltas become championship geometry.
Conclusion: constructors aren’t won by peak pace, they’re won by two-car gravity
2025 didn’t just give us a Norris title and a McLaren double; it gave us a clean demonstration of where constructors points actually come from. They come from reducing internal variance: turning P12s into P10s, avoiding weekends where one car disappears, and keeping both drivers close enough that strategy has options instead of obligations. McLaren won because both cars lived at the front even when the season tried to punish them. Mercedes beat Red Bull because their second car existed as a weekly points entity. Ferrari’s ceiling was real, but their zeros were too expensive. And the midfield reminded us that, in modern F1, a teammate gap isn’t just a narrative—it’s a points leak you can measure, model, and (sometimes) fix.