Gary Anderson's half-term report

Now that Formula 1 has hit the August break, the time is right to take a look at each team's performance.

Sometimes, a break is good to give teams a chance to recharge and think outside the box. It will be interesting to see who is able to make progress for the next race at Spa.

In the meantime, here are my ratings for how each team has performed relative to its estimated budget (which includes provision for engine payments, even for those teams that are full works operations).

To balance the drivers' points calculations for those teams where one driver has scored significantly more points than the other, I have divided the estimated budget in two and applied that figure to the leading driver's total.

MERCEDES

Mercedes leads the constructors' championship by a country mile, and while Sebastian Vettel is still hanging in there in the drivers' battle, both titles seem destined to go to the Silver Arrows.

Overall the team has done a very good job, producing the best car/engine package and winning eight out of 10 races.

F1 being F1, you always have to concentrate on what you are not doing right, and what I would like to see is Mercedes tidying up how it operates.

I explained after the Hungarian Grand Prix that the balance of power in the team still seems to be with the drivers, as shown by the call to let Nico Rosberg stay on medium tyres for the last stint when he could have taken softs and won the race.

The sign of a top team is that it performs well under pressure. And while the team has had great success during the past 18 months, when pushed - as it was in Hungary and earlier in the season in Malaysia - things have gone wrong and strange decisions have been made.

Rating:

Chassis 10/10 - Very good everywhere.
Team 8/10 - It must sharpen up, especially when under pressure.

Estimated budget £220million, 383 constructors' points = £0.574million per point.
Half estimated budget £110million, 202 leading driver's points (Hamilton) = £0.545million per point.

FERRARI

Given where Ferrari was in 2014, it has made a very good step this season. It just needs to deliver more of the same, continuing to improve the car and the engine package to chip away at the gap to Mercedes.

In normal conditions, and on a good day, Ferrari is still half-a-second off the pace of Mercedes.

But if the team could give Kimi Raikkonen a car that will reach the chequered flag, and therefore have two cars capable of taking points off Mercedes, it could still have a significant say in the drivers' championship fight.

I don't think that the new management has performed any magic to turn things around, but often a shake-up at the top can give everyone a wake-up call. While some of the gains made are the result of the previous regime, the team does seem to be sharper this year.

Whether it can get any closer to Mercedes in the second half of the year, or if it's still restricted to battling for that last step on the podium and that occasional win when Mercedes trips over itself, is the big question.

Rating:

Chassis 8/10 - Needs to find that half a second.
Team 8/10 - Too many reliability issues, especially with Raikkonen.

Estimated budget £265million, 236 constructors' points = £1.123million per point.
Half estimated budget £132.5million, 160 leading driver's points (Vettel) = £0.828million per point.

WILLIAMS

The Williams team confuses me. In the Monaco Grand Prix and in Hungary, its cars went backwards. As the British GP showed, when it's wet Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas might as well park up and go home.

What the team needs to do is find out exactly what the problem is, rather than saying a situation doesn't suit the car concept.

To win a championship you have to be competitive under all circumstances, and if it finds the reason that it went backwards in Monaco and Hungary it will be stronger everywhere else.

I'd also like to see the team be a bit more ruthless. At Silverstone, Bottas might have had the pace to win had he not been stuck behind Massa during the first stint.

Williams has made a great deal of progress since its terrible 2013 season, but I've yet to see evidence that it can take the next step and start winning races.

Rating:

Chassis 7/10 - Pace drop-off in Monaco and Hungary and dismal showing in the wet.
Team 7/10 - Poor strategy calls and, in general, slow pitstops.

Estimated budget £120million, 151 constructors' points = £0.795million per point.
Half estimated budget £60million, 77 leading driver's points (Bottas) = £0.780million per point.

RED BULL

Red Bull does now seem to have extracted better performance from the chassis, which didn't look so good earlier in the season when compared with the Toro Rosso.

Toro Rosso remains a very good measure for the team, and it's a sign of how much things have changed that the once-mighty senior squad is being compared with a relative minnow!

The weakness, obviously, is the Renault engine.

Upgrades at Silverstone seem to have given Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo a car they can be very comfortable in and attack with. But you can only do so much to the chassis when the engine isn't competitive.

It amazes me that an organisation as good as Renault has not been able to get its act together, and the relationship with the team has suffered.

The double podium in Hungary wasn't a sign of anything other than others hitting trouble, and that could easily be as good as it gets for Red Bull in 2015.

Rating:

Chassis 8/10 - Not as good as it should have been at the start of the season.
Team 6/10 - Too much energy wasted complaining about Renault.

Estimated budget £200million, 96 constructors' points = £2.083million per point.
Half estimated budget £100, 51 leading driver's points (Ricciardo) = £1.961million per point.

FORCE INDIA

Good progress has been made since Force India introduced the B-spec car for Silverstone.

Realistically, that was its 2015 car proper, since the one it started the season with was relatively under-developed because of winter budget problems.

Nico Hulkenberg is a great driver and seems to have been revitalised by his Le Mans win. But there were troubles in Hungary with failures related to the kerbs, which must be got on top of pretty quickly otherwise the drivers will grow more cautious.

Hopefully, Force India can put together a few trouble-free weekends to show the real potential of the B-spec car. If it does, it could just be fighting for a podium.

Rating:

Chassis 7/10 - Poor start before the 'real' 2015 car appeared
Team 8/10 - Goes about its business in the best way possible.

Estimated budget £100million, 39 constructors' points = £2.564million per point.
Half estimated budget £50million, 24 leading driver's points (Hulkenberg) = £2.083million per point.

LOTUS

Lotus has shown how good a team it can be over the years, it just needs a reliable budget and the chance to plan and execute a development programme.

It's a good team just being wasted by management that doesn't understand what it takes to be consistently competitive in F1.

The switch to Mercedes engines has helped to improve results, but Enstone is a team perfectly capable of being up there at the level of Williams - and has the drivers able to do it.

With the future still uncertain and talk of a Renault takeover, it's hard to see Lotus making much progress in the second half of the year.

Rating:

Chassis 7/10 - Should have started the season better.
Team 6/10 - Management - and they are part of the team - need to realise that the budget must come first otherwise you can just squander what you have.

Estimated budget £120million, 35 constructors' points = £3.428million per point.
Half estimated budget £60million, 23 leading driver's points (Grosjean) = £2.609million per point.

TORO ROSSO

Toro Rosso has come on in leaps and bounds this year. It's great to see that success is coming with two drivers who, if their ages were combined, would still be young enough to race in F1!

Franz Tost and James Key seem to have formed a good working relationship and the future is bright, provided another team doesn't steal the technical director away.

Reliability is still a concern and has cost the team too many points, but when things go well there have been some good results.

Max Verstappen's fourth place in Hungary, the best finish since the days of Sebastian Vettel, was a deserved result for the team's efforts.

Rating:

Chassis 9/10 - On its day, a match for anything out there.
Team 8/10 - It didn't spend all its efforts trying to destroy Renault.

Estimated budget £100million, 31 constructors' points = £3.226million per point.
Half estimated budget £50million, 22 leading driver's points (Verstappen) = £2.273million per point.

SAUBER

The improvement of the Ferrari power unit, and a stronger car aerodynamically, has helped Sauber to improve dramatically on last year. But there is still a long way to go.

As Hungary showed, the car is slipping down the midfield, and upgrades planned for after the break will need to be good to ensure points are still regularly on the table.

Mark Smith, with whom I worked on the first Jordan in 1991, has come in as technical director.

But while he will make a difference, it will take time for him to get his feet under the table so it might not be seen until next year.

Rating:

Chassis 6/10 - Started the season strongly but has fallen away.
Team 7/10 - Working in Switzerland makes employing people from other teams difficult.

Estimated budget £100million, 22 constructors' points = £4.545million per point.
Half estimated budget £50million, 16 leading driver points (Nasr) = £3.125million per point.

McLAREN

McLaren ended the first half of the season on a high with both cars in the points and Fernando Alonso up in fifth place, but don't let that fool you.

The upcoming races at Spa and Monza are on power circuits, which will not offer the assistance the Hungaroring did. And McLaren can't rely on others hitting trouble every time.

I still don't understand why things aren't going right here.

I've had concerns about the way McLaren has worked for some time, and I still haven't seen much evidence of it seizing hold of the situation and trying to help get Honda onto the right track.

I can't see an instant cure for the lack of grunt, so expect more of the same in the second half of the season.

On a positive note, even if progress is slow, at least there is some sign of it.

Rating:

Chassis 8/10 - Should have catered for more cooling to allow Honda to experiment.
Team 6/10 - Too many reliability problems; yes, many of them are Honda's problems, but McLaren is the end user.

Estimated budget £200million, 17 constructors' points = £11.765million per point.
Half estimated budget £200m, 11 leading driver's points (Alonso) = £9.091million per point.

MANOR

Manor is only there to make up the numbers.

I've been in situations like that and it's tough to take.

But if you haven't got the money to develop, all you can do is keep praying that someone will show up with a bag of gold.

Using a 2014 car and engine means that there's no chance to climb the grid.

Rating:

Chassis 4/10 - For reliability alone.
Team 5/10 - For keeping its pecker up week after week, knowing that there is zero potential for moving forward.

Estimated budget £60million, 0 constructors' points - is this £60million wasted or £60million invested?