Team ratings | Red Bull by far the best in 2023, Williams follows

Red Bull Racing secured the constructors' championship weeks ago, that's how dominant the Austrian team has been this year. Unsurprisingly, Red Bull will get the highest possible rating from GPblog over 2023. What grades do the other teams get? We list it!

There is no other mark possible than a 10! Both world championships are in the bag, also delivering the vice-champion among drivers and winning 21 out of 22 Grands Prix. Red Bull Racing has delivered a top performance, one that will probably be hard to match in the future. A season for the history books for good reason, then. Kudos to Red Bull Racing!

Lewis Hamilton and his team boss Toto Wolff have let it be known almost every Grand Prix this season how incredibly awful the W14 was. The reality: the Germans finished second among constructors (behind Red Bull) and saw in Hamilton the number three among drivers (behind the Red Bull men). Eight Grands Prix saw a Mercedes driver on the podium. In short, it wasn't actually all that bad. By Mercedes' standards - used to winning - this year was undoubtedly a setback. But in the end, the team was indeed the best of the rest.

In the end, it was Ferrari that prevented Red Bull from winning all Grands Prix. Yet it is also striking how changeable the Italians were: often top in qualifying, only to lose a lot of speed during the race. Especially in the first half of the season, Ferrari did not get its tyre management right. Granted, it worked hard and certainly in the last few months Ferrari was at times a good challenger to Red Bull. But that final step, was still missing.

It's perhaps a bit strange to give an 8 to a team that faltered so much at the start of the season. However, we greatly admire the way McLaren fought its way all the way to the front from the far back. The British realised even during testing that their design was totally wrong, identified what the problem was AND were able to implement a solution. If there was one team that quite deserved a win (yes, Piastri won a sprint race), it is McLaren.

Aston Martin had the opposite season to McLaren: started off hugely strong, eventually dropping away fairly. A shame? Certainly not. This is a developing team and has performed above par at times. There are still blows to be struck in the development race, though, especially if Aston Martin really wants to make an assault on the world championship. Perhaps also an idea to replace Lance Stroll, as he added little this season?

Neither meat nor fish, that was Alpine's season. Typical of the season was the way Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly battled each other in Abu Dhabi. Finally, there was no one else they could fight with. They were too good for the rearguard teams and too slow for the top teams. Alpine was middling, a six, in other words. But for a factory team, that can never be enough!

What a season for Williams! New team boss James Vowles has managed a real culture change in just one year. Competing is no longer enough, the top team of yesteryear wants to perform. And it is succeeding, because who would have expected Williams to finish seventh in the constructors' standings? And it must be said; in doing so, Alex Albon must be thanked. The Thai had the best year of his career and got more than the most out of the Williams. That bodes well for next season. With a better driver than Logan Sargeant in the ranks, another step may even be taken.

The now-departed team boss Franz Tost must have imagined the last season at AlphaTauri differently: the car was not moving forward and Nyck de Vries had to be sacked - by Helmut Marko. With Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson - alongside Yuki Tsunoda - at the wheel of the increasingly updated car, confidence slowly returned. Thanks to a strong series at the end of the season, the Italians were spared last place. But as Red Bull's sister team - which dominated all of F1 - they could have performed a little better.

Could Alfa Romeo be secretly happy that its sponsorship deal with Sauber has ended? Because what a travesty it was this season! Alfa Romeo was really in the thick of things this season. We simply cannot think of a moment from 2023 where Valtteri Bottas or Guanyu Zhou surprised us. It keeps being denied, but Sauber seems to be in full transition, wistfully awaiting the arrival of Audi in '26. So don't be surprised if 2024 is just as disastrous a year.

Well, Haas. This team must be slowly asking itself if there is still a future in Formula 1. All was not F1-worthy with the Americans in 2023. In qualifying, Haas managed to surprise at times, but as soon as the lights went out on Sunday, Hulkenberg and Magnussen dropped to the rear. Tyre management, they never seemed to have heard of that at Haas. No, a year to quickly forget.