[Official] Top 11 Teams of the Seasons and Number 1 Team Poll

[Born Racer]

What is your order of the top 11 teams of the season and why? Who had the best strategies? Who did the best with the budget they had? Who made the most of their car and developed it the best?

[TheNo1F1Fan]

1: Mercedes. A super-dominant team with their super-dominant car and 701 points in the WCC.
2: Williams. Had 9 podium finishes but unexpecteedly couldn't win a race. Both of the drivers' performances were good. Also had only 1 retirement which was a mechanical failure.
3: Red Bull. Being second in the WCC with 405 points, they almost had a 300 point gap to Mercedes.
4: Ferrari. Having the fewest retirements this year, it was a total of 3 retirements but with mechanical failures it was a total of 2 retirements.
5: McLaren. Had the same amount of retirements as Ferrari's, but when JB was classified as finisher at Bahrain, they had 2 retirements. From an impressive Australian GP, the team got disappointing and then some Top 5 finishes eith help from Button.
6: Force India. Nearly was going to overtake McLaren for a Top 5 in the Constructors' Championship, but Button kept McLaren to lead in the Top 5.
7: Toro Rosso. 125 points behind Force India? Oh well, that's impossible in a way IMHO. STR did a best finish at Singapore with Vergne finishing P6.
8: Marussia. What an impressive finish at Monaco. Sad that the team went into financial problems and folded.
9: Lotus. There isn't much opinion from me about their performances, as Grosjean scored a points finish at Spain and Monaco and then Maldonado at USA. What I also saw was that Maldonado didn't caused a collision at Germany.
10: Caterham. Sad that they went into financial problems, lost original sponsorship from the start of the season but managed to return back to the season finale.
11: Sauber. Having a best finish of 11th at Australia and Germany, the team struggled to get points.

[GT6]

Williams for me, after a dismal few years they appear to be back with a good car and a couple of good drivers

[Beryl]

Best car overall: Mercedes

Best chassis: Red Bull or Mercedes. Hard to determine given the PU disparity.

Best car relative to (estimated) resources: Williams

Best pit-work: Think this goes to McLaren. Fast stops as usual, but without the regular mistakes of years past. Red bull a close runner-up.

Tactics and strategies: Red Bull, and decisively so.

I'll give my vote to Red Bull, as they were best in terms of non-car/driver performance. If you include everything (car, pu, drivers, etc.), the constructors table presents the order fairly accurately, with only Marussia out of place.

[Notso Swift]

^^
That is a pretty good summary
Only thing I would take issue with is Pitstops, which I would probably also give to Red Bull
I vote Mercedes though, because not all categories are equal in my mind

[Aysedasi]

The head says Mercedes by a mile, but the heart says Williams.

Again, shortage of stamina to rank them all....

[Pontlieue]

1. Williams - Definitely the most improved team. They were hardly able to score points last year, and became regular podium scorers.
2. Mercedes - Almost perfect season, but I always admire those with limited resources more, so only second place for them.
3. Red Bull - Well done how they saved the season after the disastrous pre-season tests.
4. Force India - Great first half of the season, but couldn't keep up the development.
5. Toro Rosso - Only so high up because so many other teams disappointed. Basically did what was expected from them.
6. Marussia - Consistently ahead of Caterham, and scored two points in Monaco. Sad how the team ended, they did a great job with very limited resources.
7. McLaren - At least they weren't worse than last year, but a team like McLaren should fight for wins and not for lower points scoring positions.
8. Ferrari - Underperformed massively, just like McLaren. Not even Alonso could do something with that car.
9. Lotus - This team won a race last year! The car was a disaster, Grosjean lost motivation and Maldonado just wanted to destroy it!
10. Sauber - They still exist? We only saw them when they crashed, and even then they were hard to spot because they were tarmac-coloured. Never did anything notable all year long.
11. Caterham - They had a slow, ugly, unreliable car, unclear ownership, went through no less than five team bosses within a year, but at least they gave Lotterer and Stevens their first (and likely only) F1 races.

[bjohnsonsmith]

1 Mercedes
2 Red Bull
3 Williams
4 McLaren
5 Ferrari
6 Force India
7 Toro Rosso
8 Marussia
9 Lotus
10 Sauber
11 Caterham

[TheNo1F1Fan]

Originally Posted by TheNo1F1Fan

1: Mercedes. A super-dominant team with their super-dominant car and 701 points in the WCC.
2: Williams. Had 9 podium finishes but unexpecteedly couldn't win a race. Both of the drivers' performances were good. Also had only 1 retirement which was a mechanical failure.
3: Red Bull. Being second in the WCC with 405 points, they almost had a 300 point gap to Mercedes.
4: Ferrari. Having the fewest retirements this year, it was a total of 3 retirements but with mechanical failures it was a total of 2 retirements.
5: McLaren. Had the same amount of retirements as Ferrari's, but when JB was classified as finisher at Bahrain, they had 2 retirements. From an impressive Australian GP, the team got disappointing and then some Top 5 finishes eith help from Button.
6: Force India. Nearly was going to overtake McLaren for a Top 5 in the Constructors' Championship, but Button kept McLaren to lead in the Top 5.
7: Toro Rosso. 125 points behind Force India? Oh well, that's impossible in a way IMHO. STR did a best finish at Singapore with Vergne finishing P6.
8: Marussia. What an impressive finish at Monaco. Sad that the team went into financial problems and folded.
9: Lotus. There isn't much opinion from me about their performances, as Grosjean scored a points finish at Spain and Monaco and then Maldonado at USA. What I also saw was that Maldonado didn't caused a collision at Germany.
10: Caterham. Sad that they went into financial problems, lost original sponsorship from the start of the season but managed to return back to the season finale.
11: Sauber. Having a best finish of 11th at Australia and Germany, the team struggled to get points.

*with

[Neil22]

Mercedes. Simply outstanding.
Williams, next year.
Red Bull, making the most with what you got.
Ferrari, who the hell knows?

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Neil22

Mercedes. Simply outstanding.
Williams, next year.
Red Bull, making the most with what you got.
Ferrari, who the hell knows?

McLaren next year - Well here's hoping anyway - serve Mercedes right for not allowing engine updates!

[m355y]

1- Mercedes, easy, dominated whole year, best package, cleaned up.
2- Red Bull, saddled with the Renault engine but probably had the best chassis
3- Williams, lovely car, put them right back on front foot, tactics ropy at times
4- McLaren, transitional season but actually a big improvement over 2013
5- Ferrari, car wasn't that bad, engine package was. Still a very poor year
6- Force India, started the season looking a match for Williams but nosedived
7- Toro Rosso, would have put them above FI on pace, but squandered points
8- Marussia, finally got points and respectability but a terrible ending
9- Caterham, on the budget they had they pulled some good results out
10- Sauber, totally lost the plot, heavy and slow car, uninspiring driver choice
11- Lotus, disgraceful

[Born Racer]

1. Mercedes There's little doubt for me that Mercedes absolutely made the most of things this year. They had two fairly evenly-matched drivers during the year, although on balance, Hamilton had the measure of him despite Nico putting in some excellent performances to make it as close as you could perhaps expect him too (perhaps he needed to be slightly more aggressive at times; the problem is that the times he chose to be weren't the right times, e.g. Spa. In Sochi he should have defended harder in my opinion).

Not everything was perfect. The team were fraught with quite a lot of reliability problems at times, but nothing to dent their chances of victory, such was their speed advantage.

2. Williams-Mercedes I'll opt for the third-placed teams in the constructors' championship on the basis of improvement over 2013, comparative budget with their nearest rivals Red Bull Racing and performance vis-a-vis said team. It's good to see these garagistes get back in the game, and how. Claire seems to be running a good shop there. They must have finally got some of the right people in the right places. I get the impression the appointment of Rob Smedley was a successful one and Pat Fry is clearly making his pragmatic approach felt. Massa did quite well, even if he was a bit crash-prone. Bottas appears to be something of a revelation and very professional.

They did have some questionable strategies though, where they seemed to not seize the moment to go for the win.

3. Red Bull Racing-Renault It's often reminded to us how they were hampered by a Renault engine, but the team should have made sure that was better developed in harmony with them. Vettel, by his standards, was not great, while Ricciardo impressed. They clearly had a very good chassis, so they deserve a high placing. No celebrating 3rd place smiley next to their name, though, because I don't think they'll be feeling like celebrating that much right now.

4. Force India-Mercedes Another superb performance by this excellent team, even though they didn't have as many giant-killing performances as expected. There was Perez's podium, though. Continuing the Jordan spirit of showing up much-feted teams.

5. Ferrari It's a close call between Ferrari and McLaren here for this somewhat ignominious placing, but I'll go all empirical and hand it to the Scuderia because they scored 35 more points. They also had Alonso to perform some Samurai moves from time to time, although even he started to look resigned to the situation at times, in terms of how he seemed in interviews, until he eventually actually resigned. They also didn't have the benefit of a Mercedes engine. So, in fact, there are several reasons to place them higher than McLaren. I wonder how much down on prancing power the Ferrari was.

6. McLaren-Mercedes Not a lot to say. Hungary aside, I don't know if they had that many cock-ups other than simply not being fast enough. I think we'll see Ron really back at the helm in 2015 if they start performing well.

7. STR-Renault They seemed to reign in some of the inconsistency of years past and become more consistent point scorers. Vergne had his off-days as previously, but when on it he could be the driver of the day. Kvyat was very impressive for me. Him and Ricciardo will be one of the most interesting driver pairings to watch in 2015.

8. Marussia-Ferrari Well, they did score a point. Of the three newer teams, they were the ones who were the least far off a really decent performance. Bianchi's incident and the manner in which they finished the year were obviously very sad. I would like to have seen them have competed with the budget cap in place.

9. Lotus-Renault Woeful. At the beginning of the year, the car was unbelievably bad in terms of its handling, scarily so. Formula 1 had seemed so preened and perfected for years that it was like harking back to the early to mid-90s to see a backmarker having such a dodgy-looking car to drive and of course strange to see that the Enstone team were backmarkers.

10. Sauber-Ferrari They did once at least stand a chance of points, which is why I'll place them above Caterham. Their driver pairing was, for me, the least inspiring. Gutierrez was bad. Sutil was somewhere between average and mediocre. What went wrong here?

11. Caterham-Renault Stagnation is no good in Formula 1. You just move backwards. Even Kobayashi couldn't make me notice any dramatic heroics to excite me here.

[Knowlesy]

Heart says Williams. But logic dictates Mercedes.