‘Best of the rest’: Charles and Carlos chasing Norris for 5th place. Charles and Carlos chasing Norris for 5th place.

The two consecutive third places scored by Sergio Perez in Turkey and Austin have ‘put back’ the 2021 Formula 1 world championship standings. In fact, now on the top four positions there are the four drivers part of the two teams that are dominating this 2021 season: Mercedes and Red Bull. This further opens the fight for that fifth place in the drivers’ standings which in recent seasons has been known as the ‘first of the others’, meaning the challenge between those drivers who do not have a car that is constantly competitive, race after race, in order to allow them to battle for podiums and victories.

This platonic recognition went in 2019 to Carlos Sainz, sixth in the standings with McLaren, and in 2020 to Sergio Perez, fourth with Racing Point. This year, the challenge seems to be between Lando Norris’s McLaren and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari SF21, with the Monegasque also followed close by Carlos Sainz himself, now teammate. For most of the season the best driver not at the wheel of Red Bull or Mercedes was undoubtedly the young Englishman. Norris found himself third in the championship for a long time, with a margin of 39 points on Charles Leclerc after the second race in Austria. Since then, however, the wind has changed.

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In five of the last eight rounds Charles Leclerc has scored more points than Lando Norris, reducing the gap from 39 to 21 points. A trend that if confirmed would allow the Monegasque to compete for fifth place in the championship until the final round in Abu Dhabi. Carlos Sainz is also making a similar climb, nibbling on his former team mate 14.5 points. These numbers confirmed the growth in performance of Ferrari, which is currently 3.5 behind the Woking team in the standings, despite the ‘papaya’ one-two finish in Monza. The main focus of the Maranello team obviously remains the third place among the manufacturers, but even the fifth place of Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz at the end of the year in the drivers would be a strong signal to the competition in view of the 2022 Formula One season.