CONSTRUCTORS’ CHAMPIONSHIP
Lotus (6th) v Toro Rosso (7th)
Now this is a fight which carries real importance for Lotus. The team has been struggling financially throughout the past two years, with the team owners looking to sell and therefore not investing as much money as in previous seasons. Renault looks set to step in, but the deal has been dragging on for months and it remains to be seen if there is any plan B in place.
Finishing sixth in the standings is likely to be worth around £4million ($6m) over the team which finishes in seventh place, a not insignificant sum for a team in Lotus’ position.
Toro Rosso, on the other hand, has a lot of its costs absorbed by Red Bull which leads to less pressure regarding its final finishing position. The team knows that with experienced drivers it could expect to be higher up in the standings, though both Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr have done excellent jobs this season and the biggest cause of lost points has been reliability.
With Lotus currently holding a nine-point advantage and having scored a podium this year, Toro Rosso will either need one of its cars to finish in the top five or both cars in the top ten (with sixth and eighth places the minimum requirement) in order to have a chance of jumping ahead of the Enstone-based team.
Sauber (8th) v McLaren (9th)
If you had told Sauber - a team which failed to score a point in 2014 - that it would be entering the final race ahead of McLaren in the constructors’ standings, you may not have received much support. However, a strong start to the season ensures it is likely to beat the Honda-powered team.
Sauber scored over half of its points for this season in the first three rounds, but also managed a flurry of six top-ten results in seven races from Hungary onwards to keep McLaren at bay.
McLaren, on the other hand, failed to score until the Monaco Grand Prix and has struggled all year. Results have improved slightly in the second half of the season, with McLaren outscoring Sauber 22 points to 15 since the Hungarian Grand Prix, but the fact that it needed the chaos of Budapest to secure a 12-point haul suggests overhauling a nine-point deficit in the final round is unrealistic.
McLaren surely didn’t see 2015 being quite this poor, but in the grand scheme of things finishing eighth or ninth will be less crucial to those in Woking than the team bosses at Hinwil.
