Brawn GP
Race Wins: 8 (Button 6, Barrichello 2)
Final Championship Position: 1st
They were a team that didn’t exist 12 months ago, and now they're world champions. Ok, the whole "they didn’t exist" thing isn’t strictly true, they existed as Honda, one of the most bloated and rich teams in history. And their sudden burst onto the front row of the grid wasn’t as shocking as if Ross Brawn had cobbled together a car out of sticky tape and prayers in the final couple of weeks of the pre-season, the car was the result of a dedicated Honda development push that started as far back as April 2008. But, Brawn was responsible for that decision to switch focus to 2009 so early, so the credit should still very much go his way. After a meteoric start, the only blot on their season was in them slightly losing their way in the middle part of the year, with Brawn admitting at one point that a new development part was ruining their pace, but they weren’t sure which one. Still, somehow they managed to pull it together, and although they ended the year with far-from the most competitive package, their early-season work meant that they were far enough ahead for it not to matter.
Future Plans: Mercedes buyout, nail Jenson Button’s hand to a new contract, avoid the dreaded 'second season syndrome'.
Patty Rating: 8/10
Red Bull Racing
Race Wins: 6 (Vettel 4, Webber 2)
Final Championship Position: 2nd
The Red Bull team’s season seemed to mirror Brawns for much of the year, in that they started off just short of race-winning pace, but ended up as the dominant team, winning the last three races of the season comfortably. The fact that they were forced to heavily modify their unique, pullrod suspension-based car to allow the fitting of a now-mandatory double-decker diffuser meant that they lost out in the early stages of the year, which was partly what eventually crippled them. Well that, and the results they threw away, through driver error (largely Vettel), predictable bad luck (largely Webber) a number of mechanical issues (largely Renault) and far too many dodgy pit stops. Had the season lasted a couple more races, Vettel may well have reeled in Button, but it didn't. So that's a silly point. The silver lining for the team is that they have ended the year in the best form, and without having to divert too much 2010 design resources back onto their 2009 car in the process. With a driver pairing that is stupidly evenly-matched and working far better together than some may have predicted, they just might be the ones to watch in 2010.
Future Plans: Finish fixing Mark Webber's bionic leg, ply Adrian Newey with caffeine during long hours in the design studio, win in Bahrain 2010 by a lap.
Patty Rating: 8/10
McLaren – Mercedes
Race Wins: 2 (Hamilton 2)
Final Championship Position: 3rd
The team that has been there or thereabouts in every championship since 2004 had a torrid season this year, but in an odd way showed their strengths like never before. Having rolled up in Melbourne with an embarrassingly bad car, having been one of a number of teams to completely misunderstand quite how utterly non-crucial KERS would be, they eschewed the approach of some of their struggling peers to give up on the season, or on the sport altogether, and knuckled down to actually improve the thing. By the end of the year, they had turned from shockingly bad also-rans into the form team alongside Red Bull, with Lewis Hamilton at least. Only the rarest of McLaren technical failures prevented the 2008 champ from taking a hat-trick of wins in the final race in Abu Dhabi (well that, though possibly Vettel's stonking pace would have done him anyway). The issue now will be whether or not all that effort will help them in 2010, where there are less rule changes than this year, but still enough to make some of their advancements questionably useful.
Future Plans: Return to form, fail to sign Button, sign a mumbling Finn to make another 'superteam', implode sometime around June 2010.
Patty Rating: 6/10
Ferrari
Race Wins: 1 (Raikkonen 1)
Final Championship Position: 4th
Like McLaren, Ferrari turned up at the start of the year with a car somewhat below their usual standards. Not quite as abysmal as the MP4-24, but their early season efforts weren’t helped by some questionable strategy calls that reminded you of early 1990’s era Ferrari, rather than the team we had come to know and tolerate. In two race weekends their drivers found their weekends compromised by inexplicable Q1 gambles to remain in the garage, while Felipe Massa lost a probable 4th place in Spain when Massa was given too little fuel for his final stint. They won a race eventually, but with Massa injured and the team's dizzying series of choices of replacement hugely questionable, the team chose to ignore 2009 in favour of developing for 2010 and the impending arrival of Lolonso. Part of the intrigue of the winter rumour mill will be in deciding whether this giving up approach will help them return to the front more or less than McLaren's decision to continue development.
Future Plans: Massa returns, Alonso arrives, comical intra-team fight overshadows whole of next season.
Patty Rating: 4/10
Toyota
Race Wins: 0 (Best result 2 x 2nd places)
Final Championship Position: 5th
In terms of outright results, this was the Japanese squad's best season since their personal zenith of not-winning-anything-but-doing-ok back in 2005. While never really threatening that top spot on the podium that they craved so much, they still secured their first ever front-row grid lockout in Bahrain, took five podium places at a variety of different tracks and by the end of the season had even unearthed that rarest of things, a Japanese driver who didn’t look utterly out of his depth at F1 level. So, the perfect time to withdraw from the sport then, obviously. In the defence of bosses at Toyota HQ, they did tell the team back in March to win a race this year or face the chop. They didn’t, so they do.
Future Plans: Flog some doodles of their 2010 F1 car to cover the budget for their oft-rumoured return to Le Mans.
Patty Rating: 4/10
BMW Sauber
Race Wins: 0 (Best result 2 x 2nd places)
Final Championship Position: 6th
A sublime year-long all-round failure from a team that was expected by many to challenge for the title this year. Their five-year plan called for this to be a season of regular wins ahead of title glory in 2010, but if that title is going to come, it'll be in the ALMS or something equally trite, because BMW took one look at the first half of the season's results sheet and went "K thx bai" quicker than you could say "Oh yeah, and the KERS doesn't really work either". They were perhaps the team that lost out the most in their silly pursuit of KERS over sorting some aerodynamics, despite the fact that the system was always going to be too bulky to be a realistic proposition for their heavy lead driver. Mario Theissen left the sport still convinced that BMW's commitment to KERS had been a good thing, but then George W Bush will probably die thinking he did a good job in Iraq.
Future Plans: Sit around having moustache growing competitions. Theissen wins.
Patty Rating: 2/10
Williams – Toyota
Race Wins: 0 (Best result 2 x 4th places)
Final Championship Position: 7th
Not a terrible season for the former champions, compared to 2008, but nor was it a particularly brilliant one. Having started with the double diffuser that everyone else so desperately craved, they didn't really hit the ground running, and suffered from Kazuki Nakajima acting the pillock all year. Had he managed to score some, or indeed any, points, they probably would have done better than their eventual disappointing 7th placed finish. But still, it was a year spent scratching around in disappointment for the former champions, who once again demonstrated the sort of tactical nous that allowed them to think starting the 1997 Monaco GP on slicks was a good idea with some truly laughable strategic calls.
Future Plans: Zimmer frame for Rubens, replace their Nico, aim for 6th place next season.
Patty Rating: 5/10
Renault
Race wins: 0 (Best result 1 x 3rd place)
Final Championship Position: 8th
An utter disaster of a season for the French team, who managed to slip further back than even their 2007 and 2008 mess-ups, largely thanks to the foul rotting mess of Fixgate, which successfully gutted the team of key personnel, sponsors and credibility, but also thanks to having a truly naff car in the first place. They also tried KERS, with perhaps the least success of the four teams that actually bothered, and went through the rigmarole of sacking Nelson Piquet Jr after a year and a half of nonsense only to replace him with someone just as bad. A single podium finish marked the team's worst season since they became a proper constructor in their own right, with perhaps the only good news for 2010 being that things probably can't get much worse. If they're here at all, of course.
Future Plans: Prevaricate over future long enough to completely ruin motivation of 2010 design team, withdraw for 2011 season after year of backmarking.
Patty Rating: 1/10
Force India – Mercedes
Race wins: 0 (Best result 1 x 2nd place)
Final Championship Position: 9th
After Vijay Mallya's rather amusing promise when announcing their Mercedes link-up that his team would be scoring points in 2009 and winning races in 2010, Findia spent most of the season mired at the back of the field in their usual place, causing guffaws from anyone sober enough to remember his bold words. But those naysayers saw their words rammed back down their throats in Belgium, as the team scored it's first pole, it's first points and it's first podium all in one go. They remained relatively competitive for the rest of the season, though circumstances and dubious driving meant that their points haul was only added to with Adrian Sutil's 4th place in Italy. Still, a very good return for the squad, though it raises questions about whether they can sustain that in 2010. Still, with the amount of new, crap teams on the grid next year, they're likely to be solid midfield runners without even trying.
Future Plans: Predict world titles by 2011, sign Karun Chandhok, qualify last in Bahrain.
Patty Rating: 7/10
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Race wins: 0 (Best result 2 x 7th places)
Final Championship Position: 10th
After the dizzying highs of "that win" in 2008, the Red Bull B team suffered a slump in form in 2009, not helped by their mix of rookie drivers and hapless Frenchmen driving the things. Whether or not a team running ostensibly the same car as the main Red Bull squad should have spent so much of their time mired at the back of the grid is an important question, but they were also not helped by having to wait on a double-decker diffuser, and were apparently made to effectively carry out testing work on used Ferrari engines for much of practice. In the end, they finished comfortably bottom of the pile, and will have work to do to make a compeititve job of next season. Still, at least they gave us Sebastien Buemi.
Future Plans: Get confused when asked to design their own chassis, buy Toyota's designs on the cheap to save the effort, further Buemi fun.
Patty Rating: 3/10
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