Patty's 2010 Team Ratings

Some were better than others... McLaren - Mercedes
Points: 454 (2nd in constructors championship)
Best result: 1st x 5 (Hamilton 3, Button 2)
After the Woking team had thrown the entire might of their geek-heavy development team at their woeful 2009 car, and transformed a complete dog into a rival for the pacesetting Red Bull squad by the end of the season, it was startling to see the shambles McLaren made of their development strategy in 2010. Starting with a strong baseline car and pioneering the must-have F-duct accoutrement to a few grumbles from other teams in Bahrain, the team looked set for a strong season. But by the middle of the season, they had dropped off Red Bull's shoulder and had been overtaken in the performance stakes by Ferrari. Some blamed their focus on copying Ferrari's electronic brake distribution designs rather than honing their trendsetting F-duct, the team themselves became monomaniacally obsessed with Red Bull's 'flexi' wings without seeming to have any idea how it worked, and upgrades and updates were thrown at the car with no seeming rhyme or reason, to the point that both drivers went on vastly different and bizarre setups at many races. Finally, Lewis Hamilton hailed a breakthrough at the final round of the season that managed to sort out their F-duct and their latest spec of rear wing, and he was able to live with Vettel and RBR's pace, but by then it was all far too late.
Room for improvement for 2011: Sit down the design team together and actually get everyone to communicate with each other this year.
Patty Rating: 6/10

Mercedes GP
Points: 214 (4th in constructors championship)
Best result: 3rd x 3 (Rosberg 3)
The reigning champions from their brief Brawn GP days continued the downward trend in performance that their earlier incarnation had suffered through their ultimately-successful 2009 campaign. But while the BGP001 at least began with race-winning pace, the W01 had nothing of the sort. By the Spanish Grand Prix in April the team introduced a massively aggressive upgrade package, complete with ultra-thin rollbar with side-mounted airboxes, and they didn't take as long as some to get on the F-duct bandwagon. But the results showed little signs of improvement despite all that effort. The problems were more fundamental than the team could have ever hoped to solve, in fairness, with the inherent understeer present in the design a trait that neither of their drivers particularly likes to work with. In the end, Ross Brawn decided to adopt a similar approach to how he had dealt with an uncompetitive Honda in 2008, i.e. call the whole thing off as a bad job early in the year and turn the team's attention to their 2011 design. We wait to see whether the tactic works again, but certainly the Mercedes brand won't fancy another year of watching their superstar signings crawling around in the lower reaches of the points-paying positions.
Room for improvement for 2011: Start designing the car earlier, hope the Pirelli tyres work for Schumacher, cross fingers.
Patty Rating: 4/10

Red Bull - Renault
Points: 498 (1st in constructors championship)
Best result: 1st x 9 (Vettel 5, Webber 4)
For a team with a package as dominant as this one, the mark assigned here might seem rather stupidly low. But this is a mark of the team overall, not just their car, and while the RB6 was the class of the field by some distance throughout the season, the Red Bull Racing team themselves did their level best to screw up their advantage throughout the year. Whether it was dubious tactics, poor reliability, dodgy driving or hapless PR, the caffeinated team never seemed too many steps away from all-out disaster despite the way that they appeared to be predestined to win the titles this season. Eventually, and mercifully, they did succeed in both tasks, and with Adrian Newey in the design studio and the collection of monkeys off their respective backs championship-wise, they should be even stronger in 2011. All we can hope for is that they invest in some more varied celebratory music to play in their pit garage next time around.
Room for improvement for 2011: Leave Adrian Newey alone with a pot of coffee and a design studio, try not to bugger the whole thing up quite so completely this time.
Patty Rating: 7/10

Ferrari
Points: 396 (3rd in constructors championship)
Best Result: 1st x 5 (Alonso 5)
The Italian team were gifted victory straight out of the box in Bahrain, after Sebastian Vettel's first mechanical issue of the season, but after that they entered a dark period of a competitiveness vacuum, as their drivers struggled around in the lower half of the top ten while Red Bull and McLaren made hay. But although the post-Schumacher era Ferrari often seem more likely to run around like headless chickens at the first sign of a crisis, in 2010 the team knuckled down to their slow but inexorable efforts to get back to the front of the field. They were rewarded with four further wins and a crushing near-miss at the drivers championship with Fernando Alonso. After all the behind the scenes work to bring the F10 up to scratch, it seemed a little bit silly that eventually the title came down to a simple tactical slip-up in Abu Dhabi. But then, sometimes, them's the breaks.
Room for improvement for 2011: Less controversy, stronger start, talk through pit lane strategy decisions first.
Patty Rating: 8/10

Williams - Cosworth
Points: 69 (6th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 4th x 1 (Barrichello 1)
It was yet another season of doggedly average midfield toil for Williams in 2010, but after starting the season slightly below average, they did at least improve to slightly above average by the end of the year, with the combination of Rubens Barrichello's experienced development head and Nico Hulkenberg's impudent rookie pace proving to be a fruitful partnership. But another year of midfield drudgery has done little for a team that has now gone some six full seasons without a race win, and the exodus of sponsors that followed the end of 2010, and the subsequent signing of a questionable pay driver to replace the man who had secure the team their first pole position in many a year shows that things probably won't get much better for the team next year.
Room for improvement for 2011: Re-sign Adrian Newey. And Renault. And Nigel Mansell.
Patty Rating: 6/10

Renault
Points: 163 (5th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 2nd x 1 (Kubica 1)
The Renault company must be feeling pretty pleased with themselves at the end of 2010. Despite having effectively sold-up at the end of their chaotic and disastrous 2009 campaign, during which a combination of Fixgate-based fiascos and general frustration stripped them of sponsors, team bosses and lead drivers alike, the now Gerard Lopez-owned team kept the Renault name for 2010, and were the surprise package of the year. Despite some patchy testing form, the team was a competitive prospect from the start, and ran the fully manufacturer-backed Mercedes GP squad close for a top four spot in the constructors standings, and would likely have secured the spot if their budgetary situation had allowed them to employ two competent drivers. Renault seemed to get a handle on the F-duct better than most, and their car was prodigiously quick at heavy downforce tracks. Although they missed out on a race win, the team will hope that this is the first step on the road to renewed championship success in the future.
Room for improvement for 2011: Try not to get distracted by Lotus buy-ins, hypnotise Vitaly Petrov into believing he is the reincarnated spirit of Alberto Ascari.
Patty Rating: 8/10

Force India - Mercedes
Points: 68 (7th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 5th x 2 (Sutil 2)
The Findia squad perhaps showed a lack of experience in developing a car in 2010, as they started as one of the stronger midfield teams challenging the big guns for a spot in Q3, before slipping back horribly to end up scrapping with the Toro Rossos for the right to avoid Q1 humiliation. The team's F-duct did not seem to pay off as much as it did for some of their rivals, and they were also hit by the departure of a number of key (pun not intended) personnel, including technical director James Key, who moved to Sauber and consequently masterminded a turnaround in that team's performance. A string of costly late-season retirements didn't help matters, and they ended up losing out on sixth spot in the constructors championship to Williams by a single point. Still, after 2008's backmarking anonymity and 2009's late-season resurgence, this was another year of general improvement from the Indian outfit.
Room for improvement for 2011: A slightly better car, a development budget, and a stricter line on employee's contractual obligations.
Patty Rating: 5/10

Toro Rosso - Ferrari
Points: 13 (9th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 8th x 1 (Buemi 1)
2010 was a big year for Toro Rosso, who for the first time were forced to design their own car, rather than just run a customer Red Bull. The result was a virtual carbon-copy of last year's car, but with added failure. The team were regularly the slowest of the 'established teams' throughout the season, and finished 9th and last of any of them in the constructors standings (which was admittedly still an improvement on their 10th placed finish in 2009). The development push was limp to say the least, with the team introducing an F-duct towards the very end of the year, after they had already been banned for 2011, without any great success. They will be the most likely squad to be concerned by the prospect of improvement from any of the three backmarking newbie teams for 2011.
Room for improvement for 2011: Improve the quality of the tracing paper when designing the STR6 from photos of this year's Red Bull.
Patty Rating: 2/10

Lotus - Cosworth
Points: 0 (10th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 12th x 1 (Kovalainen 1)
A generous-looking mark for Lotus, but one based on both their successful domination of the 2010 'Class B' set of F1 teams, as well as their commitment shown for the future. The results were, on the face of it, painfully bad. But given that the Malaysian squad were the last of the newcomers to have their spot on the grid confirmed (in September 2009 no less, just five months before they launched their T127 car), they managed to see off the challenge of teams with far more development time available to them than Lotus. Granted they are the newcomer with the best backing, but nevertheless, their performances were impressive. For 2011, not only will Mike Gascoyne have the time to do some aero work on an area of the car other than the front wing, they will also have Renault engines and Red Bull transmission innards, meaning that whatever they end up being called, Lotus Racing are heading in the right direction.
Room for improvement for 2011: Glue all their new pieces in the right way around, try not to cry as they grudgingly affix '1Malaysia Racing' decals to their car and contemplate the drop in merchandise revenue.
Patty Rating: 5/10

HRT - Cosworth
Points: 0 (11th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 14th x 2 (Chandhok 1, Senna 1)
An unmitigated shambles of a season for F1's most penniless of penniless backmarkers. But in fairness, the Spanish squad almost achieved a goal as lofty as RBR's title successes simply by making it to the grid in Bahrain, and then completing the season by hook or by crook. Chronic budget issues prevented them from making any effort to improve the Dallara-designed car, which does make you wonder why they brought Geoff Willis in as a technical consultant, and now the team face a new race against time to somehow get on the 2011 grid, after their plans to run an upgraded 2010 Toyota design fell through.
Room for improvement for 2011: If they have their car ready a week before the start of the season, that would be a big improvement.
Patty Rating: 2/10

Sauber - Ferrari
Points: 44 (8th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 6th x 1 (Kobayashi 1)
After over-impressing in pre-season testing in a thinly-disguised effort to find any sort of sponsor whatsoever for the 2010 season, and then suffering some truly staggering early-season reliability issues (the team got just two cars to the finish in their first twelve attempts), the charming Swiss dullards enjoyed a greatly improved second half of the season, as Kamui Kobayashi hit top overtaking form and the underdeveloped C29 chassis showed it's potential. The team were one of the first to copy the McLaren F-duct, and new technical boss James Key was showered with praise at the way that he helped to turn around the rudder-less ex-BMW works team throughout the year. The team also found time to tie up a title sponsorship deal as part of their race contract with Sergio Perez for 2011, so the future looks bright for the team from the land of cuckoo clocks.
Room for improvement for 2011: Slow, steady and barely noticable improvement from the lower midfield to the upper midfield. Re-hire their sponsor decal-producing division at HQ.
Patty Rating: 6/10

Virgin - Cosworth
Points: 0 (12th in constructors championship)
Best Result: 14th x 2 (Glock 1, di Grassi 1)
While Hispania struggled to even make it to the grid, Virgin had no real apparent issues of their own, which is what makes their failures all the more of a negative point. From the hapless mess that was their early season fuel tank issues, through to their chronic reliability issues and their ultimate inability to even beat HRT in the constructors championship, 2010 was a massive list of failures for Richard Branson's team. Not that he seems to care much, having found a cut-price way into the F1 advertising marketplace and seemingly more than happy to doll around on an Air Asia flight per year in drag if it means not investing more than is strictly necessary to simply keep the wolf from the door. All hail modern F1!
Room for improvement for 2011: Literally everything.
Patty Rating: 1/10