The 2012 team-by-team season review

In a season which saw half of the grid win a race, teams had to fight more than ever for every position during the course of the 20-race campaign. Here Sky Sports F1 Online takes a look back at how all 12 of them fared in an utterly absorbing year.

Ferrari
Points:400; Final position: 2nd
There's two distinct approaches to take when analysing Ferrari's season. The first, the 'glass half-full' attitude if you like, is that they pulled off extraordinary feats to split Red Bull and McLaren in the Constructors' Championship and take the Drivers' title down to the wire given the competitiveness of the car they both started, and ended, the campaign with. Much of the credit undoubtedly goes to their Spanish matador Fernando Alonso, who scored 70 per cent of the team's points with his relentless fortitude all season. But the Ferrari operation as a whole was virtually error-free, while the F2012 boasted an extraordinary 100 per cent reliability record in races. Yet on the flip side, rather like McLaren, Ferrari's historical pre-eminent status in F1 means that they're subjected to higher levels of scrutiny than most. That means there's plenty of 'half-empty' ways of viewing their season as well. Indeed, right from the F2012's first test the car's Achilles heel was its fundamental pace and, while the situation improved markedly with a big upgrade for the start of the European season, never at any point of the season were Ferrari clear top dogs. There was no doubting their development rate - new iterations of front and rear wing for example continued to arrive right into the final flyaways - but more often than not it failed to hit the mark amid ongoing wind tunnel correlation problems. The tunnel will be temporarily shut over the winter while Ferrari attempt to finally get to the bottom of the problems and for all the positives regarding their operational and reliability work this year, it's the success of that particular process that will determine whether they can get back to title-winning ways in 2013. JG McLaren
Points:378; Final position: 3rd
Just how did McLaren make such a mess of 2012? Broadly speaking, McLaren's reoccurring problem through the course of their annus horribilis was that every time they fixed one they found another. First it was the pit-stops, then it was pace, then it was reliability. On their day, they were unbeatable. The fundamental flaw was that there were too many days when they didn't finish at all as reliability deserted them with chastening frequency towards the end of the campaign. It is a damning reality that not only did Red Bull win the title with a race to spare, but, despite winning seven events, McLaren still managed to lose out to Ferrari's one-and-a-half-driver combo in the Constructors' Championship. That took some doing. And, of course, to compound the wrenching sense of frustration at losing out with a winning car was the profound shock of Lewis Hamilton's departure for a team which has won just a single race in three years. Perhaps, as Hamilton himself has insisted, there was no more than the team could have done to retain him. But the sense lingers that McLaren could have handled negotiations better and that they should have been able to persuade Hamilton to stay once Mark Webber re-committed to Red Bull. The loss of their prized asset and fastest driver is a blow that will leave long-term, if not permanent, scarring. Martin Whitmarsh thus ends the year as a team boss under mounting pressure. Still without a title during his tenure, he can't afford failure again in 2013. PG Lotus
Points: 303; Final position: 4th
The portents for Lotus were good right from the off and although there was a slice of luck in their victory in Abu Dhabi, it was richly deserved. It has been widely commented that the E20 always looked a fast car; a good paintjob always helps (a sponsorship deal with an anti-dandruff shampoo perhaps less so) but the engineering team led by James Allison responded to the failed gamble of last year's forward-pointing exhaust with something altogether more effective. A slight hiccup with the integrity of the car's suspension came during pre-season but its speed was never in doubt. That much was apparent when Romain Grosjean qualified third on the grid in Melbourne and whilst the Frenchman's waywardness left him unable to convert, he backed up Kimi Raikkonen when both secured podium finishes three races later in Bahrain. Just four races into his F1 comeback, the Finn might otherwise have given race winner Sebastian Vettel a real run for his money, but that performance nonetheless confirmed two things: firstly, that the Lotus was better in the race than in qualifying; and secondly, that it went particularly well in warmer conditions. Grosjean finished second in Canada and also held that position in Valencia before retiring. Yet it was his third place behind Raikkonen in Hungary that really built anticipation; during the summer it seemed that a Lotus victory was a matter of when not if. It eventually came when F1 returned to the desert but only after the team had started losing ground, their DRS-type 'device' being one of the most intriguing developments of the season - albeit one they failed to make work properly. It will return in 2013, though, as will Raikkonen, with Lotus also confirming a major new sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola. All-in-all, a far better position for the former Renault team to find themselves in compared to this time last year. MW Mercedes
Points 142; Final position 5th
What a bittersweet year 2012 must have been for the Mercedes team. On the one hand, it was a campaign which witnessed their first win since returning to the sport as a fully-fledged outfit three years previously. On the other, the team fell horribly off the pace as the season progressed, failing to score a point in five successive races and fortunate to rebuff Sauber's pursuit of fifth place in the standings. The acquisition of Lewis Hamilton - a signing which effectively amounted to the team recommitting to the sport after a troubling period of introspection - swung the year back into a positive, but 2012 must nevertheless have concluded with a hefty amount of trepidation and anxiety amongst the ranks at Brackley. Ross Brawn's troops must know that there will be no excuses and no hiding place if they don't deliver a competitive car for a proven race like Hamilton and it hardly bodes well for their prospects that 2012 ended with the team still struggling with the same issue of over-heating tyres that they first endured in winter testing and their innovative Double DRS device ultimately regarded as more of a hindrance than a help. Not well at all. Mercedes remain, in summary, what they were this time last year: a team with everything still to prove. PG Sauber
Points: 126; Final position: 6th
Considering the mess Peter Sauber found his life's work left in when BMW made a hasty departure from F1 at the end of 2009, the turnaround achieved inside three years has been remarkable. Indeed, discounting their heavily-funded manufacturer era, Sauber's four podium finishes this year were only two fewer than the total number they had ever previously achieved as an independent. To finish 16 points behind another flattering-to-deceive German motoring institution reflected similarly well on the Hinwil team in 2012. Yet looking back the outfit really should have capped what turned out to be their veteran team owner's final season in the Team Principal's hotseat with a race victory, with only Sergio Perez's small, late slip in his otherwise thrilling pursuit of Fernando Alonso in Malaysia scuppering what would have been an extraordinary victory. The Mexican's surge to second place at Monza, beating both Ferraris in the process, was similarly stirring and even when the team had stopped developing the C31, Kamui Kobayashi produced the performance of his career to make the podium in Japan. For all the high points the team did have a number of races when their weekend didn't quite come together - Bahrain, Hungary and Austin spring to mind - or their two young drivers didn't manage to hit the mark in qualifying when practice had suggested another competitive showing was in store. The arrival of the arguably more consistent Nico Hulkenberg for 2013 may help in this regard and it will be interesting to see whether this year was the elusive breakthrough for Sauber, or whether 2012 was the exception rather than the rule. JG Force India
Points: 109; Final position: 7th
The term 'The Squeezed Middle' has appeared in the political lexicon over the past couple of years and it's one that could be applied to those teams that occupy positions six through to nine in the Constructors' Championship. Without the income of the bigger teams and yet still aspirational, they consequently struggle to match the two. Making the best of what you have is what matters, then, and whilst Sauber have proved the most adept in that regard this season, Force India have also given a good account of themselves. Unlike their rivals, they failed to scale the heights of the podium but were more consistent and failed to score on just four occasions. The VJM05 performed particularly well on street-type circuits such as Valencia and Singapore but in general lost out as other teams pushed forward with upgrade packages.