The 2016 Formula One season gets underway in just a few weeks’ time with the first race in Melbourne on 20th March. As ever, most of the attention will fall on the battle for the individual glory of the drivers’ world championship but here we take a look at the outright betting for the Constructors’ Championship. After a period of Red Bull dominance (the team won the crown from 2010 to 2013 inclusive) certain rule changes allowed Mercedes to challenge and in both 2014 and 2015 they won the title by huge, huge margins. Can anyone challenge Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg this season or will it be a hat-trick of triumphs for the UK-based German team? Read on for our outright winner betting tips, predictions and odds.
If you know exactly who or what you want to back then you can skip our analysis (at your peril!) and head straight to our live odds comparison. We’ve got live odds from all the best F1 betting sites and have compared them on the drivers and constructors outrights, as well as a range of individual race markets. This means you can always be assured of getting the best odds on all of your Formula 1 bets without wasting time checking betting sites individually, meaning more time and more money for you!
If you aren’t sure who to back just yet then a quick glance at the Constructors’ Championship betting odds will make it very clear who the bookies predict are going to be top dogs in Formula 1 in 2016. The defending champions, Mercedes, are priced at odds of just 3/14 with 10bet, slightly longer than 1/5. This is a reflection of the driver betting, which sees the Mercedes pair of Hamilton and Rosberg priced as first and second favourites for the title at 4/6 and 3/1 respectively.
Ferrari are deemed to be the only other contender, priced at best betting odds of 4/1 with Sky Bet but it would take a Herculean effort by both of their drivers and indeed all of their engineering staff to overhaul the advantage Mercedes appear to have at this stage. Ferrari finished second last season, some 275 points behind Mercedes and whilst they were an impressive 171 points ahead of third placed Williams-Mercedes it is clear that they have a mountain to climb.
Ferrari will once again have Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen in the cockpits and any team with two former world champions and five championships between them has to be respected but the fact remains that the Mercedes is an almost unstoppable force. Last season Hamilton and Rosberg completed 12 one-two finishes from the 19 races with a further two races where both drivers were on the podium.
Odds of 3/14 are undoubtedly short but with third favourites Red Bull out at 20/1 with William Hill and McLaren priced at odds of 25/1 with Coral, the Constructors’ Championship outright betting is a two-horse race – at best – this year.
We confidently predict more glory for Mercedes and with just a couple of rounds of testing to come (22-25 February and 1-4 March, both in Barcelona) we expect little to change. The lead that the Bracknell team have over their rivals is just far too big to be bridged and with rule changes for the new season limited we think 2016 will follow a similar pattern to 2015 when it comes to the F1 Constructors’ Championship.