Undercutters Ep4: F1 2025 Driver Lineup Predictions (transcript)
Today, we’ll be looking at the driver pairings for each team and I’ll be picking who’ll end up on top, in my opinion (of course). For some teams this is very easy, others are harder to call. There’s been a huge amount of change this year and a lot of young drivers, with multiple newcomers and three drivers who are kind of newcomers in Lawson, Bearman, and Doohan, who have driven before but for less than a full season.
I do need to add a quick disclaimer: Formula 1 is the only sport I follow. This includes other categories of motorsport so my knowledge of new drivers is based on research for this podcast and sometimes numbers don’t tell the whole story. It’s also worth remembering drivers can often be worse than anticipated or exceed expectations. I remember Kamui Kobayashi doing a lot better than many predicted and he was always very fun to watch.
I’ve split the teams into three groups. Unchanged, one new driver, and two new drivers.
We’ll start with unchanged driver lineups of which there are three.
Gasly and Doohan - 01m:34s
There are technically three teams that are unchanged this season, as Doohan drove the final race for Alpine in 2024. So they’re unchanged but it’s kind of a new lineup. Gasly had a great end to the season in 2024, racking up 33 points in the last four race weekends. This meant he actualy finished ahead of Hulkenberg, just, in the standings, and was behind only Alonso in the midfield. He also beat Ocon, his rival and team mate, handily but as updates were only available for Gasly late in the season, and these made a huge difference and Ocon missed the final race comparing the two isn’t really fair, I don’t think.Gasly’s been one of the stars of the midfield for some time now and I think when people look at the midfield, so everyone outside the top four, the names that crop up tend to be the same: Alonso, Gasly, Hulkenberg, for the most part. And this is a great recovery because it’s not that many years ago that Gasly had a brutal half-season at Red Bull from which he’s now fully recovered and if a top team had a vacancy I could see him being on the list of people being considered. That’s not the case, of course.
He said goodbye to Esteban Ocon and I imagine that perhaps both of them are happy not to be sharing a garage anymore. And Gasly’s going to be partnered by Jack Doohan next year, or this coming season, I should say. Doohan finished 2nd in the 2021 F3 championship and in Formula 2 was 3rd in 2023. So that’s pretty good. He was also reserve driver for Alpine for most of 2024 until he drove the final race for them at Abu Dhabi where he finished 15th. Which isn’t great, on the other hand his first race and everybody else was completely up to speed with their cars, so I’m not inclined to read too much into that. But if you compare it to someone like, say, Bearman, for Haas at Azerbaijan not as good.
My prediction for Alpine is one of the easiest calls on this list: Gasly will win comprehensively. I don’t think Doohan will be nearly as close as Ocon but will probably be a lot easier for Gasly to get along with.
Alonso Stroll Head to Head - 04m:21s
Next up, we have Aston Martin. In 2024 Alonso scored 70 points and was the most successful guy, outside the top teams. Stroll, by contrast, scored 24 points in the whole season which was a total reached by Alonso in just four races. The season did see some periods of low motivation and weaker performances for Alonso but these were occasional only and they should be remedied by the combination of Adrian Newey’s arrival and major regulation changes in 2026.Alonso’s spoken about a possible title challenge in that season and I think that’s credible, an outside shot, but credible. He’s still got an awful lot of pace, still very very consistent, and if Newey can do what Newey does and designs a car capable of winning races I don’t see any reason why Alonso can’t. In 2023, Aston Martin started with the best non-Red Bull car and Alonso was on the podium, I think it was something like five races in a row. Certainly in the first part of the season he was on the podium more than anyone apart from Perez and Verstappen.
Turning to the other side of the garage, Stroll often seems unhappy and he had some howlers in 2024. I’ve mentioned these before so I won’t go into detail but the Chinese safety car incident, ramming Ricciardo in the rear, was not great and the infamous gravel trap before the Brazilian Grand Prix was farcical. An interesting thing I learnt when I was running through the numbers is that in 2023 Alonso scored 206 points to Stroll’s 74. That’s about three times as many, just under, which is the same proportion as for 2024. Also, in 2023, Alonso scored 75 points in the first five races. So that’s more than Stroll got all year and the Spaniard had eight podium results to zero for Stroll.
Again, this is not a tricky prediction. Alonso will win by miles. Possibly scoring Stroll’s season total in the first half-dozen races and finishing with nearly three times as many points.
Norris and Piastri - 07m:00s
McLaren are a bit different. They’ve got one of the strongest driver lineups on the grid. Certainly that was the case last season and I think it will be again this year. Norris and Piastri both won multiple races last season. Overall, though, Norris was much better in qualifying. Norris scored 374 points to Piastri’s 292.It wasn’t all plain sailing for Norris, he did have some weak spots. These were in wheel-to-wheel racing, the example that I think of would be getting passed by Piastri in Monza and being unable to pass Verstappen in, I think it was, Austria where Russell inherited the win. Norris also had numerous bad starts and these were pretty serious as a problem but he seemed to iron it out towards the end of the season.
On the upside, Norris had better overall pace and sometimes it was incredibly impressive. Singapore and Zandvoort stand out.
Piastri has a very calm head on his shoulders and a great mentality. I think he can be sharper than Norris in close combat. Bit more ruthless maybe. He had a great mid-season. But Piastri was slower to get going and his performance dropped off late on, whereas Norris was more consistent throughout.
So, a trickier call but I’m still gonna go for Norris to win. I think it’ll be more closely contested this year than most battles.
Ferrari F1 Drivers - 08m:52s
So we come to the biggest group: the one new driver category which is half of all the teams on the grid. And that includes three of the top four teams.Ferrari have what many consider to be the best lineup on the grid with Leclerc and Hamilton. And it’s hard to disagree with that. Want to talk a little about Hamilton and the new regulations because he had a very very close title battle with Verstappen, of course, but his performance has fallen off dramatically since then and the new regulations. And the question is how much of that is down to the lacklustre Mercedes and how much is difficulty, in relative terms, of Hamilton adapating to new regulations.
Just looking at the points between Hamilton and Russell at Mercedes with the current regulations: Hamilton was 22 points behind Russell last season, 59 points ahead in 2023, and in 2022 he was 35 points behind, putting him ahead of Russell, overall by 2 points in three season. I think Hamilton’s actual advantage over Russell is a lot bigger than that and the difference, and why they appear to be evenly matched, is that the elder Briton has more relative difficulty adapting to the current regulations. Now, if I’m right, this makes it likely that Leclerc will beat him in 2025. But in 2026, when there’s new regulations making the cars smaller, basically, and the way the front and rear wings work will change too, in 2026 Hamilton could see a greater performance gain than rivals.
Hamilton’s had some good moments under current regulations. He should’ve won in the Netherlands in 2022, got screwed by the safety car, shockingly. He also had great pace this season in 2024, at Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. But these have been far less frequent than in previous seasons.
Leclerc was strong almost the entire time in 2024. There were some exceptions. Canada, when you’re sent out on hard tyres in the driving rain nobody’s gonna do very well there. He also had some bad luck here and there, as did Hamilton. But overall Leclerc was very impressive over the season. Came close to nabbing 2nd from Norris.
So my prediction is that Leclerc will beat Hamilton.
Russell and Antonelli Mercedes F1 - 11m45s
And that brings us to Hamilton’s old team: Mercedes. Russell had a strong 2024, he had multiple wins and he beat Hamilton, as already mentioned, despite suffering a disqualification from Spa where he finished 1st on-track.Again, as mentioned, he was extremely matched with Hamilton during their years together. So he’s looking pretty set fair.
He’s going to be joined this year by Kimi Antonelli, who won the Italian F4 title in 2022 and the Formula Regional European Championship in 2023. He was 6th in Formula 2 in 2024 but he did miss a race due to illness. Mercedes clearly rate Antonelli highly, to the extent they didn’t want to give Hamilton a longer contract with a view to securing their future with Antonelli.
When it comes to new drivers in F1, some hit the ground running very much so, like Verstappen, Hamilton, Vettel. But Russell’s matched Hamilton all through the current regulation era; he’s no slouch, I’m going to have to say Russell will win this. Because even if Antonelli’s as good as Mercedes think, beating a man who’s been matching Hamilton for three years is a very tall order. Not impossible, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Red Bull Drivers - 13m:20s
Now we’ve got Red Bull, who were 3rd in the Constructors but won the Driver title, or Verstappen did last season. During that year, Verstappen won more races than any other driver with 9 against 4 for Norris. So he scored twice as many as any other driver. Rather obviously, he annihilated Perez. Verstappen scored 437 points to 152 for the Mexican after Perez’s form fell off a cliff. And you can see this with the standings. The top four teams have eight drivers and Red Bull had 1st and 8th for Verstappen and Perez.Verstappen does have a habit of this, though, he’s demolished other drivers. Talented drivers like Albon and Gasly. Gasly, of course, got replaced after half a season in 2019 by Albon. All of those three are good, maybe even very good, drivers. So Lawson, Verstappen’s new team mate is going to be up against it. Lawson’s had a few races in 2023 and 2024, both of which were for the team now known as Racing Bulls. He showed immediate pace and was very impressive.
On the flipside, Tsunoda scored twice as many points as Lawson in 2024 and whitewashed him in qualifying. So if you’re a Tsunoda fan you probably wonder what does he have to do to get a promotion because beating everyone apparently isn’t enough. Lawson has plenty of confidence which, at the moment, is a good thing, we’ll see if it survives.
My prediction has to be that it’s hard to see anything but Verstappen crushing another team mate. If Lawson survives and stays psychologically intact, that’ll be a good result. But maybe he’ll surprise on the upside, we will see.
Racing Bulls 2025 Drivers - 15m:25s
We come to RB, who are now Racing Bulls. As mentioned, Tsunoda had a strong 2024. He outscored Lawson comfortably and that applied to Ricciardo as well before Ricciardo got shifted. The Japanese driver’s making fewer mistakes and has good consistency. The problem he had with scoring points was car development. They lost out in the development race to Haas and Alpine, towards the end.There’s also a fairly small age gap between him and Isack Hadjar, his new team mate. He’s only 4 years older. Hadjar was 2nd to Bortoleto in Formula 2 in 2024. In 2022 he was in contention for the Formula 3 title but ended up 4th. So, pretty good results there but my prediction is gonna be Tsunoda’s been driving very well and I fully expect him to beat Hadjar.
This may be especially likely, and this applies generally to new drivers, if development is relatively wea which means most points are early on when Hadjar’s still learning the ropes. If development’s better then it’s going to be easier for rookies to finish ahead.
Albon and Sainz - 16m:42s
The last team with one driver change is Williams. Albon’s been the number 1 at Williams for quite a few years now but he’s going to be driving alongside Carlos Sainz in 2025. Albon demolished Sargeant when they were team mates and outscored Colapinto 8 points to 5 when they raced together. However, Colapinto was a rookie so that’s not too bad.Looking at Sainz he scored 290 points to Leclerc’s 356, in 2023 Leclerc was ahead by only 6 points, and in 2022 Sainz was 62 points behind. So he’s competitive but not as fast as Leclerc. Obviously it’s a huge downturn for him to be moving from Ferrari to Williams, which is only happening because Hamilton was available. But Sainz is highly experienced and very fast.
Albon has thrived at Williams after he got ejected from Red Bull. But this was mostly with an easily beaten team mate, whether that’s Sargeant or Latifi. Versus Colapinto he seemed a little uncomfortable. Flustered. So my prediction is that Sainz is going to win this fairly easily. I think he’s underrated and I think he’ll be very keen to stamp his authority on the team with a view to being in the mind of top teams when they want a new driver in a year or two, if that happens.
Haas F1 Drivers - 18m:15s
We’re 80% through the teams and if you’re enjoying the podcast so far, why not leave a positive rating and review? It’d be much appreciated.So we come to the final category, those with two new drivers and two teams have completely changed their lineup for the 2025 season. These are Haas and Sauber and we’ll look at Haas first.
They’ve got Bearman and Ocon. Bearman, Oliver Bearman I should say, is not a totally newcomer to F1. Last season he drove for both Ferrari and Haas and he scored for both of them. That’s pretty impressive, particularly the 10th in Azerbaijan, he was one place ahead of Hulkenberg there and Azerbaijan’s the kind of place where you can mess up pretty easily.
Ocon scored 23 points last year, almost all coming with his excellent 2nd in Brazil. A lack of upgrades and then getting dropped for the last race stopped him getting many more. Ocon’s been in the sport for a while, and he’s consistently quick. However, he also consistently annoys team mates. His clunky overtake on Gasly in Monaco is an example of doing this and also of poor judgement and selfish behaviour. So we’ll see if this continues.
Before he joined F1, Bearman was 6th in Formula 2 in 2023 and 12th in 2024 but obviously the latter season overlapped with F1 appearances. Of his three appearances in 2024 only one was pointless. That was Interlagos which was very wet and tricky, where he was 12th. Given the conditions and lack of experience that’s not too bad, although he did give himself a hard time over it.
My prediction here is… Bearman. He beat Hulkenberg narrowly in Azerbaijan and was 24s behind Leclerc in Saudi Arabia. But given that was his first race in F1 at short notice, and Leclerc’s a really good driver, that’s still very good. One of the reasons I’ve gone for Bearman, when I’ve generally not gone for rookies, is we do have solid F1 data on him. And his performance in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Interlagos, all points in a very positive direction. I don’t think this’ll be cut and dry, I think it’ll be very close but he might do it.
Sauber Drivers 2025 - 20m:54s
So we come to Sauber, last in terms of points and last on our list as well.
In 2026 they’re going to become the Audi works team. And ahead of that they’ve opted for one experienced and one new driver. The experienced guy being Hulkenberg and the new guy being Gabriel Bortoleto. Hulkenberg is a talented chap and had a very good 2024. He’s also 17 years older than his new Brazilian team mate, so he’s old enough to be Bortoleto’s dad.
Speaking of the Brazilian, he only started single seater racing in 2020, and won Formula 3 in 2023, the year of his debut in that series. He followed this up in 2024 by winning Formula 2, which is something that Leclerc, Russell, and Piastri have also achieved. And, obviously, all of those are doing very well right now.
Another highlight I noticed was at Monza in Formula 2 he went from last to win. And it’s kind of nice to see a Brazilian back on the grid. It’s been a little while. I think it was 2017 that Felipe Massa said goodbye. So that record for Bortoleto is very impressive and I found this to be the hardest call to make. I think if we had, as with Bearman, some solid F1 data maybe that would change my mind but, for the moment, I think Hulkenberg.
He’s a very good driver and experienced driver and his 2024 season was very strong indeed. The 6th places in Austria and the UK were very impressive. So I think Bortoleto is going to do very well, probably finish behind Hulkenberg.
General Thoughts and Ranking the Driver Lineups - 23m:00s
So that’s the end of the 10 predictions but there are a couple more things I want to briefly cover. It’s hard to predict how a new driver will do and there are tons this year.
The closest battles I’m expecting are probably Hulkenberg and Bortoleto, and Bearman versus Ocon. At the top end of the grid, the closest contests will probably be Piastri and Norris, and Hamilton versus Leclerc.
There’s also, at the time of recording, a poll in progress on the official F1 website for the best driver lineup. At the time of recording Ferrari are easily first with 57% of the vote. McLaren are clearly in 2nd with 29%. Red Bull have 6%, Williams 5% and everyone else, so half the grid, are on 0% or 1%. So that’s a pretty clear ‘Ferrari are the best’, according to the poll, McLaren are clearly 2nd best, and then everybody else is on scraps.
For those wondering, I agree with the F1 poll that it’s basically a two horse race between Ferrari and McLaren as to who has the better driver lineup. Ferrari are probably better. It’ll be interesting can perform as well during a whole season as he did during high points of 2024 when he was the top scorer, along with Hamilton, for about four races.
I’d probably place Red Bull as 3rd best, and then Mercedes in 4th. Williams I’d place as 5th best for driver lineup as they have two proven drivers. And I’d put Haas in 6th as Ocon’s swift and Bearman had very strong starts for two different teams last season and might give the Frenchman a run for his money.
Very difficult to tell between Sauber and Aston Martin. Because Alonso’s great but Stroll very much is not. Hulkenberg’s a star of the midfield, Bortoleto is unknown, he could be really good but you can never tell until things go live. So I’d guess Sauber in 7th and Aston Martin in 8th. I was tempted to switch them around because Alonso is fantastic, still, but Stroll drags down the pairing.
I’d put Alpine in 9th, Gasly’s great but Doohan’s sole appearance so far was lacklustre. And Racing Bulls are probably bottom of the heap, alas. Hadjar’s a last minute replacement and while Tsunoda’s a decent driver I don’t think he’s as good as Gasly or Hulkenberg.
At the end of the season I’m sure I’ll look back at this and remark on how many I got right and how many wrong. I did tend to be conservative. We’ll see if that turns out to be smart or not.
As always, you can get in touch with me on Twitter at MorrisF1, or for the transcript of this and to see some lovely graphs, you can head over to morrisf1.blogspot.com.
Next up, I’ll be assessing the title odds in the betting markets to see who the favourite is and if we can learn anything interesting from the odds as they stand.
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