F1 2025 Predictions (Undercutters Ep8 transcript)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 8th Undercutters podcast. I’m your host, Morris, and this episode is all about Formula 1 predictions for 2025. I’ve decided to make this episode before testing for a couple of reasons. In 2024, F1 testing was actually a pretty poor guide in various ways, with Haas being seen as rubbish only to turn out to be pretty good all year. Also, there’s just over two weeks from the end of testing to the start of the season and cramming in post-testing thoughts, F1 predictions, and the preview for the Australian Grand Prix felt a bit much.
It’s very easy to look like a complete idiot when predicting things, so I’ll get started right away.
F1 Prediction: Who will Win the Drivers’ Title? 00m:47s
I’m going to start with the most obvious of Formula 1 predictions: who will win the F1 championship? We’re going to look at the F1 driver title first.
In the 2024 season there were four teams that produced cars capable of winning multiple races. The drivers’ title might be classed as a two or three horse race, depending on whether or not you feel like adding Charles Leclerc to Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. Much of the media coverage did portray it as a two horse race, and this is not unfair as Ferrari’s initial success did see a relative drop-off, with Verstappen retaining an early lead and Norris being the fastest man in the fastest car for much of the season. Ferrari then enjoyed a late spurt of success which put the constructors’ title in contention and meant Leclerc finished just 18 points behind Norris.
Ferrari is the most interesting team for both titles in two different ways. The first is very obvious: they’ve got Leclerc and Hamilton, which is quite the lineup. The second is that their car is expected to undergo a fundamental change, with the front suspension shifting from push rod to pull rod. The pull rod approach is also taken by Red Bull and McLaren (plus RB and Sauber) so neither style is inherently superior. Ferrari, therefore, have greater scope for change in pace than most other teams. This makes things interesting but also makes it more difficult when making F1 predictions for 2025. If things go well, they might have the best car on the grid. If things go very badly, they might replicate the downward spiral that McLaren suffered around 2013 when they changed their suspension setup and ended up tumbling down the order.
This may well make Ferrari the most volatile car in terms of change from 2024 to the F1 2025 season. This cuts both ways, and is an interesting choice given there’s just one more year with the current regulations (another similarity to McLaren when they did it a decade or so ago).
I agree with the Formula 1 predictions consensus that McLaren and Ferrari will have cars ahead of the Red Bull and Mercedes. For me, this rules out Lawson, Antonelli, and Russell as potential title challengers. I also think that Norris and Leclerc will beat their team mates, which leaves those two drivers plus Max Verstappen in the picture for the title.
My guess is that Verstappen will have a slight car deficit compared to Norris and Leclerc but will benefit from being a clear number one driver right from the word go. Piastri and Hamilton will take points away from Norris and Leclerc early on, and neither McLaren nor Ferrari will be trying to pick a winner immediately. This gives Verstappen an edge when it comes to team mates taking points. Will it be enough to offset a potentially slower car?
I suspect the edge Norris will have over Piastri will be bigger than Leclerc’s advantage over Hamilton. While Leclerc might be a contender I do agree with the general consensus that the top two will be Norris and Verstappen.
But not in that order. Even without the first five races, Verstappen would have won the F1 2024 drivers’ title. If his car is close to the others he’s the favourite for the title. Odd as this might sound, I think people underestimate Verstappen. This might be due to 2023 when the Red Bull was dominant and winning almost every single weekend. In 2024, it was the fastest car for the first five races but then declined to be around second or third fastest most of the time. Even with that, Verstappen did well enough to win.
I do think that the F1 2025 drivers’ title will be much closer than in 2024. This is partly because I don’t expect the same degree of volatility from one weekend to the next, nor for there to be so many wins for so many teams. My suspicion is it will be a more classic season, with Verstappen, Norris, and Leclerc competing consistently.
My 2025 Formula 1 prediction for the drivers’ title is Verstappen, narrowly beating Norris, with Leclerc slightly further back.
If the Ferrari team pull a blinder, then Leclerc could well win. But my prediction is that Verstappen makes it five in a row.
Formula 1 Prediction: Constructors’ Title 05m:43s
The constructors’ title is another story entirely. I do not think Red Bull will do well here as the McLaren and Ferrari lineups are both excellent. I agree with with the results of the F1 website poll that these two are the best lineups by some distance.
The question is which car is better initially, and how they develop over the course of the season. I’ve got to side with McLaren here. There are a few reasons. In recent history, McLaren have been fantastic at developing a car, often better than everyone else and never really surpassed. Because Ferrari have altered their car more significantly this does present the possibility they’ll move ahead but also the risk they’ll drop off.
In driver terms, there isn’t a huge amount between them but most would say Ferrari have the better pairing. However, Hamilton’s recent qualifying has not been as good as it could be.
My F1 prediction for the constructors’ title in 2025 is McLaren to win it, followed by Ferrari and then Red Bull.
You might have noticed that both my predictions are exactly what happened in 2024. But I do have just cause for thinking this way, and the betting odds agree entirely on the constructors’ and only differ for the drivers’ title by making Norris very slight favourite ahead of Verstappen.
It’s a new season so we might see things drift more than expected from 2024. But if things do stay broadly the same that means we’ll have another fantastic season.
F1 Prediction: Best of the Rest 07m:24s
Next on the list of F1 Predictions for 2025 is: who will be the best of the rest, the king of midfield in the 2025 F1 season?
In both 2023 and 2024 the answers were Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso. But I think both will change in 2025, because of Aston Martin’s downward trend, which I’ll cover a bit more later. The midfield was entertainingly competitive in 2024, with RB, Haas, and Alpine all in close contention and faster than Aston Martin in the latter part of the season.
I think Aston Martin’s declining performance means they’ll lose out this year, and Racing Bulls have a weaker driver lineup than either Haas or Alpine.
Alpine were a funny old beast in 2024, rubbish for almost the whole season, then very impressive for the last four races or so. In 2025 the team is likely to begin as Gasly and Doohan before the latter is shipped out and replaced with Colapinto. But is Gasly and Colapinto as good as Bearman and Ocon?
The driver decision is easier, as I’m backing Gasly for this. If Alonso is hamstrung by Aston Martin going backwards and Hulkenberg’s out of the running in a Sauber then Gasly is the remaining star of the midfield in a probably competitive car. He finished right behind Alonso in the standings last year, and while the points gap was 28 this was falling rapidly by the end of the season.
However, I think Haas will end up 5th in the Constructors’, ahead of both Alpine and Aston Martin. Bearman and Ocon is a very good lineup for a midfield team, and I think both drivers can be underrated.
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Formula 1 Prediction: Biggest Team Mate Gap (Points Only) 09m:30s
My next F1 2025 prediction is about the biggest team mate gap, in terms of raw points.
How the team mate pairings go this year is going to be fascinating because there are so many new drivers on the grid. Add into this the very strong pairings at McLaren and Ferrari and we could see some titanic battles. At Red Bull and Aston Martin, we’re likely to see things go a bit more lopsided.
Other teams that I think could be tilted towards one driver heavily are Williams, Alpine, and perhaps Mercedes.
For Alpine, I’m assuming Doohan is replaced by Colapinto around six races in, so that comparison would be between Gasly and Colapinto. I rate Colapinto pretty highly but Gasly is very quick and should have the whole season, not just three-quarters. However, that does make it an unfair comparison in my eyes so I’m not counting Alpine.
I think that Red Bull will have the biggest points difference. They should be one of the big four again and I think Verstappen will enjoy the whip hand. Constantly racking up points, including podium finishes and wins, means he has a good chance of ending the season a long way ahead of Lawson even if Lawson does pretty well. If we end up with a Perez situation the points difference will be astronomical.
F1 Prediction: Smallest Team Mate Gap (Points and Percentage) 10m:59s
I also want to consider which team mates might have the smallest gaps between them, in terms of both points and as a percentage.
The teams I anticipate being fairly well-balanced include Ferrari, McLaren, Haas, and Sauber. The first two will score a bundle of points all season long, and while I expect Haas to be in the points fairly often they’ll be scoring at the lower edges. Sauber might not score all year, though I suspect they’ll have one or two points finishes.
Even if Leclerc and Hamilton or Piastri and Norris are very closely matched then that’s a few points per race and could add up to 60 or so by then end of a 24 race season. Last year, Russell and Hamilton were the closest matched of the top teams and still had a 22 points gap between them, which is greater than most midfield teams (exceptions include Alonso over Stroll and Hulkenberg over Magnussen). So I think the smallest points difference is almost certain to come from the midfield. I’m opting for Haas. I found this very hard to call in the driver lineup predictions and eventually opted for Bearman over Ocon but I do think this will be highly competitive. They won’t score every race weekend and when they do it’ll be minor points almost always.
The percentage difference is perhaps the more interesting F1 prediction to consider. I didn’t use this for the largest gaps as one team mate scoring zero or a single point can distort things. Most people believe that Leclerc and Hamilton will be more closely matched than Norris and Piastri. I think that’s open to doubt. The Leclerc-Sainz gap in 2024 was 66 points, with Piastri 82 points behind Norris. The Aussie does have the pace to be closer, but his form fell off towards the end of the year. The F1 2025 season will be only his third year driving and he’s still very much getting better. Norris scored 56% of the points, while Leclerc scored 55%. Russell scored 52%.
However, there’s a points premium for winning, with the gap to 2nd being 7 points. And because I think Norris will be the chief rival for Verstappen this year I think this will broaden the gap to Piastri. So, in percentage terms, I think the closest pairing will probably be Leclerc and Hamilton. The Briton’s qualifying needs to improve but he has been good in races of late.
Formula 1 Prediction: Most Poles 13m:44s
Who will get most poles?
When it comes to qualifying I expect that Leclerc will be the man to beat, unless Ferrari completely changing their car concept leads to their performance falling off a cliff. It’s unfortunate that his excellence in qualifying doesn’t always get converted into a race win but I think on Saturday Leclerc’s probably the best driver right now.
Obviously, competition will come from Norris, Verstappen, Piastri, and Hamilton, but Hamilton’s been a bit iffy in qualifying, Piastri will mostly be behind his team mate, and I don’t think Norris or Verstappen are quite as good as Leclerc over a single lap.
F1 2025 Prediction: Most Wins 14m:29s
Most wins is a tricky F1 prediction to consider because I think Verstappen will have the third fastest car but also far less competition from his team mate than either Norris or Leclerc. In development terms, if any of the big teams is a mile off they may opt to shift their focus entirely to 2026, when we see the new regulations, which would obviously undermine their 2025 campaigns.
Tough to call but I’m going to go with Norris. Once again, I think it’s between him and Verstappen. Leclerc’s great at getting pole but has only eight race wins despite 26 pole positions.
Formula 1 Prediction: Most DNFs 15m:11s
Next up we look at the F1 2025 prediction for most DNFs in the course of the season.
If Sargeant or Latifi were still driving for Williams then most DNFs would be a bit easier to guess. There are a few ways DNFs can occur: bad weather causing a crash, driver error or misfortune causing a crash in normal conditions, and car failure. Reliability is miles better than it was in days gone by, and usually doesn’t affect things too much.
The driver and conditions are the main causes of DNFs nowadays, as we saw in the Brazilian Grand Prix last year. The numerous rookies on the grid make this an interesting question. Many think Antonelli has fantastic pace but is also prone to errors, something perhaps backed up by his practice sessions last year. If Ocon and Bearman are close together then clashes are eminently possible, as we saw between Ocon and Gasly in Monaco last year, and at the Australian Grand Prix in 2023.
I think it’s reasonable to pick a rookie, and I’m going for Isack Hadjar. The reason is that he’s likely to usually be in the lower half of the grid, with plenty of opportunity to hit or get hit by others. In addition, he lacks the experience of other midfield chaps like Bearman and Colapinto, assuming the Argentine driver joins the grid. Bortoleto will likely be near the back, with fewer opportunities for mischief, while Lawson’s relatively experienced and hasn’t shown himself prone to crashing, and Antonelli should only be in close contact with a top few drivers, so unless he crashes by himself he should be ok.
F1 2025 Prediction: Will a Team Outside the Top Four Finish on the Podium? 16m:55s
Will any team outside the top four finish on the podium in the 2025 season?
While the races in the F1 2024 season were very exciting with the top four teams swapping wins and every weekend being hard to call, this also meant the podium was dominated almost entirely by Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes. I think Brazil was the sole exception, in large part due to the weird circumstances. Unless one of the top teams drops the ball or we have another freak race then I think there’s a high chance we won’t see anyone else make it onto the podium. The two dozen races means it’s possible we’ll get another Brazil but I think the top four will lock down the podium this year.
Formula 1 Prediction: Biggest Decline From 2024 17m:43s
Now let’s consider who will have the biggest decline from 2024.
Aston Martin saw a huge decline from 2023 to 2024. Two years ago they scored 280 points, just 22 fewer than McLaren. In the 2024 season, Aston Martin got 94 points, and were 572 points behind McLaren. Despite this they were 5th in both those seasons.
Alonso got many podium finishes in 2023 and none in 2024. In addition, the car developed poorly across both seasons. I covered in a previous news section how the upgrades were likely poor due to using Mercedes’ wind tunnel which provided data that did not correlate to the real world. This seems to be mended for Mercedes but Aston Martin are going to start using their own wind tunnel, and, while Mercedes developed better in 2024, the Aston Martin upgrades saw them lose relative pace to midfield rivals.
Haas were consistent, fast, and developed well across the whole season. RB started well and then lost out to Haas and also Alpine, who started terribly but developed incredibly well late on.
I’m putting Aston Martin as my prediction for the biggest decline from one year to the next. They finished 5th in the standings for both 2023 and 2024. I think they stand a high chance of finishing behind Alpine and Haas. For those wondering about Adrian Newey, he won’t have the opportunity to have much impact on the car this year.
F1 Prediction: Biggest Improvement from 2024 19m:38s
On a happier note, who might improve the most from last season?
Williams have the potential for this, although, understandably, their main focus will be on 2026 and the new regulation era. The lineup of Sainz and Albon is very good indeed for a team that finished 9th last year. I’m not sure if they’ll be able to improve on that given how competitive the midfield is but I do expect them to have more points, more points finishes, and to look in promising shape for the 2026 season.
Will the sprint races alter who wins the titles in F1 2025? 20m:04s
Will the sprint races alter who wins the F1 2025 titles?
Six sprint races are on the calendar this year, the same as last season, with 8 points for a win, meaning there’s 48 points on the table. If the sprints do alter who wins the titles this means the season will have been nice and close, but the champions will be determined by an extra mini-event stuffed onto the schedule to extract more money from fans. I’m not in favour of sprint races, as you might have gathered, and think it’d be a travesty if they alter how the titles turn out. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this will be the case.
Formula 1 Prediction: Development race winners and losers, comparing H1 to H2 performances 20m:43s
I thought it would be interesting to try and assess who will lose and who will win the development race. Measuring this can be tricky so I’ve decided to compare the performance through the points scored in the first and second halves of the season, with the UK being the last race in the first half and Belgium being the first race in the second.
While McLaren have rightly received plaudits for their upgrades in the last two seasons, I think this will be a little less impressive in 2025 due in large part to the flexi-wing change, which is covered in the news section at the end of the podcast. By contrast, Ferrari might well be a net beneficiary of the flexi-wing being banned for two-thirds of the season and they also developed nicely all the way through 2024.
Alpine had the best performance in this regard last season but unless they start with a terrible car again it’s unlikely they’ll be able to repeat that.
My prediction is for Ferrari to have the best performance increase from the first to the second half of the year.
As for the worst, there are a few options. Aston Martin have a bad habit of developing poorly, in ironic contrast to their Force India days when they had less money but were really good at development. It’s also possible that top teams not in the running for the title might just decide to shift focus entirely to 2026, as history teaches us a strong start to a regulatory period can lead to multiple titles, as per Vettel, Hamilton, and Verstappen. But even if they do that, all the top teams are still likely to be ahead of the midfield.
It’s also possible midfield runners could focus on next year, with Williams and Sauber the most obvious possibilities.
I’m going to stick with Aston Martin developing poorly, as this has been something they’ve done fairly consistently. So the biggest performance improvement I think we’ll see will be Ferrari, while the worst decline will be Aston Martin.
F1 Prediction: How many Drivers will Compete? 22m:53s
Time for the final Formula 1 Prediction for 2025: how many drivers will compete?
The 2024 F1 season had 10 teams with two drivers each, yet the total number of drivers in the season was 24. This was very unusual and I don’t think we’ll see this repeat, to the same extent, in 2025. That being said, it’s near certain Doohan will be replaced by Colapinto. It’s possible another driver might be replaced if they have a shocker, or if someone gets injured. With so many rookies on the grid, my prediction is we’ll end up with 22 drivers competing this year.
F1 News 23m:36s
F1 News.
The FIA are ever ready to be inconsistent. The sport’s governing body, having permitted flexi-wings in 2025, has performed a U-turn. One of the reasons for indicating flexi-wings would be ok was to assist teams in developing their cars and avoid pouring resources into a dead end. However, the FIA has now decided that flexi-wings will be allowed at the start of the F1 2025 season and then effectively banned from the Spanish Grand Prix on the 1st of June, which is the ninth race of the year, one-third into the season. At this time tougher tests will come in for the front wing.
Who benefits from this? Well, those most adept at using the flexi-wings last year were McLaren and Mercedes. This might aid Red Bull most of all, whose early advantage in 2024 was wiped out when McLaren’s new front wing arrived. Ferrari were late to the flexi-wing party so they may also get a relative performance gain versus McLaren and Mercedes, but perhaps to a lesser extent than Red Bull.
Also, the official start times are finally up. The Australian Grand Prix starts at 4am UK time, with qualifying starting at 5am. Whether I manage to get up in time for the race is open to doubt, and I might watch the highlights anyway as I imagine I’ll be rather sleepy during the live event.
In addition, the Las Vegas Grand Prix start time has been moved two hours earlier, so it will also start at 4am UK time, rather than 6am. It’s an exciting new way the Americanisation of the sport has found to annoy fans in Europe.
Last, we have some Audi-Sauber news. They’re to open a base in the UK. This is a substantial step for the Swiss-based team, and one that will help them a lot when it comes to attracting talent. There’s a corner of England where almost every team except Sauber and Ferrari have a base, which means engineers can switch teams without having to move house or find a new school for their kids. This is a great little eco-system for teams, so basing at least some operations there will help Audi attract more talented individuals.
And that brings us to the end of this F1 2025 predictions episode. Thank you for listening. As always, if you want to get in touch then you can find me on Twitter at MorrisF1, or leave a comment on the morrisf1.blogspot.com website, which is where I post transcripts of the podcast.
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