Welcome to the final Part of my 2025 F1 Season Review. I’m really sorry you had to wait so long here, the big reason being… I caught a really nasty virus over Christmas that stopped me dead in my tracks, so this took about a week longer than I would have liked. Apologies, here’s Part 3 where I talk about the big dawgs – Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren, before some looking on to 2026, and some closing thoughts on the year just gone. Thanks for your patience.
Scuderia Ferrari HP
Constructor’s Position: Fourth (398 Points)
Head-To-Head Records: Leclerc 23-7 In Qualifying and Races
Best Finish: 2nd (x2 – Monaco and Mexico City)
Season In A Nutshell: Return Of The Honse
I can’t stand this team. Full disclosure, I grew up a Ferrari fan, they’ll always have a special place in their heart, even though this team has a firm tendency to kick me in the dick on a yearly basis.
Last year, the dick kicking came as a result of being teased. So close to their first major title in 16 years, they came up just 14 points shy of the Constructor’s title, despite reliability issues and a development path that went completely off the rails in the middle of the year. It was a year of what could have been.
Fred Vasseur elected to gamble knowing he was entering the final year of the regulation set. A radically different car, claimed to be over 90% new parts. Oh, and the small unimportant matter of hiring the statistically greatest driver ever in the second car instead of Carlos Sainz Jr. The hype was real, but like every man who’s ever let go early and then had to waddle to the bathroom holding himself, it was a rather embarrassing spectacle.
This season was probably the most irrelevant that Ferrari has been relative to success since 2020. Nothing on this car was elite. It was middle of the road in low-speed, medium and high-speed turns, the balance was off through the corners, it didn’t have enough power to compensate, and it was nothing special on its tires. But that in a blender, hit frappe, and you get a team that at times was the best in the sport falling to second at best, and at times, as low as fourth.
A severe weakness to wet weather was exposed right at the start in Australia when they finished 8th and 10th. Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Sprint race, but the car was so low they had to raise it for the Grand Prix, killing its performance. And yet both cars ended up disqualified after the flag. And for the first time in 76 years of F1, they were tossed for different reasons – Leclerc for being underweight, and Hamilton for excessive skid wear. Humiliating.
Saudi Arabia was the closest Ferrari would come to victory all year, with Leclerc just barely in the lead fight as Piastri and Verstappen pulled away at the front. Winless on the year and just seven podiums, all from Leclerc. The latter busted his ass on so many occasions to take whatever he could from a rough car, while Lewis Hamilton tried to stay with him. On a good day he could, on a bad day, he was double-digit seconds back.
I still suspect John Elkann has a degree of buyers remorse over his landmark deal, because why else would he make his divisive comments after Brazil? By year’s end, Ferrari looked lost at sea. Leclerc in Qatar had a 720 spin and the car looked like it was the F14T vacuum cleaner again, understeer and oversteer all at once. All while Lewis couldn’t get out of Q1, calling his season in red “a nightmare”. So much for the photoshoot.
The rumours are, Fred Vasseur is on the hotseat for 2026 immediately, and that if the initial car is poor, he’s gone. I feel for the man, he’s one of the genuinely likeable team bosses in the sport, he has to deal with the nastiest national press in the business and his mother passed away earlier this year, but he has to be the accountable one if this regression holds. The Tifosi will not tolerate failure and this team will be blown up if there’s a second straight season of poor results. Good luck.
Charles Leclerc – 5th In Points (242), 1 Pole Position, 7 Podiums, 20 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 2nd (x2) / Average Start – 5.4 / Average Finish – 6.8 / Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of 2025 – #3
This is Year 7 of Charles at Ferrari. They’ve not delivered him a title challenger yet. This is becoming one of F1’s greatest dick-punchings.
Let me make one thing clear, and it’s not the first time it’s been said – Leclerc’s the only thing about this team that wasn’t mid at best. He is F1’s Superman right now with what he’s doing with this car and with this team and I still don’t think he gets the flowers he deserved. Seven podiums in a car that was nearer fourth on the board for most of the season is a phenomenal effort. He barely put a foot wrong all season and was constantly extracting everything he could from an inherently flawed car.
I look at the Wikipedia strip of his season, a year where he’s in no man’s land, 77 points behind George Russell and 86 ahead of his teammate and I think: “What was bad about his season, outside of the car?”. Britain, where he lost control but even then, the car sucks in the wet. Australia, same deal. Qatar the car looked undriveable. That might be about it.
On the contrary, there were many brilliant performances that went under the radar. So close to that vital Monaco pole position against Lando that likely would have been a free win. Holding off Verstappen in Mexico and Spa, two of his best tracks for podium finishes. The pole position in Hungary that shocked the field until adding to the car’s tire pressures mid-race killed the car. That was one of five front row starts in 2025. Being the only partial spoiler in Abu Dhabi for the title race. Ferrari wasn’t relevant at the front for 2025, but man did Charles try.
The people who know wheel know this man is a special talent. He’s become F1’s Fabio Quartararo, burning the years of his prime out of loyalty to a team that quite frankly, doesn’t deserve him. Give that man something, please, LORD. 9/10
Lewis Hamilton – 6th In Points (156), 1 Sprint Win, 2 Sprint Podiums, 19 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 4th (x4) / Average Start: 9.4 / Average Finish: 8.5
I haven’t forgotten. The mob gangster jacket. In front of Enzo Ferrari’s house. The eight open windows, in front of arguably their greatest car, the F40. This wasn’t just a photoshoot to say “Welcome to Maranello”. It was a statement of intent that Sir Lewis Hamilton was here and gunning for his rightful Number 8.
What we got was for me – The worst season of Lewis Hamilton’s legendary career. Of course, as said with many others in this series, a degree of mitigation would be needed as this was a radical new move for LH, new country, new lifestyle, very different car and culture after 12 years at Mercedes. But even then, if we’re evaluating Lewis like the GOAT he arguably is, you can’t call this season anything other than a disappointment.
I warned you all on the Podcast when we had Spencer Hall on back in February. He was walking into the toughest name in the business, against one of the best drivers on the planet, and he came off getting beaten by George Russell handily in 2024. Anyone expecting a different result, I think were kidding themselves.
On a good day, Lewis could run within a couple of tenths of Charles on average. He was a consistent points scorer – 11 out of the first 12 races. That two tenth margin was also his average qualifying deficit. The problem with that though, is that that equated to 3.6 places on the grid compared to Charles. Two full rows. The difference between making Q3 and dipping out early – Lewis did the latter nine times in 2025. Isack Hadjar made Q3 more often.
On the bad days like Saudi Arabia, he was 30 seconds behind Charles, straight up. A couple of poor crashes in Zandvoort and having to park it after driving into Franco Colapinto in Brazil. That end of season run was genuinely hard to watch, seeing a clearly angry and dejected Hamilton give up on the year. Four straight Q1 eliminations to close it out and just 10 points across those four weekends. 24 races without a podium finish, long surpassing Ivan Capelli’s “record”.
I don’t want to declare Hamilton is cooked, or anything like that. But we might be seeing the transition of Lewis into just being a “good” driver rather than the great one he’s been for the last 16-17 years. Rumour has it Lewis is trying to influence the team leadership in a similar way to Sebastian Vettel. I get it, Lewis has more Championship experience than anyone in history, but just how much of an influence did he have in the Mercedes dynasty beyond his driving excellence? And a sincere question – How influential should a soon-to-be 41-year old Lewis Hamilton be in 2026, coming off two of his weaker seasons?
Whatever you think, one thing is for certain, Lewis Hamilton didn’t join Ferrari for this, and Ferrari didn’t empty the clip for this amount of return on their investment. Something has to give in 2026. 6/10
Oracle Red Bull Racing
Constructor’s Position: Third (451 Points)
Head-To-Head Records (vs Tsunoda): Verstappen 26-1 In Qualifying, 25-2 In Races
Best Result: 1st (x8)
Season In A Nutshell: The End?
This really feels like the end of an era in Milton Keynes. It’s impossible to talk about Red Bull Racing, then, now or in the future without talking about their two big kingpins. Christian Horner, the team’s very first leader from Day 1 in 2005 and Helmut Marko, head of Red Bull’s Driver Academy since 1998, were both released over the course of the season.
Horner, who had somehow survived two investigations into alleged misconduct within the team, was finally let go from the team for poor performance after 20 years in charge and the protection from the Thai ownership side of the business disappearing with their stake reducing from 51 to 49%. It was a genuine shock, but after the last 18 months, CEO Oliver Mintzlaff (Big Red Bull) wanted a fresh start. It’s worth noting that this was after the British Grand Prix, arguably the biggest day of disfunction for the team in the Verstappen era. A car that was a nightmare to drive week-to-week, that Max was still able to hustle to two wins in Imola and Suzuka, but threading that performance window got really difficult, even for the best in the world. Silverstone, where they gambled on a Monza rear wing despite the heavily rain affected race, was the final straw as Max spun out and could only manage fifth as McLaren scored another 1-2.
Laurent Meikes came in as Red Bull’s new CEO and there was definitely a change in mentality within the team. A commitment to try and go for the Driver’s title, even with Max as far as 104 points back in Zandvoort. A trust in Max over even what the team’s simulator was telling them too. Combine that with a front wing and floor package that debuted in Monza, and it was a game changer. Quite possibly the greatest of its kind in the modern era. It was enough to widen Max’s performance window and get the Red Bull into play. And next thing you know, McLaren’s points lead melted:
104 > 94 > 69 > 63 > 40 > 36 > 49 > 24 > 12 > 2
Max wins six out of the final ten and refuses to finish off the podium on Sunday. It was an astonishing comeback that nearly pulled off the unthinkable. Helmut Marko’s latest words to the press after his release said that if they had fired Horner sooner, they’d have won the title. Not sure about the development decisions back there, but it definitely felt like that upgrade path came around two rounds too late.
Red Bull turned around a completely dead season, but there’s still a nasty aftertaste in the mouth. After Horner’s £57m buyout to send him home, Helmut Marko got drunk with power and inserted Arvid Lindblad into Racing Bulls as well as attempted to bring in F2 ace prospect Alex Dunne from McLaren, without Mintzlaff and Meikes’ blessing. Marko was explicitly told by senior management that Dunne wasn’t viable. With it, Mintzlaff told Marko to take his ball and go home. Across the garage, Yuki Tsunoda struggled to perform as an emergency switch for Liam Lawson after just two rounds, and never really found his footing, and now he’s out as Isack Hadjar takes his place.
It’s a new era for Red Bull in 2026. Honda is gone, in comes Red Bull’s own Powertrains in collab with Ford. Laurent Meikes wasn’t perfect but led an exceptional comeback as new team leader, is he going to continue the recent positive trend of engineers in overall leadership roles. And who replaces Marko? Guillaume “Rocky” Rocquelin, Sebastian Vettel’s old race engineer, is rumoured to be in the frame. Maybe it’ll be a softer, more forgiving Red Bull. Has the culture truly changed? We’ll have to see. Because the 2026 aim is simple – Keep Max Verstappen. At all costs.
Editor’s Note: On the day this was due to go out, it leaked to the public and was reported by Autosport that Gianpiero Lambiase’s wife has been battling breast cancer throughout 2025. That may explain some of his leave across the season and maybe some of the emotional moments we’ve seen on camera. I also suspect that this is something that wasn’t supposed to be put out there and now we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I’ve been one of those people who have written about it, so I wanted to take an extra minute here to send my love and strength to GP, the family, and also ponder as to where the line is drawn when it comes to ethics in sports journalism, because that feels like something that shouldn’t be out there unless explicitly said so.
Yuki Tsunoda – 17th In Points (33), 7 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 6th / Average Start: 12.8 / Average Finish: 12.2
Yuki Tsunoda was setting up for another season where he’d look solid in Racing Bulls colours. He had a big early advantage on Isack Hadjar after the first two weekends. Until Liam Lawson was jettisoned from Red Bull after the Chinese Grand Prix. Tsunoda was now a Red Bull driver, with no off-season to adapt to the car, and now was lining up against Verstappen, the teammate killer. And the result was about what you’d expect.
There were genuine moments sprinkled across the season where the Japanese driver was around 3-4 tenths behind Max, the ideal sweetspot for someone looking to back him up. But the majority of the time it just wasn’t. On average, Yuki was seven tenths slower than Max on a single lap. That just isn’t good enough for what the team needs.
For me, the Imola crash in Qualifying was the nail in the coffin. Why? Because it set Yuki back in terms of potential upgrades and put him on the backfoot for the majority of the season. The best he could manage was sixth in Baku, intentionally blocking Lando Norris, and a couple of decent sprints. Understandably with a new set of regulations coming, Red Bull are going to roll the dice on Isack Hadjar.
Yuki Tsunoda has been demoted to test/reserve driver. I’m glad he’s taken it on, it still represents his best chance of getting back on the grid, and I think in the right team he’s still good enough to be there. He’s rubbed shoulders with many established players in the space, had over 100 starts (The most of any Japanese driver, ever), and he got given chances because there was enough for people to believe in him. In F1, that’s worth more than you think. 3/10
Max Verstappen – 2nd In Points (421), 8 Wins, 8 Pole Positions, 2 Sprint Wins, 15 Podiums / Average Start: 3.6 / Average Finish: 3.7 / Dre’s 2025 F1 Driver Of The Year
It’s funny. In a weird sort of way, Max Verstappen may have had his greatest campaign yet, in the one year he didn’t win the title.
With Red Bull, you know the score. They’re committed to the Driver’s title, and building their structure around Max. The RB21 was a meddlesome bastard at the best of times. For the first two thirds of the season, getting the car in the window without butchering its tires was a near impossible task. Through picking off McLaren errors, and a pass of the year winner, he was able to steal wins in Japan and Imola from Team Papaya, but that just wasn’t a week to week possibility.
At times Ferrari and Mercedes were also giving Max a headache, like in Bahrain where the car was nowhere, the aforementioned Silverstone blown gamble on setup, Hungary’s wrong strategy to run the 2-stopper, or Barcelona before Gianpiero Lambiase set Max off with a wrongful message to step aside. I maintain, a better pitwall doesn’t make that call, even if Max losing his rag was unacceptable.
Then the Summer Break happened. See Verstappen’s average finish? It was 5.3 after Hungary. It was 1.4 from Zandvoort to the end of the season. That’s 2023 pacing from Max. The 19-win season. 10 straight podium finishes from his home race to the end, including six wins. It was the Max of old, get him in the window and he did the rest. It wasn’t a perfect run, some bad luck in Mexico and a misfire from the Red Bull garage in Brazil’s sprint derailed him slightly, but Max felt like The Terminator down the stretch. Inevitable, impervious, and having McLaren shit bricks. Zak Brown called him a horror movie villain. Andrea Stella called him a title threat. In Monza. When he was 104 points behind. They knew what he was capable of, and they were right.
Yes, Max had some lucky breaks. The Austin double takeout in the Sprint. A horrible Baku weekend where McLaren were unlucky and Piastri was wasteful. But Max forced McLaren into operational errors. The double DQ in Vegas was a McLaren team running intentionally low ride heights because they knew it was a case of running them low and risk disqualification, or play it safe and risk not being on the podium. Watching it happen in real time reminded me of seeing mere mortals going up against prime Ronnie O’Sullivan playing Snooker in the early 2010’s where half the tour shit themselves before they even made the table.
It ultimately wasn’t to be. Red Bull left it just a bit too late to get their car in the right place, and Lando’s wins in Mexico and Brazil were probably just enough to get him over the line. But despite that, Max Verstappen still led the sport this year in race wins, tied in sprint wins, pole positions, laps led, and had the best average finish of any driver in the field.
I think Max is now in that rarefied air with Lewis Hamilton’s 2017-2020, or Michael’s late 1998-2004 kind of “aura”, where there’s a unified acceptance that he’s the best driver on the planet. Has anyone ever had a 5-year run better than his in F1? From the beating of Lewis and Mercedes at their best in 2021, to the 34 wins in 2022 and 2023, to winning the title early in a non-dominant car last year, to now? He’s become the Nikola Jokic of F1. It wasn’t perfect, but Max is the best in the world, Red Bull’s greatest and is now easily one of the best to ever do it. 9.5/10
Mercedes AMG-Petronas F1 Team
Constructor’s Position: Second (469 Points)
Head-To-Head Records: Russell 25-5 In Qualifying, 26-4 In Races
Best Result: 1st (x2 – Canada and Singapore)
Season In A Nutshell: Huh?
Every year, Mercedes becomes more and more enigmatic as an F1 franchise. You just don’t know what they’re going to be weekend to weekend, and it became frustrating trying to get a read on their form.
They ultimately finished second in the manufacturers, but that almost felt like a default prize given McLaren had a fundamentally better car as a customer team, Red Bull effectively were a one-car team, and Ferrari was… Ferrari. If anything, they were a bit more of a baby Red Bull, only because of the point distributions of George Russell’s excellence and Kimi Antonelli finding his footing.
The bad news was, they were pretty unreliable. Russell somehow nursed a car that felt like it was short-circuiting home in second in Bahrain, but a power-unit failure in Monaco qualifying ruined his weekend, while Kimi Antonelli also suffered two car failures in Imola and Barcelona. The good news was, when everything was hooked up right, it was better than anything on the grid, taking a brilliant 1-3 in Canada, with George leading almost every lap in Singapore from pole position. Even Kimi got in on the act, nearly winning the Brazilian sprint and finishing second in the race, holding off some guy called Max at the end.
What worries me though, is that it still feels like this team has the windtunnel calibration issues they’ve had across the Ground Effect era. Last year, they could at least explain that they were excellent when the weather was cold, like in Vegas and Silverstone. This year… you win in a Canadian summer and a Singapore furnace. Right. Toto Wolff summed it up best after Abu Dhabi, when Russell finished 48 seconds off victory; “We still don’t understand these cars.”
But none of that may matter. We’re entering a new power-unit regulation set, and with Mercedes winning 10 Constructors titles with their last one, they’ve been pencilled in by many to get back to the top in 2026. Can Mercedes get it right again, and establish that dominance they opened the turbo-hybrid era with? If nothing else, they’ve got the right lineup…
Kimi Antonelli – 7th In Points (150), 3 Podiums, 14 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 2nd / Average Start: 8.8 / Average Finish: 9.8
I don’t envy Antonelli entering F1 this year. Generally, you were in two camps, people who thought the hype train was completely unjustified, or you thought that he was the best thing since sliced bread. My answer? Probably a bit of both.
Now I need to point out that Mercedes did Antonelli no favours early on in the season, making suspension changes in Imola which derailed Kimi’s outright speed. It was that middle block where the damage was done, despite the outlier Canada podium. He crashed in Monaco Q2, and took out Verstappen in Austria on the opening lap. While the results had mitigation like the aforementioned reliability, the general sentiment in the garage was poor, that something wasn’t working and Kimi’s confidence was rocked. And there’s no getting around it, being nearly half a second off Russell in Qualifying is just not good as an average mark.
But in the final third of the year, once Mercedes reverted the spec of their rear suspension, Kimi was much better, especially on Sunday’s. Top 5 finishes in Baku, Singapore, and Qatar (Despite the infamous late minor error), and an outstanding pair of podiums in the flyaways. Pushing Norris all the way in the Brazil sprint before stout defence against Max, then a 50-lap stint on the Hards in Vegas to take third after the McLaren DQ’s. That is the upside on display as to why people believe in Kimi.
I’m not all the way convinced, a few too many unforced errors and some forgiveness for losing the Russell matchup (Easy to understand why), but there’s absolutely something here. Which makes you wonder… if Toto Wolff gets his dream hire, will he be fed into the woodchipper? 6.5/10
George Russell – 4th In Points (319), 2 Wins, 9 Podiums, 2 Pole Positions, 3 Sprint Podiums / Average Start: 4.4 / Average Finish: 4.5 / Dre’s Top 10 Drivers Of 2025 – #2
I’ll cut to the chase… George Russell isn’t getting the flowers he deserves. This is a monster year. Especially given IndyCar’s audience has boiled piss over the fact he beat Alex Palou in the Autosport Top 50. While I somewhat agree with them, there’s absolutely a case given the publications leaning towards F1 that gives Russell a nod.
There’s two killer stats that sums up Russell’s season. First, 1,442 laps completed. Russell was just two laps shy of completing every single racing lap in an F1 season, something only four drivers have ever done. (Schumacher’s 2002, Hamilton’s 2019, Verstappen’s 2023, and Piastri’s 2024). He lost two stuck in traffic in the nonsense Monaco round-robin event. That’s it.
The other is that average finish stat. I’ll give you a quick spoiler as to the McLaren’s to come:
- Max Verstappen: 3.7
- Oscar Piastri: 4.2
- Lando Norris: 4.3
- George Russell: 4.5
Russell’s average finish was only a quarter of a place behind two McLaren drivers who won seven races each. Both sets of stats speak for one thing, Russell’s remarkable consistency.
He led the sport with 23 points finishes in GP’s. The only time he wasn’t was his 11th place in Monaco, and he had to start from 14th due to a car failure in Q2. He had 18 Top 5 finishes. In fact, the only genuinely off-colour races I think he had was at Silverstone, where he gambled on slicks too early and still finished in 10th. An understandable swing for the home run but he still got on base. The other was likely Brazil, where he was only fourth but looked average because Antonelli was comprehensively better, and that was an outlier.
When the Mercedes was on it, he was untouchable, surviving the early Verstappen pressure in Canada to win there, and then dominating in Singapore too. Even when it wasn’t, Russell was just there, stuffing the point column every weekend as a pest to the other elite runners.
This is a Championship season in sheep’s clothing. The only thing missing is a car worth fighting for, which Russell just didn’t have. Maybe next year. In any case, Russell is no longer in Hamilton’s shadow anymore. He’s one of the three best F1 drivers in the world, an exceptional leader and he’s ready to be a true contender. 9.5/10
McLaren F1 Team
Constructor’s Position: Champions (833 Points)
Head-To-Head Records: 15-15 In Qualifying, 17-13 Norris In Races
Best Result: 1st (x14)
Season In A Nutshell: Dominance Via Papaya Stained Pants
Man. Where do we start with Zak-Speed F1 Team?
I’ll give Mr Marketing some due here. From a Constructor’s standpoint, he’s built the ideal F1 team for their current environment. An incredibly fast car, especially in race trim, excellent on its tires, very fast in high downforce tracks with only a small weakness in terms of top speed.
There were a lot of murmurs they could have been in trouble after the Spanish Grand Prix when the FIA implemented a new, tighter testing regime for flexi-wings but it just didn’t matter even after the 33% restriction kicked in after July. Rob Marshall was named the “King of the Flexi-Wings” when he was at Red Bull, so not a shock they’d figured it out.
In layman’s terms, McLaren right now are the only team in F1 with a race-winning car and two elite drivers. Red Bull is a one-driver team that has focused on the Driver’s Title while forming prayer circles over its second seat. Mercedes has an elite driver, another who might be, but don’t fundamentally understand their car. And Ferrari have one elite driver, another who might be but may also be showing his first signs of decline, and have a team and car that’s good, but never fully optimised to the point where it feels like it can win.
With that in mind, no wonder they won the Constructor’s Championship at a canter. The second highest point total ever, and the second earliest title win in Singapore, five rounds early. And that was with them only winning 14 races.
But it’s also impossible to talk about McLaren without talking about their team management and how “Papaya Rules” became a huge part of what defined their first Drivers’ Championship since 2008. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fully committed to McLaren trying to play their inevitable title fight as “fairly” as possible. I don’t think there was much of an issue here for a lot of the season, mostly their respective fanbases making mountains of molehills.
For instance in Japan, it was reasonable for Piastri to ask for a swap to see if he can attack Max for the win, Oscar being the somewhat more aggressive driver. It’s also reasonable for McLaren to hold position and see if Lando can get a breakthrough or force an error. The problem is, their decision making got weirder as the year went on.
Monza. Norris’ has a bad final pitstop and loses second in Monza, so McLaren tells Piastri, leading the Championship by 34 points at the time, to give up a 6-point swing to let his at the time, only title rival back in front. And then he agreed! I had prominent journalists try to tell me that this was “cool”. I wanted to jump out of my hotel window. And it did have an impact on Piastri because he said he was still torn up about it when he got to Baku, his worst weekend of the season. They created needless drama over team dynamics by discussing internal punishments for Norris’ largely fair move on Piastri in Singapore publicly, which was then cancelled out in Austin after Piastri was deemed responsible for a four car pile-up in Austin’s sprint, a weekend where Max Verstappen took all 33 points.
We didn’t know it at the time, but Lando’s two wins at Mexico and Brazil were huge, title-winning victories to slow the Verstappen counter-attack, because around that kind of time, McLaren were running their car so low to the ground they were risking disqualification on their skidblocks, and they actually got the Double DQ in Vegas as a result of the lack of running. Combine that with an admittance that they didn’t want to screw Lando (That’s that fairness again) in Qatar via a double stack when the Safety Car came out, they turned a 1-2 into a 2-4.
McLaren just about got over the line in the end, but it still came across like a team that despite having a perfect setup to succeed, were too scared to favour a driver over the over because of the “vibes” of it all and the risk of upsetting either their franchise stalwart, or their S-Tier prospect come good. This is the drawback of the blatant two-driver system. Someone has to lose. Whether or not Zakspeed can keep both his stud talents happy could be the bigger factor in this team going forward. And that’s before the potentially turbulent politics with their engine supplier…
Oscar Piastri – 3rd In Points (410), 7 Wins, 1 Sprint Win, 6 Pole Positions, 16 Podiums / Average Start: 3 / Average Finish: 4.2 / Dre’s Top 10 Drivers of 2025 – #5
Oh Oscar, you somehow managed to finish third in a two-car Championship. That takes some doing.
The thing is that for a good while, Piastri had put together a Championship campaign. Despite a poor start at home, he then finished 14 out of the next 15 on the podium, laced with five wins, including muscling Verstappen out in Saudi Arabia, being a dominant front runner, and leading the title battle all the way until Mexico in October. As I’ve said before, I think a lot of people started making out that Piastri was this ultra-cool and collected front-runner because of Lando’s early struggles and making him out to be that foil that was going to jump him in the queue. I get it, at his best Piastri was sensational and I still think his ceiling is higher than Lando’s week-to-week.
It was all looking brilliant until Zandvoort. Piastri wins a narrow weekend over his teammate that ends up being a +25 point swing due to Norris’ car failure. He wouldn’t see a podium again until Qatar in the final week of November. It was a run of form that completely derailed what could have been a relatively easy title for the Aussie.
Simply put, he ended up being second best McLaren for eight weekends in a row. Out-qualified and then asked to swap with Lando in Monza. Was rattled going into Baku and had a racing meltdown to leave with nothing. Beaten to Turn 2 in Singapore. Lost an internal advantage by causing a double DNF in Austin’s sprint, and was anonymous in the race. Beaten by Lando by 48 seconds in Mexico. Commits a needless stonewall penalty in Brazil, and even then was slow. Same again in Vegas with Lando challenging Max, before the DQ.
He bounced back well in Qatar and was arguably the true victim of McLaren’s scaredy-cat strategy call, and was the quicker man in Abu Dhabi, but the damage was already done. And if you know your wheel, you know that down patch wasn’t a true surprise – It was a similar pattern last season too. Piastri has always struggled on lower-grip tracks, and he lacks experience in some of the flyaways you don’t get in the juniors. Piastri’s done a brilliant job eliminating some of his early problems like tire wear, but this may be the one he truly has to overcome in order to take that final step towards winning the big one.
There was no grand conspiracy here that led to Piastri’s downturn. The team didn’t screw him or treat him badly. It was just the critical mistakes that cost him big points to his two rivals. -23 to Norris in Australia. -25 to Max in Baku. -23 to Norris in Brazil. -15 to Norris in Mexico. Those errors are what cost Piastri the crown, way more than anything you may want to believe was under the surface. Seriously, a Channel 9 TV presenter in the US argued with me on Instagram about it, the Australian Senate brought it up after Qatar. All we needed was Stuart Broad refusing to walk again and I think it would have been a national scandal.
If nothing else, this season proved that Piastri has the talent to win a Championship. No doubt about that now. But now comes the most difficult part, getting rid of as many of those “bad days” as possible, because that’s when world titles are won and lost. 9/10
Lando Norris – 7 Wins, 1 Sprint Win, 7 Pole Positions, 18 Podiums / Average Start: 3 / Average Finish: 4.3 / 2025 World Champion / Dre’s Top 10 Drivers Of 2025 – #4
What a journey it’s been for Lando. Seven years with McLaren, with nothing but bangers alongside him. From the friendship of Carlos Sainz, to the struggles of Daniel Ricciardo, to a now formidable threat in Piastri. For a while, some believed that day in December would never come for the Brit. But he can call himself World Champion forever.
It didn’t come easy though. In fact, Norris’ start was arguably his biggest challenge in 2025. He openly admitted that he didn’t vibe with the MCL39 at first because it was built with more outright speed in mind and it didn’t fit his driving style as much, something that wasn’t really addressed for Lando until the second half of the season. A big crash in Saudi Arabian qualifying didn’t help those early impressions, even if we recovered reasonably well to 4th in the race. At that time, Piastri was racking up the chunkier results. For Lando, it felt more like a game of survival and damage limitation than a genuine title push.
But Lando always kept himself in range with some big wins when needed. Monaco was huge given Leclerc was in the middle of the McLaren’s, and when he came back after his embarrassing rear-ender on his teammate in Canada, he won three of the next four, with brilliant strategic drivers in Austria and Hungary, and a home-win off the back of the Piastri brake-test.
After the obvious final punch to the gut in Zandvoort, Lando started chopping wood. Just doing what he had to do, taking points out of Oscar every weekend, while managing the ever-closing gap to Verstappen behind him. And those two wins late on in Mexico and Brazil were huge, dominant, convincing wins. They were the drives of what seemed like a World Champion completing his comeback, even if in hindsight, it very nearly ended differently. And don’t get me started about Qatar, that was rough.
But as I said in that DRR three weeks ago, that’s the beauty of Lando’s title win. It was won not with brutality, asshole mechanics or even some of the team orders we all somewhat feared. It was won with mitigating the bad days, but via vulnerability, commitment, honesty and an openness that you just don’t ever see with World Champions in this sport. There’s a value in that. Well earned Lando, they can never take it away from you. 9/10
And that’s that. Not only the end of the season, but the end of an era as this’ll be the last season of what was the Ground Effect era of F1. I don’t think it’ll be missed. I remember the promise of what 2022 showed once these new regs were unveiled, and races like Saudi Arabia or the Imola Sprint where Verstappen could actually follow Leclerc for long periods of time and eventually score a pass for the win. That was cool.
But the FIA weren’t fast enough in clamping down the inevitable developments from the engineers, who added more downforce over the years, eventually making the cars faster and faster, and inevitably too quick to follow, leading to many races being damp squibs by comparison. 2025 had some fun races for sure, but I don’t think we had anything that screamed “Race of the Year contender” like we saw in other major series, and that sucks given we had a genuinely fascinating title battle between two teams and three drivers that ebb’d and flowed. The best since 2021, or maybe even 2012 if you don’t like how the former ended.
F1 and the FIA finally finalised the regulation set for 2026 last week, and with it some major changes. This video explains things in a pretty sexy way, but here’s the TL;DR version:
- Overall, cars are smaller and lighter from 798 to 768kg, wheelbase is 20cm shorter and 10cm narrower
- MGU-H has been scrapped from power-units, internal combustion and electric motor now deploying in 50:50 ratio for around 1,000 total horsepower, double the level of regen expected
- Front/Rear Wings simplified but with more outside space for future development, DRS now scrapped for “active aero”, with wings switching into “straight mode” (What did you call me?) in designated areas
- “Overtake Mode” kicks in within a second of another car, maximum power at top speed to aid passing, alongside manual “Boost Mode” across a lap to attack or defend, and multiple “Recharge Modes”.
- Ground effect tunnels on car floors are gone and minimum ride heights will be raised, with bigger diffusers, meaning less downforce
- Cars will run on 100% “Sustainable Fuels” for the first time (Don’t get me started on this shit, it’s not a real thing.)
- Driver’s Survival Cell has been strengthened as well as the roll hoop after Zhou’s horror crash at Silverstone.
What do I think? Well, I think they’re certainly talking a good game. Both FOM and the FIA’s messaging is really clear, they want cars to follow, they want to appeal to a range of driving styles, they want the hybrid to be the focal point of the car and they want the drivers management of the car in real time to be highlighted.
Will it work? Not so sure. The fact we only got this finalised 11 days ago isn’t a confidence filler given the first private test is five weeks away. The FIA is aiming for around 20% less downforce on the whole, is that going to be enough to make a difference alongside all the engine reworks? And will they be on the ball enough once engineers figure these regulations out and start to add more speed, likely via downforce like we had last time?
A manually deployed boost mode does intrigue me, but I fear that once drivers and teams learn the optimal way to deploy it over a track, you won’t see much variation. Are these cars actually going to be able regen enough to allow for aggressive use of said modes too? A lot of this, we’re going to have to wait and see, but this is the most radical rule shift F1’s had in 12 years, so naturally I’m nervous. There’s some good ideas here, but the active aero the sport’s bringing in feels like a bandaid.
How do I feel about the sport beyond that? I’m tired, boss. I don’t care what you tell me, we don’t need 24 Grand Prix. As I said before, we got to Brazil, one of the better races of the year as ever, and then groaned when I realised we still had a Triple Header to come, with the sport racing a week into December. I shouldn’t be watching an F1 race with a Christmas tree in my friggin’ living room.
While I’m glad everyone accepts that 24 IS the human limit, it also means a compromised calendar as we’re starting to see rotational races hitting the scene. Spa only has four out of the next six seasons, with Portimao back, but only for two years. Barcelona might not actually be put out to pasture with the “Madring” allegedly up against it to make its 2026 slot. And of course, everpresent rumbles of a Thailand race and/or a return to South Korea. Woo, more street circuits, just what we all wanted.
On a personal level, I’m also a little scared about the media coverage for the sport going forward. It’s no secret that I’m funemployed and to be honest, it’s very unlikely I will work in Motorsport full-time again given the lack of places big enough to hire people in this climate and me having quite a loose skillset. Logging into LinkedIn on a semi-regular basis only makes for depressing reading. More people than I’ve ever seen have been laid off, or moving into more communication based roles like copywriting.
A lot of people piled into F1 in 2020 fresh off DTS and the pandemic making people yearn for something new. Some of your favourite content creators in this space jumped the queue because of big early capital and access that many can’t have – a critical thing for F1 success. If you’re a big third party firm and you want people to cover your events or activations, why invite the press and play the lottery, when you can pay some influencers, control the message and get guaranteed clicks across your socials? Five years on, and I think F1’s popularity bubble is bursting and many are realising the money pit isn’t as deep as they once thought, and we’re starting to see the ramifications of that.
The Motorsport Network has had multiple rounds of layoffs in 2025. So has the Planet group, so have Reach here in the UK. Conventional journalism in this space is losing money, and it’s making a beeline for PR firms, influencers and event planners. The places more likely to have a suite in the paddock than a place in the media center. That worries me. I hope things change soon, for the better, or else there’ll be many more stories like mine out scanning the JobCenter+ ads (There’s no shame in that by the way, do what you need to do to survive, shit is tough out here.)
It’s a bold new world for F1 in 2026, but one that still feels somewhat familiar. There’s a genuine elite five set of drivers in the sport now, it’s not felt so loaded since 2012. Whoever nails this new regulation set could dominate for the next few seasons if left unchecked, even with the exciting feeling of new cars and challenges hanging in the air. It’s a beauty, it’s a struggle, it’s a beautiful struggle.
Time for me to sign off. I hope you’re having a wonderful festive season, thanks so much for reading my work in 2025, and I’ll see you in the new year. Love you all.
Dre x