Last season featured Formula 1’s closest title race since 2021. Although Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen managed to defend his driver’s title, McLaren won its first World Constructors’ Championship since 1998. With the 2024 title, it also became the first team outside of Red Bull and Mercedes to win the Constructors’ Championship since 2010.
Championship battle
Over the last few years, a big three have been established in the sport: Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari. McLaren has not only managed to break through the big three but also better them.
But a close title race isn’t all that 2024 had. For the first time in F1 history, seven different drivers won multiple races. McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri picked up their maiden race wins.
Additionally, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc became the first Monegasque to win the Monaco Grand Prix. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, making him the driver with the most home race wins in F1 history. His first win since 2021 came at home in his final season with Mercedes, which made it more special.
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With records tumbling last season, the stories for the 2025 season are already being written.
Papaya rules
McLaren, whose team color is papaya orange, started on the backfoot last season. That heavily impacted Norris’ chances of competing for the title. Verstappen won four of the first five races and took a hefty lead into the remainder of the season. All Norris could do was try to eat into the championship lead.
The 2025 pre-season testing in Sakhir, Bahrain, hinted at McLaren’s race pace being superior to the rest of the pack. If it starts as championship favorites, Norris and Piastri can win their team’s first Drivers’ Championship since 2008.
Prancing horse
Ferrari broke the internet in January last year by signing Hamilton to a contract for 2025 onwards. This put an end to a 12-year partnership between Hamilton and Mercedes that consisted of 84 wins, six Driver’s Championships and eight consecutive Constructor’s Championships.
It stunned the F1 world when Hamilton ended one of the most successful driver-team partnerships the sport has ever seen to switch teams at 40 years old. But when the most prestigious group in racing comes knocking, it’s hard to say no.
It could be the biggest story ever in sports if Hamilton can find success on a different team at this age. If he wins, it would most certainly cement him as the greatest driver to ever step foot in an F1 car.
Red Bull redemption
It might be crazy to call it a redemption, but Red Bull is possibly the weakest it has been since its Renault engine days. Its chief technical officer and one of the most successful car designers in F1 history, Adrian Newey, recently left Red Bull after a 19-year-long partnership. Its 2025 challenger, the RB21, is the first Red Bull car that hasn’t been designed by Newey.
It uncharacteristically fell off in the second half of the season, and despite Verstappen’s best efforts, the car performance was not good. The car struggled to find balance, and it was all down to Verstappen’s brilliance.
Regardless, Verstappen is still the best driver on the grid and has a new teammate this season. Rookie Liam Lawson will drive the second Red Bull car. Lawson has already driven a few races for Red Bull’s sister team, the Racing Bulls, and has shown fiery prospects so far.
In many ways, his aggression is similar to Verstappen’s early days. The Red Bull garage might provide theatrics as a now-veteran Verstappen tackles a rookie.
Where’s Mercedes?
The Silver Arrows won seven Drivers’ Championships and eight Constructors’ Championships between 2014 and 2021. They dominated the sport like never before, and at one point, it looked like the dominance would never end. But, as all dynasties do, new 2022 regulations hurt them and led to their downfall.
Mercedes got the new ground effect aero regulations terribly wrong. The 2022 car was a disaster, and Mercedes fell back into the midfield. With a budget cap and wind tunnel restriction for development, it couldn’t do much until the next season. It tried different things and made strides, but it wasn’t enough to push Mercedes back up to the top. Hamilton finally lost patience and signed with Ferrari.
Now, Mercedes has slowly found its strengths. The car is good in colder conditions. Its chief technical officer, James Allison, also said Mercedes found something with the car’s front wing that could unlock performance.
Can the Silver Arrows rise back to excellence in the last season of the ground effect regulations? Can the eight-time champions reestablish who the bosses of the hybrid engine era are?
What pre-season testing told us
The recently concluded three-day pre-season testing certainly had a lot of stories coming out of it. Putting the computer simulations aside, teams could test their 2025 challengers on track for the first time.
Tight at the top
Looking at the numbers, McLaren’s 2025 challenger, the MCL39, was 0.15 seconds per lap quicker than Ferrari’s SF-25 in race pace. The order in race pace was McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. But it is terribly tight between three out of the top four teams. Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes are separated by a mere 0.08 seconds per lap.
This is such a small gap that changes in race conditions, track temperature or simply aero setup, all of which could shuffle up the order. Of course, it would be foolish to say that this will be the race order for each event. It was pre-season testing, after all. We didn’t know the fuel loads, the run plans or the engine settings these cars were running at.
So, putting the prediction cap aside, McLaren and Ferrari are very close at the top from the looks of it. With a couple of minor tweaks, Ferrari can find the pace to take on McLaren, if not beat them. This is the same for Red Bull and Mercedes. After all, McLaren finished sixth and eighth in the first race last season but ended up winning the Constructors’ Championship.
Return of Williams?
Williams, one of F1’s most successful teams, has been stuck in a historic slump for the last several seasons. In the last five seasons, they have finished ninth, seventh, 10th, eighth and 10th respectively. Since 2020, they have scored a combined 76 points. For reference, Verstappen scored 77 points in 2024’s first four races alone.
James Vowles has now had two full seasons as team principal of Williams, and he is making things happen. In pre-season testing, Williams was fifth fastest in both race pace and qualifying. Not that it means anything, but Williams driver Carlos Sainz had the fastest lap time in the three days.
He was already over a second faster than Williams’ fastest lap in qualifying in Bahrain 2024. Williams might not be the fifth fastest over the season, but this certainly is a huge jump from being settled into the bottom three the last five seasons.
Last dance … sort of
Hamilton has made the blockbuster move to Ferrari for one reason — to win his eighth championship. He seems more motivated than ever to do that. In his own words, the move to Ferrari revitalized him. It also brought back a faint arrogance that he was known for in his earlier days. His recent interview with TIME Magazine proved that.
“Don’t ever compare me to anybody else,” Hamilton said. “I’m built different. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve had my own journey. You can’t compare me to another 40-year-old, past or present, Formula One driver in history. Because they are nothing like me. I’m focused on one thing, and that’s winning. That’s my No. 1 priority.”
This is what this season promises. A 40-year-old driver, already a seven-time world champion, giving it everything for that eighth title. On the other hand, young drivers like Leclerc and Norris, who have now become the faces of the sport, will fight for their first title. And it would be unwise to rule the defending champion Verstappen out of the title battle.
Why should you watch F1 this season?
Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” brought the niche European sport to American audiences. The average viewership on ESPN in 2018 was 554,000 per race. It has since skyrocketed to 1.1 million per race in 2023 and 2024. Since then, F1 has added two more races in the country: Miami and Las Vegas.
There have been murmurs about adding a race to Chicago as well. The Windy City already hosts NASCAR and IndyCar races. The racing series has also recently approved the addition of an 11th team for the first time since 2016. Cadillac will join the F1 grid in 2026. This will make them the second American team alongside Haas on the grid. So, a new American team joining the grid and three American races and counting? There is no better time to start watching the sport.
Four teams and eight drivers can potentially fight for both titles. Before the ground effect regulations say goodbye to the venturi tunnels, before they say goodbye to these cars, in its 75th season, F1 is set to have a blockbuster of a season. This is a season that takes us all around the world. With 24 races and 20 drivers, the streets of Melbourne await the sounds of the roaring cars.
