My Predictions for 2025 Season of Formula 1

Note: Despite being published now, this blog post is based on the predictions that I made before the pre-season testing. So please don’t look at me like I’m an utter idiot!

The 2025 season is probably the hardest season for me to predict in the entire time I’ve followed this amazing racing series.

Last year, a whopping 3 teams had a realistic chance of becoming the constructors’ champions – Red Bull, McLaren, and Ferrari.

There were races where Mercedes, too, joined the fight for the top step of the podium.

It’s really hard to tell which driver and which team is the most likely to win the championships, given the lack of any significant change to technical regulations.

But, that’s precisely what we want here – when the season is over, we want to see and laugh at how far off the reality my pre-season predictions were.

So here are my predictions, which will hopefully make us all laugh in December!

CONSTRUCTORS’ CHAMPIONSHIP

1	◀0	McLaren-Mercedes	Norris	Piastri
2	◀0	Ferrari	Leclerc	Hamilton
3	▲1	Mercedes	Russell	Antonelli
4	▼1	Red Bull-RBPT Honda	Verstappen	Lawson
5	◀0	Aston Martin-Mercedes	Alonso	Stroll
6	◀0	Alpine-Renault	Gasly	Doohan
7	▲2	Williams-Mercedes	Sainz	Albon
8	◀0	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda	Tsunoda	Hadjar
9	▼2	Haas-Ferrari	Ocon	Bearman
10	◀0	Stake Sauber-Ferrari	Hulkenberg	Bortoleto

3 out of 4 realistic title contenders have a new driver for each – Ferrari has Hamilton, who’s never raced with non-Mercedes power units in F1 to date, Mercedes has Antonelli, a young rookie, and Red Bull has Lawson, who can still be considered to be a rookie, depending on how one defines a rookie.

If McLaren and Ferrari are close in terms of pure car performance, then the only obvious advantage for McLaren would be the fact that both drivers have spent more than 2 years racing for the team.

Although we hear a lot about how well Hamilton’s adaptation to Ferrari is going, I can’t be convinced he’s going to squeeze every bit of performance from the SF-25 and his team from the very beginning of the season and fight for wins alongside with Leclerc.

Would it be slightly bold to put Mercedes ahead of Red Bull, given how things have been since the introduction of the current technical regulations in 2022?

I don’t think it’d be entirely unrealistic, though, after seeing how much Red Bull struggled last year after losing Newey.

Let’s wait and see.

Williams, in my predictions, have made up 2 places from last year, in the hope that they won’t suffer so many crashes as they had with Sargeant and Colapinto (and Albon too, to be fair).

The performance of their car wasn’t correctly reflected on the teams’ standings due to too many crashes, so I hope the Williams mechanics will have their work rewarded with as many championship points as it deserves this year.

I don’t necessarily expect Haas to do worse than last year, despite having them 2 places lower than where they finished in 2024.

But Haas is the only team on the grid with a completely new driver line-up.

One of the drivers, albeit a promising talent, is still a rookie who should need some time to develop.

Additionally, Haas is still the smallest team on the grid, even though the cost cap has made it less of a problem.

So I don’t think we should be shocked if they drop a few places this year.

DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP

1	▲1	Norris	McLaren-Mercedes
2	▲1	Leclerc	Ferrari
3	▼2	Verstappen	Red Bull-RBPT Honda
4	◀0	Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes
5	▲2	Hamilton	Ferrari
6	◀0	Russell	Mercedes
7	-	Antonelli	Mercedes
8	▲1	Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes
9	▲12	Lawson	Red Bull-RBPT Honda
10	◀0	Gasly	Alpine-Renault
11	▼6	Sainz	Williams-Mercedes
12	▲1	Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes
13	▲3	Albon	Williams-Mercedes
14	▼2	Tsunoda	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda
15	▲9	Doohan	Alpine-Renault
16	▼2	Ocon	Haas-Ferrari
17	-	Hadjar	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda
18	◀0	Bearman	Haas-Ferrari
19	▼8	Hulkenberg	Stake Sauber-Ferrari
20	-	Bortoleto	Stake Sauber-Ferrari

For me as an Oscar fan, this table isn’t very delightful to look at, but I don’t actually predict he will do much worse than Norris.

It’s just my hopeful prediction that the top 4 teams will be close enough to make the drivers’ championship table look like this.

I do want to see Max winning his 5th title in a row, but P3 was the maximum my optimism could allow.

I predict Norris to be the drivers’ champion, and Leclerc and Verstappen to be the last drivers to stay in contention.

It might be bold of me, as well as in my prediction about Merc and Red Bull, to put Alonso ahead of the second Red Bull driver.

Given that Aston Martin doesn’t look very fast in the pre-season testing, and they traditionally haven’t been the best at in-season development, I shouldn’t be too disappointed if this prediction fails to come true.

It’s said that Colapinto is virtually promised a race seat, as soon as in the middle of 2025, otherwise he wouldn’t have signed a 5-year deal with Alpine.

If that happens, then I’d lose a lot of points for this prediction (and I’ll explain later how I’ll give my predictions points post-season).

Doohan seems to be a nice person and I don’t want to see him suffer such a fate, but it seems like many people are convinced there’s no way it won’t happen.

Did I predict Hadjar – not just Hadjar but VCARB in general – too low?

I know he’s a promising young talent, but I guess I don’t trust VCARB as much.

VCARB is supposed to be my favorite team, despite what you see in this blog post.

So I’d be happy if they manage to surprise me and cost me points with this prediction.

It feels realistic that Hulkenberg scores some good amount of points at a particularly messy race and puts Sauber where it doesn’t belong on the championship table.

But I could see Haas doing the same, so I’ll be safe and put Sauber drivers in 19th and 20th in this prediction.

POINT SYSTEM

From now on, I will do these predictions every year and grade how well I do once the season finishes, and see how much better or worse I get over time.

The table below shows how I will give myself points.

Gap between actual position and predicted position	Points
0	5
1	4
2	3
3	2
4	1

If all teams and drivers finish the season exactly where I predict them to, then my constructors’ points would be 5 x 10 = 50, and the drivers’ points 5 x 20 = 100, meaning I would score 150 points.

And if, for example, the teams finish where they did in 2018…

		Prediction	Gap to actual position	Points
1	Mercedes	3	2	3
2	Ferrari	2	0	5
3	Red Bull-RBPT Honda	4	1	4
4	Alpine-Renault	6	2	3
5	Haas-Ferrari	9	4	1
6	McLaren-Mercedes	1	5	0
7	Aston Martin-Mercedes	5	2	3
8	Stake Sauber-Ferrari	10	2	3
9	Racing Bulls-RBPT Honda	8	1	4
10	Williams-Mercedes	7	3	2

… then my constructors’ points would be 28 out of available 50, meaning a scoring rate of 56%.

If you want to join this prediction competition and race against me, comment on this blog post to let me know! 😁