The new Formula 1 season is now just around the corner, with the 2025 campaign expected to be a continuation of last season’s unpredictable battle right across the grid. With McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all seemingly on course to bring battle to the still just about frontrunning Red Bull squad, it could even rival 2021 as a narrative-stuffed year.
While the title challengers will take the headlines, as ever there are fascinating subplots all over with the field as compressed as it is. Given Sauber’s late-2024 gains, if things are still as tight as the new season starts then there’s a strong argument to say F1 has no backmarker squads for the first time in recent years. This means every team has something to fight for, which in turn adds pressure to their drivers.
Beating your team-mate is the number one job for any racer, but in F1 this year the close fighting adds an extra edge, as any underperformance will leave a team exposed. Hence why Red Bull has finally acted in dropping Sergio Perez, given how far he was finishing from the ongoing successes of Max Verstappen.
The driver market shouldn’t be quite as turbulent this time around, as teams will want stability heading into the 2026 rules reset. But perception quickly becomes reality in global sport and so the intra-team battles will be no less important even with this in mind, as how the drivers fare in 2025 could well become important further down the line.
Here then, is how we think the pressure stacks up ahead of 2025 for each driver, given the competition from across their respective garages and in the context of their careers and reputations to this point.
20. Fernando Alonso
He’s got at least a two-year contract having re-signed with Aston Martin last spring, which means Fernando Alonso will be competing with Aston Martin as F1’s latest new rules era gets underway next year. How long he stays with the green team beyond that remains to be seen, with there being a greater chance of a split if Aston can’t climb up the pecking order next year.
But Alonso clearly has the least pressure from his team-mate given his strong record against Lance Stroll in the metrics that really matter – with 38-8 and 29-5 scores from their qualifying and race head-to-head counts from the last two years.
And, as we’ll come onto, given the lack of pressure from the risk of line-up disruption overall at Aston given Stroll’s position, the combination means he should take the lowest spot in this ranking for 2025.
Aston is adamant the recent speculation about a future place for Verstappen at the team is nonsense and if the other superstars stay locked up elsewhere, it’s hard to see how even the coming Honda era means any more pressure on Alonso’s position. Not that that matters right now.
19. Lance Stroll
Alonso’s clear superiority in the intra-Aston fight means Stroll must line up below him in this exercise, but his position as the owner’s son means that matters very little.
Stroll’s place is secure as long as he and his father Lawrence want to continue on the high-profile F1 path, which so far has yielded three podiums and one pole from 166 race starts since 2017. Stroll is, however, yet to take any silverware or pole stats under the Aston banner.
There were times in 2024 when he was able to outpace Alonso in qualifying, but they proved to be short-lived.
18. Pierre Gasly
Pierre Gasly had an excellent 2024 season, when he had a team-mate that pushed him extremely close. Esteban Ocon was actually a fraction quicker on average in qualifying and held sway during the early part of the year when the Alpine was overweight, but after that and their Monaco crash, it was really all Gasly. Even Ocon’s wet-weather brilliance in Brazil wasn’t enough to overhaul his team-mate’s points haul by the year’s end.
With Ocon now at Haas, Gasly will be on familiar ground from his AlphaTauri days in working with a rookie in Jack Doohan (at least for now). Given the Australian’s lack of experience bar that Abu Dhabi cameo – where he qualified and finished 14 and eight spots respectively back on Gasly – there’s little real pressure of a battle between them at this stage.
If that were to develop and Gasly plays a mentorship role and sustains team harmony as he did so well last year, that’d actually be a plus.
17. Max Verstappen
If he still had Perez as a team-mate, Verstappen would take the least-pressured spot on this list – and comfortably so given everything that F1 witnessed over the last four seasons. But now Liam Lawson is aboard the other Red Bull, there’s at least a crack of new doubt for the world champion.
Verstappen remains the best driver of this era, however, and so it’s only how the unknown adds into logical thinking that means he must climb a few spots higher than might later be the case if that previously solid 0.3s pace gap over Perez is continued with Lawson.
The questions over his long-term future with Red Bull continue in 2025, but any chance of an exit rest entirely on his own decision-making.
16. Yuki Tsunoda
Yuki Tsunoda is actually in a rather awkward career position. Red Bull denied him the chance of a promotion for 2025 when it ditched Perez and its feelings towards Tsunoda are unlikely to change given how long it’s had him on its books and competing at the top level.
Therefore, it’s all about what might happen with Aston, Alonso and Honda that could decide Tsunoda’s future, not how he fares against new team-mate Isack Hadjar in 2025. Tsunoda’s considerable backing from Honda might appeal to Aston commercially from 2026 onwards, but one can hardly expect Andy Cowell and Adrian Newey to consider such a switch an upgrade on Alonso.
At this stage, it remains unknown how Hadjar will fare at this level. But based on the lack of cool he so regularly showed over the Formula 2 airwaves – a charge that can be levelled at Tsunoda at F1 level that will have formed part of Red Bull’s late-2024 choice – right now a lopsided Racing Bulls results returned should be expected.
That’s firmly in fifth-year F1 driver Tsunoda’s favour.
15. Esteban Ocon
Ocon is one of four drivers experiencing a different form of pressure in 2025: an established star settling in at a new squad.
He’s been handpicked by Haas boss Ayao Komatsu to effectively lead its fresh era and by all accounts he’s been pleased by what he’s seen so far at his new team. At Haas’s recent Jerez TPC test, Ocon was said to have been impressed by just how efficient the squad – much reworked for 2025 in terms of its trackside make-up – worked.
He’ll have (part) rookie Oliver Bearman as his team-mate and is therefore expected to be the intra-squad frontrunner. Ocon’s reputation as a formidable team-mate also pushes some of the pressure towards Bearman. There’s unlikely to be much quarter given from his VF-25.
But Komatsu has made it clear he won’t tolerate them crashing and so Ocon will have to be wary he can’t be too feisty if they do end up scrapping over the same bits of asphalt once the year gets going.
14. Gabriel Bortoleto
Given there’s no evidence to go on for some of the 2025 rookies – a certain contradiction at play for half of the six given Doohan, Bearman and Lawson have started a handful or less of races – specific things both separate and group them in this list.
Bortoleto is one of the three yet to make an F1 bow, but his junior pedigree offers him a degree of comfort.
The last three drivers to have secured back-to-back F3/GP3-F2 titles are Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri – fine peddlers, all. To some, this might raise the stakes, but I’m choosing to view it currently as a sign of more good things to come for a driver said to also be a thoroughly nice man.
He’s racing against veteran Nico Hulkenberg at Sauber. He won’t offer any handouts, but Haas insiders say he warmed to Bearman over their two weekends as team-mates in Baku and Brazil last year.
Hulkenberg had a great 2024, so Bortoleto getting beaten by him this year would be no shame. And, if it’s the reverse after all, all’s the for the Brazilian.
13. Andrea Kimi Antonelli
Grouped with Bortoleto because he too is yet to start an F1 race, but what keeps Antonelli so far from the pressure hot seats is also what brought him to F1.
This is Antonelli’s close personal relationship with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, to whom he has to thank for his rapid career progression from all those Formula 4 and Formula Regional titles in 2022 and 2023.
Wolff is said to have come to realise that giving Antonelli a home F1 weekend debut in FP1 at Monza was a mistake, but how forcefully the Austrian went out to bat for his charge in the press conference after that shunt shows the strength of support Antonelli will enjoy at Mercedes.
Of course, there is pressure in being Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes replacement, and Wolff’s support won’t go on Stroll-style forever if Antonelli can’t hack in F1. But that he’s got this far so fast suggests he should.
12. Nico Hulkenberg
The expectation will be for Hulkenberg and his 227 F1 race starts to blow away Bortoleto in 2025. But the German is also finding his feet again at Sauber, 11 years after he last raced for the Swiss team.
There are other elements to consider when it comes to intra-squad pressure in this case.
One is that Hulkenberg, although armed with a multi-year contract to take in the start of the coming Audi era from 2026, was hired by previous team management topped by former team CEO Andreas Seidl. Mattia Binotto and Jonathan Wheatley were signed afterwards as CTO/COO and team principal respectively, with professional sport littered with examples of stars being eventually ousted due to such situations.
Hulkenberg was a qualifying star when he was reborn in F1 at Haas, but both times he was paired with Bearman in 2024 the Briton produced a perfect record of outqualifying him (three times in total factoring in the Brazil sprint weekend).
That raises another crack of uncertainty Bortoleto may be able to exploit with similar stunning pace. And with Sauber needing positive results after a dire 2024, Hulkenberg will find the pressure rising if that does become the case.
11. Oliver Bearman
It’s Bearman’s team-mate and his feisty reputation that amps up the pressure for the still-started-three-races rookie in his first campaign with Haas.
Having spoken to Bearman recently, I don’t fear he’s under any illusions when it comes to how hard Ocon might make it – "everyone tells me that he's very quick" and "I know he'll be tough" statements telling. And, indeed, Ocon may not be quite as willing to scrap as hard against Bearman in his first year with a new team after everything that previously happened with Perez, Alonso and Gasly at his former squads.
But Ocon is seriously rapid and unlike Hulkenberg, has a track record of silverware success at the highest level. That alone means Bearman’s task is tough in 2025 and a poor return against Ocon would stunt the momentum he’s built up rapidly as a junior and enriched further with that calm cameo in his Ferrari Jeddah debut last year.
Bearman could still very show well, however, and given team boss Komatsu is iron-clad in his belief in the 19-year-old, a strong 2025 remains likely too. One thing he may look to exploit is how Ocon’s race pace too often came in much adrift of Gasly for Alpine in 2024.
10. Isack Hadjar
Again, the lack of F1-level data means we’re leaving the door ajar for the Frenchman, who could excel amidst the excitement of an unexpected promotion to the top level a la Franco Colapinto.
But the Argentine is precisely the reason Hadjar will be under pressure, as if it were not for Colapinto’s many crashes as his Logan Sargeant-replacement stint wore on late in 2024, then Red Bull may well have gone through with its plan to sign him from Williams.
At the same time as this was being seriously thought through by RB’s benefactor, Red Bull insiders were suggesting Hadjar had little chance to make it to F1 even with his F2 title challenge last year.
But circumstances swung his way and he deserves a fair crack now he’s arrived at the top level. The pressure-increasing problem is that Red Bull gives its junior drivers so little time these days (see Nyck de Vries) and the types of radio outbursts Hadjar displayed in F2 won’t go down well.
Tsunoda, in the other RB, demonstrates this. And he gave Daniel Ricciardo an almighty challenge – more of which has the potential to make Hadjar’s F1 stint short if he can’t step up as he’ll be hoping.
Then there’s Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad starting out in F2 this year, already possessing some momentum within Helmut Marko’s fiefdom. If he goes well, that increases pressure on both current RB drivers.
9. Carlos Sainz
Now on his fifth F1 team, Sainz starts 2025 getting to know Williams.
Some may wonder if he’ll struggle to cope with racing much further down the pack – Russell blamed those 2020 early race offs on the lack of downforce he wasn’t used to from racing further down the grid for the same team as it started its rebuild. And there’s a suggestion a driver may struggle when suddenly not racing for regular podiums. But Sainz is far too clever for any of this to apply.
And he’s so good overall – just fractionally off Leclerc on pure pace last year and showing so fearlessly against him in battle. Being badly beaten by Albon would, however, significantly alter his hard-work-won F1 career perception and so hence this ranking spot. I just don’t see it happening.
8. Oscar Piastri
Again, experience level is on Oscar Piastri’s side when it comes to how pressure can build within F1 team-mate partnerships. Given how much he’s already achieved, it’s easy to forget that 2025 will be just the Australian’s third season in grand prix racing.
But his McLaren squad now has a constructors’ crown to defend, with additional pressure coming from the very real possibility that one of its drivers really can win their championship this time too.
Here is Piastri’s twin problem. In 2024, he was much improved on race pace compared to his rookie year, but on average was still 0.4s slower than team-mate Lando Norris – based on my calculation of average race pace from last year (see the February edition of Autosport magazine for a complete rundown).
And Piastri knows he was often undercooked in qualifying too, where Norris generally excelled. Those lower grid spots have a knock-on effect in the ongoing era of fragile tyres and dirty air, when it then comes to race pace averages.
Piastri has the potential to be an F1 great but must take two big steps on that path this year, with a driver who has more experience of championship challenging and racing the dominant force of Verstappen wheel-to-wheel still as his direct comparison.
7. Alex Albon
Two things secure Albon this spot compared to the drivers ahead.
He’s secure in his position at Williams – the team just loves him, his attitude, his speed and his nous. Plus, he almost certainly won’t have to deal with the additional external pressure of racing for wins and titles, given where Williams still is in its rebuilding phase.
But he now has a properly top rated team-mate for the first time since his painful Red Bull days. That could spell danger for his own hard-won excellent standing.
Albon still has a reputation for being a tad too nice and Sainz showed last year how hard he’s prepared to race a team-mate when he has little to lose. This extends to scrapping in the midfield pack these days.
I worry a touch for how Albon may fare overall given he did suddenly look a bit exposed against Colapinto late last year. But he’s pulled off so many career surprises that the possibility of his defeating Sainz just cannot be written off.
6. Charles Leclerc
Now we’ll see exactly how excellent Leclerc is in F1. Ok, he’s still yet to produce a full-season title tilt – about which new team-mate Hamilton knows everything – but his 2024 season was the pick of his seven years so far at this level. He saw off a waning Sebastian Vettel, defeated Sainz’s impressively close-run charge, now he comes up against statistically F1’s greatest ever driver.
Leclerc has plenty on his side given he’s been a Ferrari star for nearly a decade – he knows the team and the political Maranello atmosphere very well. And Hamilton is quite not the driver he once was at the peak of his powers for Mercedes in 2018 through 2020.
It’s win-win in a sense for Leclerc, as that point will be brought up if he does defeat Hamilton. But Leclerc still has to actually do that first, in the full glare of F1 fan interest. It’s not for nothing that Hamilton’s first Ferrari laps this week have generated headline after headline…
Leclerc is more than just a one trick qualifying star – his 2024 results showed that and he’s stopped crashing when the pressure is on in qualifying. But with Hamilton alongside him in red, its immediately his most intense intra-team season since he joined Ferrari in 2019.
5. Liam Lawson
Like Hadjar, the pressure comes from across the Red Bull empire for Lawson, as Marko, Horner and co will dispense with any underperforming driver if they don’t build up considerable credit like Perez did with his defence on Verstappen’s behalf at Abu Dhabi in 2021.
Before that, the Dutchman’s team-mates in Gasly and Albon were rapidly dropped. And that was with Red Bull yet to get back to title-challenging status pre-2021. Now, any repetition of Perez’s points haul compared to Verstappen could cost the team a third constructors’ title in five.
That all said, Lawson does seem to be fearless. On his ‘rookie return’ in Austin he immediately incurred Alonso’s wrath with his gutsy driving. Then, he had the confidence to give Perez the finger in front of the Mexican’s home fans amidst their battle a week later.
The combination of the two factors covered so far means Lawson’s season is already guaranteed to be fascinating. But Verstappen’s reputation as team-mate breaker stands alone in elevating the pressure considered here on the New Zealander.
4. Jack Doohan
Another one where the pressure is really coming from elsewhere in the team, but how Doohan stacks up against Gasly will be what’s most readily cited if he is dropped early in his F1 stint.
Alpine’s decision to hire Colapinto as reserve has already been interpreted as a sign that it has serious doubts about Doohan, which means he’s got a kind of team-mate pressure that is completely unique in this list. And he lacks junior car racing titles to raise confidence stakes compared to some of his fellow rookies.
That said, Alpine team boss Oliver Oakes insists “he's getting his fair crack at it next year”. But he also claims, “it just keeps everyone honest in terms of how they're performing and gives us options”, which contradicts the first statement significantly.
And when Autosport sources suggest Toyota World Endurance driver Ryo Hirakawa has also been hired as an Alpine reserve with the promise of a potential 2026 seat, that too highlights just how much pressure will pervade on Doohan as the 2025 season starts.
3. Lewis Hamilton
He’s winning the off-season with his slick arrival at Ferrari, but that counts for nothing once the real action gets going. And Hamilton is heading into 2025 off the back of a poor 2024, overall.
Yes, he returned to winning ways with that emotional record-extending win at Silverstone, but too often he was off Russell’s pace in qualifying and he struggled to cope best with Mercedes’ fluctuating form. Based on recent history, more of this should be expected for Ferrari.
Perhaps more tellingly is that on race pace averages last year, Hamilton was marginally slower as well (0.01s down, in fact) compared to Russell. This should be of alarm given how tyre management and race execution remain Hamilton’s biggest strengths.
And in Leclerc, he now has F1’s fastest qualifier as a team-mate. This will massively amp up pressure across the Ferrari garage on Hamilton – if he’s regularly lining up behind Leclerc (see the race pace caveat above for Piastri too).
But Hamilton has all those 356 starts, seven titles, 105 wins and 104 poles. He has achieved exactly what Leclerc is still dreaming of, as they both hope 2025 is the year Ferrari is fully back in championship contention. His enduring class could yet win out.
Both team and driver have uber-illustrious reputations in this case. But for Hamilton, a defeat to Leclerc after that inflicted by Russell last year would mean more damage created.
2. Lando Norris
Norris should be a title challenger from the off this time, given how McLaren was going as 2024 concluded. And he took that masterful, pressure-filled walk-off win in Abu Dhabi to deliver its first constructors’ title in 26 years.
But his high ranking here is all to do with his team-mate. In that Monza move, which eventually cost them both the race win to Leclerc, Piastri showed exactly how strong he can be in achieving his own glory at Norris’s expense.
Piastri will surely be even better in 2025 and Norris was still making tiny errors even as his sixth F1 season came to a close (his Brazil sprint quali slips and missing the Qatar yellow flags, for example).
He just must be perfect in the face of what is probably the most intense intra-team scrap on the grid this time around.
1. George Russell
One thing elevates Russell above Norris in this list: how defeat to Antonelli could leave him vulnerable to a sudden Mercedes exit.
Yes, it requires other uncertain moving parts – in that surely only Verstappen has a chance of moving into the squad for 2026 if he does decide to force his way out of Red Bull early after all. But Wolff just wouldn’t stop wooing him for so long last year…
Therein lies the danger for Russell. If Antonelli defeats him this year, that will be an embarrassing reputational hit for the delightfully outspoken GPDA director. And if Verstappen is indeed available, then Wolff can suddenly match the racer he clearly views as the Dutchman’s potential successor as the pre-eminent F1 driver with the existing one, who he missed out on signing from F3 in 2014.
In what feels like a flash since his Mercedes promotion back in 2022, suddenly Russell is the Silver Arrows driver with most to lose. But he compared so well to Hamilton in their three years together, that alone should be a massive confidence booster.
