The new F1 Formula One season isn’t far away, and 2025 has a lot of work to do to be better than the 2024 edition, where we saw a rare year of no domination nor complete on-track bitterness. So crossing our fingers and hoping the good times continue, we look at the potential interest from the team’s point of view with The Gurgler’s 2025 F1 Season Team Preview.
After nothing much changed in 2024, the 2025 F1 season is all about change with drivers in and out, with a bumper crop of rookie drivers, as well as a certain technical genius. The 2025 F1 season certainly has the right ingredients, and you need the freshest ingredients to bake the best cake.
Our preview is less about predicting where each car will finish and more about all the potential for interest and fun for the 2025 F1 season, starting with our 2025 F1 Interest O Meter.
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The Gurgler’s 2025 F1 Season Preview – 2025 F1 Interest O Meter
The new season awaits, and instead of just predicting where the cars might finish, which would be stupid to do before any Testing times, we have devised a general ranking system of just how interesting every team will be this year. Predicting in advance where all the good stories will come from and who to watch for various reasons.
Below is the table with all our scores, followed by a Team by Team explanation.
McLAREN
McLaren could well have the best car in 2025 to consolidate their Constructor’s title win in 2024, so there is plenty of potential for drama in 2025, based on their young driver’s ambitions and their Team Orders efforts during 2024. Imagine how that’s going to work out if the car is as fast as last season from the very first race. While the team mate battle itself is interesting, the drivers themselves aren’t really. Oscar Piastri almost makes Kimi Raikkonen look like a Circus Ringmaster or better equivalent, and Lando Norris isn’t as interesting as he thinks he is. Or Sky F1 does.
McLaren’s progress from plodder at the beginning of 2023 to number one by the end of 2024 is as impressive as any team of the last few decades, and hints that there could more to come in 2025, and a Championship winning car straight out of the box with ambitious young drivers means they will be a team of immense interest this season.
FERRARI
Ferrari top our 2025 Interest O Meter with a hearty combination of at least one interesting driver, a potential championship winning car and big changes. Most of that all revolves around Lewis Hamilton’s arrival to the Prancing Horse squad, and rightly so as one of the biggest high profile driver moves since, well, probably his prior move from McLaren to Mercedes. Whilst that move ended up a masterstroke for Hamilton who won just about everything for five or six years, except for the smash and grab title win by Nico Rosberg. Whether this big move for Hamilton will end up as successful is one of the huge points of interest heading into F1 in 2025. There is a feeling from some of his late 2024 form that it may not be the best value for money for Ferrari, but either way it will be interesting. And either on track or off, there will always be a bit of drama and interest with Lewis Hamilton.
One is presuming that the Ferrari will be up there for the Championship, so if that is so it should make for a very competitive, and potential tense season. Maybe this is the season where Charles Leclerc puts it all together and gets some luck (and good strategy) and beats the great Lewis Hamilton. If the car is no good after the raised expectations of Hamilton’s arrival, then it could be fun to watch the fallout.
RED BULL
After finally working out what everyone knew, Sergio Perez was too slow and not good enough anymore, Red Bull made the culling call in the off season, which was a little too late to stop them from slipping to third in the Constructor’s Championship despite Max Verstappen taking a fourth Driver’s title.
The fact they chose Liam Lawson over Yuki Tsunoda, Carlos Sainz and anyone else that was available except for Daniel Ricciardo, still leaves a few questions. Lawson has shown to be quite capable in a lower tier car, and at times in 2025 quite feisty, so maybe that is the reason he got the nod over Tsunoda who was vastly more experienced, fast enough, but prone to a good dummy spit. Maybe it’s better the devil they don’t know to a degree. Either way Lawson’s arrival does heighten the potential for drama and keep the interesting driver score high.
Lawson aside though, there’s not much change, which is disappointing, as it would be good to see the back of either Christian “Netflix” Horner or Helmut “Shut Up Already” Marko. What certainly hasn’t changed is Max Verstappen, and the occasional drama that follows him, but he should be the favourite for the title. And will probably win a lot of races. But the question mark is there for the team, if they car remains suitable for only their top driver and the second driver keeps getting sacrificed, another team title will slip away. At least with the feisty Liam Lawson it should be interesting viewing if it does goes awry.
MERCEDES
A big year of change for Mercedes who go from one of F1’s most successful drivers of all time, to one of the most undercooked rookies in history. But there’s plenty to be excited about with the incoming Kimi Andrea Antonelli. Surely Mercedes wouldn’t be taking such a risk on a driver whose two previous seasons were F4 – F2 unless he is worth it. Or the boss of the F1 team has a hand in the driver’s affairs. Either way there should be plenty of talking points.
Antonelli’s F2 season in 2024 was underwhelming, at least to the same degree as his F2 team mate Oliver Bearman, but the 2025 Haas driver proved he was well capable in F1, and so we’re picking the Mercedes driver will be too, towards the end of the season. But there could be a few, interesting and wild weekends ahead.
Not quite so interesting is George Russell, but he is plenty quick and had the measure of Lewis Hamilton for most of 2024. There’s added interest with a potential feud with Max Verstappen to keep us interested in 2025. As for the Mercedes performance, it was hard to tell at times in 2024, with Mercedes right up there on some weekends, and then undriveable for Lewis Hamilton on others. With a rookie driver it may be up and down as well in 2025, which is interesting for all.
ASTON MARTIN
Aston Martin are second on our 2025 F1 Interest O Meter, and that may well be a back handed compliment for the interest levels may not be for the right reasons. For them.
Mainly the potential drama and interesting drivers revolves around Lance Stroll, who looks like the most disinterested F1 driver in history. Although, his efforts beaching himself in the gravel in Brazil last season was pure entertainment genius. But Stroll’s indifference to F1 will make him one to watch always in 2025, and depending on the car is how far back you’ll have to look for him. Just find the first Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso and look a little further back. Alonso himself adds to the interesting driver score, as he still commands attention on track for vintage performances when he can and truth bombs off it.
The other big point of interest for Aston Martin may not well come in 2025 but the season after and more. We talk about the arrival of Adrian Newey, which is one of the biggest Technical staff changes for the last five seasons and more. Newey is good, but even he will struggle to turn around Aston Martin that quickly. Although, he is some genius, so who could rule of 2025 for Newey inspired success.
ALPINE
Alpine is a funny one, and hard to predict, and with Flavio Briatore getting more involved it’s hard to see any of that changing in 2025. The fact he seemed to be behind signing another driver before the season started, and the rumours circulating (probably started by him) that new driver Jack Doohan has a handful of races to save his fledgling F1 career means Alpine won’t be too far from F1 fan’s attention in 2025.
It’s good there could be off track drama or driver changes, as the starting line up of Pierre Gasly and Jack Doohan is one of the dullest on the grid. Both are fast, and probably great once you get to know them, but on the surface neither fire up the excitement meter. But it a great to have two Australians on the grid for a change. If Franco Colapinto does steal Doohan’s drive, it could well make the Alpine’s season even more interesting,
The room for improvement score is based on Alpine continuing their late season rise from 2024. Not just for the slightly arsey double podium in Brazil, but Pierre Gasly’s qualifying form late in 2024 was sensational, and proof of speed for both car and driver. Back in the day late season form improvement did creep into the following season, so let’s see at Albert Park.
TEAM RB
Team RB could potentially have the most explosive team pairing in a long time. Yuki Tsunoda remains at Team RB after being overlooked again for the Senior Red Bull team, and he is quite well known for his grumpiness over the radio, and almost side-swiping team mates. So add some Red Bull rejection bitterness to some general short temper and it could be very interesting in 2025.
His new team mate Izack Hadjar has shown in F2 that he has an even shorter fuse in the cockpit, and has even been told by Helmut Marko to calm down. Some of Hadjar’s radio in F2 was brutal, especially after losing out at the feature race in Monaco, where he had a full kindy kid meltdown. But he’s fast, and was in with a shout for the F2 title at the last race last season before he stalled on the grid and never restarted.
As for performance, who knows with the junior Red Bull team. Given in 2024 they were meant to be closer than ever to the senior Red Bull and were disappointing, and Red Bull did slip from best car to good car last season, it is hard to see them climbing too far up the grid this season. Given the recruitment of the teams below them, maybe not going backwards will be a win.
WILLIAMS
Williams must be super happy heading into 2025, gaining a new title sponsor for the first time in a while, and securing the services of multiple race winner Carlos Sainz. Early team publicity shows that the Williams team look happy for Sainz’s arrival, even if the smiles are forced or barely visible from the former Ferrari driver.
It will be a big drop for Sainz to deal with going from a front running Ferrari to mid field will be a big point of interest in 2025, as will the incumbent Alex Albon’s reaction to it all.
As for the car, it’s hard to see a move up to front running, but there is an upward curve recently and the arrival of a Grand Prix winner in Carlos Sainz should help. Or if the car is no good, having a winning driver will make the problem seem worse. Which is potentially more interesting.
HAAS
A double driver change for Haas in 2025, who will probably miss the qualifying skills of Nico Hulkenberg. But they do have the exciting Ferrari backed prospect in Oliver Bearman, who has proven himself better at F1 than F2.
The other half of the driver changes is the arrival of Esteban Ocon. A competent race winner but also someone who has a history of not being a team player. Refer Monaco last season where he almost wiped out both Alpine’s in a rare points scoring position. So team mate drama usually does follow Ocon, and Bearman himself can be quite the feisty driver when it comes to on track action. So a intra team collision is a real possibility.
With the looming entry of the new US based Cadillac F1 team, Haas have plenty of inspiration to improve in 2025, and may well do that with a pair of fresh drivers.
KICK SAUBER
Despite the very amusing Valtteri Bottas, Sauber were nearly invisible in 2024, but importantly a rare great drive from Guanyu Zhou got them some points, but the bar was set pretty low and it’s hard to see enough improvement in 2025. Especially when it appears that Audi, who take over the naming rights from 2026, aren’t having much impact on improving the car.
The fact that there’s two new drivers is interesting, and the line up of fan favourite Nico Hulkenberg and reigning F2 Championship Gabriel Bortoletto should give Kick Sauber, or whatever they want to call themselves this season, fewer excuses for not scoring many points. Nico Hulkenberg continued to pull some great qualifying out in 2024, and Bortoletto was a very consistent front runner in F2.
But the car was terrible in 2024, and it needs to improve by some margin in 2025 to allow us to see how interesting they are.
The Gurgler’s 2025 F1 Season Preview – Constructor Title History
Here are a couple of visuals showing the teams progress. Points start at 2010 under the new system, while the rankings go back to 1980 for enough context.
