The F1 season 2025 has finally started! We’ve been waiting for it and of course, now for the seventh year, Netflix has contributed to the build-up by launching the latest season of “Drive to Survive” a week ago (I’m not through it yet…). Anyway the new F1 season started today if you read this on the day of publication, and if so, you may just have seen Lando Norris win the first GP of the season in Melbourne, allowing a McLaren driver to lead the Drivers’ championship for the first time since 1992! If you look back on the practice sessions of the last weeks that was hardly a surprise, and Norris may well stay at the top far longer than just until next race.

Whatever happens, 2025 is the last season with F1 in its current form before some major changes in 2026. More on that later this year but it will affect fuels, engines and downforce, with signs that cars will not be as fast as in 2025. Therefore, we should enjoy the current season for as long as it lasts, especially since it promises to be even more exciting than last year, which itself was of course the most exciting season in many years!

Starting with the driver line-up, the biggest news of the season is of course something that was announced already last season, namely Lewis Hamilton taking Carlos Sainz’ seat at Ferrari, with the latter joining Williams. Lewis is of course a true legend with seven world championship titles under his belt, but he will still have his work cut out for him, not only in comparison to Charles Leclerc but actually also to his predecessor who had a great season in 2024.

We know now that Sainz had the choice to join Alpine or Kick-Sauber in addition to Williams. Kick-Sauber is set to become Audi in 2026 and would perhaps have been most promising in that regard, seen from the outside. That Sainz still opted for Williams hopefully says a lot about the potential the team has this year. In the first, chaotic Melbourne GP he didn’t manage to capitalize on that, but his teammate Alex Albon finishing fourth may have been an early indication.

Lewis’ departure from Mercedes also meant Toto Wolf as team principal had a seat to fill, with quite some pressure to get it right. Toto, in my view wisely, chose not to go for Sainz or another more experienced driver, but rather for perhaps the most exciting of the five newcomers this season. The Italian Kimi Antonelli is only 18 years old and has been a part of the Mercedes Junior Team since 2019. Last year was his first in F2, he won several races and now gets the chance to drive for Mercedes in F1. That’s quite a development for a teenager who only got his driver’s license a few months ago… Together with George Russell who is now Mercedes’ first driver, that gives the team not only the youngest, but perhaps also the most exciting driver line-up.

The other newcomers include 19-year old Englishman Oliver Bearman from the Ferrari academy driving for Haas, the 22-year old Australian Jack Dohan on Alpine, from the team’s own academy and the son of the MC legend Mick Dohan, and the 20-year old Brazilian Gabriele Bortoleto who won the F2 championship last year and now drives for Kick-Sauber. Last but not least is 20-year old Isack Hadjar who was the runner up in F2 last year and drives for Red Bull’s junior team Racing Bulls. Hadjar is French-Algerian, meaning he will be the first F1 driver ever from the African continent, outside of South Africa.

This means that only Aston Martin and McLaren have an unchanged driver line-up in 2025. Haas has replaced both their drivers, with Bearman coming in alongside Esteban Ocon, who lost his Alpine seat to Jack Dohan. None of the Kick-Sauber drivers, Bottas and Zhou, will drive in F1 this season, replaced by Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg from Haas. Most importantly however, Liam Lawson has graduated from Racing Bulls to Red Bull, being replaced by Hadjar, and now drives for Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen.

Lawson is a 23-year old New Zealander who during last season was Red Bull’s reserve driver and came in to replace Daniel Ricciardo at the junior team Racing Bulls (previously called Alpha Tauri) when he broke his hand mid-season. Lawson has driven a total of 11 GP’s, finishing ninth at best, but proving he’s got the speed on a couple of occasions last year. And that’s probably a good thing, since it’s still a bit of a mystery how fast the Red Bull car really is.

McLaren of course won the Constructors’ title last year and clearly had the fastest car in the latter part of the season. At least at the beginning of this season, that still looks to be the case. Behind McLaren, we’ll have to see if Red Bull still has any kind of edge on Ferrari and Mercedes. It’s no secret that the car has a narrow window where it performs at 100%, and the question will be whether that window has become wider or not. If not, it’s difficult to see how Verstappen will be able to hold on to his title, and how the team could win back the Constructor’s title. And looking at the other teams, if the first race and Carlos Sainz’s experience is anything to go by, Williams could be the positive surprise of this season!

Before we close, it’s also great to see that F1’s leading playboy is back! Flavio Briatore doesn’t need much of an introduction, he was of course team head at Renault in the 90’s during Schumi’s time, when the team was still called Renault, and returned to the team in the middle of last season. Back in the day, he helped Renault win three Constructors’ titles and four Drivers’ titles with Schumi, but was then banned from F1 in 2008 following “Crashgate”, when he was accused of instructing Nelson Piquet Jr. to crash, such as to help his teammate Fernando Alonso to win the race.

Flavio was later acquitted, and none of this prevented him, on a personal level, from having affairs both with Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, with whom he has a child. Briatore now returns to Alpine as “executive advisor”, but few doubt he’s running the team. And that’s a good thing, because not only is Briatore widely respected, he also has more charisma than all the other team heads taken together!