Even though the dust has barely settled on the 2024 Formula 1 season, it’s hard not to get excited about what 2025 has in store.
The primary reason is that F1 has never seemed as open as it did at the end of the 2024 season. Four teams and seven drivers won races throughout the year, and although the lion’s share went to world champion Max Verstappen, the spread of victories in the second half of the campaign was far wider than it has been for more than a decade.
Going into next year, the sport’s technical regulations remain stable, which means there’s no reason why one team should steal a march on the others.
What’s more, with a major regulation overhaul looming for 2026, the development focus for all four top teams will likely shift toward the future. Balancing development between an already competitive 2025 car and a 2026 project — one that will shape a team’s success for the next five years — will be a key challenge. As a result, there’s a good chance the competitive nature of the final races of 2024 will spill into 2025 and provide a title battle for the ages.
And that makes the challenge of picking a favourite all the more difficult.
Max Verstappen | Red Bull
Age at 2025 season’s start: 27
Championship position in 2024: 1st
Wins in 2024: 9
Coming off four consecutive titles, there’s a compelling case for Verstappen to make it five in a row in 2025 — something only Michael Schumacher has achieved before.
After his struggles in the second half of the season, it’s easy to forget he scored nine race victories in 2024 — a number that would usually represent a level of domination in a single season. It’s also more than double any of his nearest rivals and equal to the number of victories scored by Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri combined.
His early-season points haul, when the Red Bull was still the class of the field, laid the foundation for Verstappen’s championship. However, it was his ability to grind out results in a subpar car during the second half of the season that secured the title with two races remaining.
But while Verstappen was in a class of his own for much of the year, things haven’t been quite right at Red Bull for several months now. The car’s competitiveness has slowly tailed off since May, when Norris beat Verstappen fair and square for the first time, and big names…
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