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.
Alonso’s position at Aston Martin is rock solid and will see him into the new rules era in 2026
Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images
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…
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