The 2024 F1 season is hotting up, with seven different winners in the first 13 races of the year and four in the last four races. Max Verstappen currently leads the championship with 265 points, ahead of Lando Norris in second with 189 points.
Over half of the grid’s contracts are set to expire at the end of the year and it looks likely that the summer break will be packed full of negotiations. The driver market was sent into chaos at the start of the year when Lewis Hamilton announced he would be leaving Mercedes – the team he’s been with since 2013 – to join Ferrari, leaving Carlos Sainz out of the Italian outfit.
2025 F1 driver line-up
Hamilton’s announcement of his move to Ferrari meant that contract negotiations began earlier in the season than anticipated, as teams looked to secure their driver line-ups for the next season. The move left Sainz without a seat and he had been described as “the cork in the bottle” by Kevin Magnussen, as the grid tried to solidify their seats for next year.
Sainz has announced at the start of the summer break that he will be joining Williams in 2025. The Spaniard has signed a two-year deal with the option to extend past 2026. Team principal James Vowles has said: “Carlos brings not just experience and performance, but also a fierce drive to extract every millisecond out of the team and car; the fit is perfect.”
This move from Hamilton also leaves the second Mercedes seat available, with speculation that the place could be given to F2’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Following the 17-year-old’s maiden feature race win in Hungary, the Italian said “I don’t know if I will be ready” for a move into F1 next year.
Antonelli’s Prema team-mate Oliver Bearman announced in July that he would be joining Haas in 2025. The Chelmsford-born driver had an impressive debut for Ferrari at the Saudi Arabian GP after he was called to stand in for an unwell Sainz. Following the announcement of his move into F1, Bearman said: “It’s hard to put into words just how much this means to me. To say out loud that I will be a Formula 1 driver for MoneyGram Haas F1 Team makes me so immensely proud.”
Oliver Bearman, Reserve Driver, Ferrari and Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
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