Grading the class of F1 2025

Formula 1’s summer break is a time for reflection, particularly with 10 races remaining beyond the holiday period. As such, we thought we’d take a look at how the season has unfolded for each of the 21 drivers to have driven in a grand prix this year, and then grade them based on an overview of their season. 

It’s difficult to distil 14 races into a single letter but, taking the balance of each driver’s performances over 2025 so far, we’ve maintained tradition and offered each driver their own report card. 

Who’s top of the class? Who’s earned themselves an after-school detention? Here are the half-term test results…

Max Verstappen: A

#1 Red Bull
Championship position: 3rd

Verstappen has starred, with stunning qualifying performances and combative races, in a car that remains difficult to drive

Photo by: Mark Thompson - Getty Images

Even when armed with a less competitive car, the four-time world champion has walked the tightrope with his Red Bull to remain (albeit mathematically) an outside bet for the 2025 title.

Verstappen has enjoyed some of his finest qualifying results in a car that has been difficult to drive, and his Suzuka and Silverstone poles surely fit somewhere among his top 10 single laps in F1.

Converting pole into a win at Suzuka capped off a near-flawless drive, and his move on Oscar Piastri at the start at Imola also demonstrated his ability to sniff out weaknesses in his opponents’ defences.

When the car hasn’t been in the right ballpark, Verstappen has been forced to make do, and Bahrain and Miami underline moments when Red Bull has slipped back in races. Despite that, he’s always battled against the tide, and valiantly so.

Might have been on for an A+, but the Barcelona crash with George Russell was unforgivable. Still prone to overstepping the mark.  

Oscar Piastri: A

#81 McLaren
Championship position: 1st

Points leader Piastri’s cool-headed nature is tailor-made for the rigours of a championship battle

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

It was always known that Piastri was an unflappably calm character, even in the scalding heat of battle; his approach has been a huge boon given the pressures involved in a title battle.

His approach has served him well, and the Australian is starting to find new ways of raising his game after two seasons spent learning how to battle at the front.

Piastri’s tyre management skills have developed from a weakness into a strength, and his qualifying efforts are becoming more consistent as he nails his fast laps with greater precision. China and Bahrain were dominant drives, and Spa demonstrated his greater touch with tyres this season when he took a set of mediums through 32 of the 44 laps.

He’s been less affected by the apparent numbness in the MCL39’s handling than Lando Norris, and can adopt a more patient stance with the car on the approach to corners. He would be further ahead in the points, without his Australia off and British GP safety car misdemeanour.

Lando Norris: A

#4 McLaren
Championship position: 2nd

Norris’s Monaco Grand Prix victory came at the right time to lift his confidence

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Norris has found this year’s McLaren very different in handling versus last season’s machine and has struggled to adapt – which let Piastri claim the early limelight.

The Briton kicked off the year in style with a win from pole in a wet Australian Grand Prix, but crunch-time qualifying laps then eluded him and he didn’t claim another pole position until Monaco in May. At least he picked the most important time to find his form.

He missed pole in Japan and China by fractions, but Bahrain and Saudi Arabia qualifying sessions were huge miscues, crashing out of Q3 in the latter, forcing him to dig deep to reclaim ground in the races.

His Monaco win brought back confidence, and he later reeled off back-to-back victories in Austria and at Silverstone. Still, the Canada clash with Piastri will be remembered as a potentially pivotal moment in the championship battle.

Tiny mistakes aside, he’s got himself dialled back into a championship fight, and must be commended for his resilience.

George Russell: A

#63 Mercedes
Championship position: 4th

Converting pole into victory in Canada is high point of Russell’s season so far

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Russell has performed admirably, despite continued speculation about his Mercedes future – to the point where it has become unclear why the team would consider looking elsewhere.

After claiming consecutive third-place finishes in the opening pair of races, ensuring Mercedes got its best start to a season since 2021, Russell then beat Norris to second in Bahrain despite wrangling with myriad electrical issues.

The highlight was his domination of the Canadian GP weekend, where he absorbed early pressure from Verstappen to maintain pole position, as his W16 worked sweetly in the cooler conditions.

While the car has struggled to contend with higher temperatures, Russell has maximised those results; fifth in both Saudi Arabia and Austria was solid, given the team’s troubles at those weekends. But he rued his British GP strategy in conditions that should have suited his car, and the on-off suspension tinkering hasn’t helped… but those issues are hardly his fault. 

Charles Leclerc: A

#16 Ferrari
Championship position: 5th

Leclerc is operating at his prime in a car that has fallen frustratingly short of expected front-running performance

Photo by: Clive Rose / Formula 1 via Getty Images

There’s been an edge to Leclerc this year, one that seems to have been developed by frustration; Ferrari was expected to challenge for honours this season and he is disappointed by the apparent backwards step that it has taken.

But Leclerc deserves his place among the A-grades – he’s effectively been on a par with Verstappen and Russell as the best of the rest who aren’t fortunate enough to drive a McLaren.

Getting his Ferrari to third at Jeddah was a little bit of a false dawn – he spent the next two rounds fighting against Williams – but finishing second at Monaco and three further podiums beyond that showed that he’s getting the best out of the SF-25 at his disposal.

And he’s showing Lewis Hamilton the way. Silverstone was the only real disasterclass this year, but that was mostly a function of the weather and Ferrari’s difficult relationship with damp conditions. He’s operating at his prime; Ferrari must give him a car to make the most of his talent.

Alex Albon: A-

#23 Williams
Championship position: 8th

Impressive Albon has shone against Sainz and played a key role in Williams’s 2025 revival

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

After Franco Colapinto was parachuted into a Williams seat in the latter half of last year and proved more of a match for Albon than any of his previous team-mates, many wondered how the Anglo-Thai would get on with Carlos Sainz next to him.

As it happens, Albon has taken a huge step forward. Qualifying sixth and finishing fifth in Australia underlined Williams’s much greater form in 2025, and Albon managed seven points finishes in the opening eight races of the season, matching his Albert Park results at both Miami and Imola.

In both cases, he duelled with the Ferraris, showing his worth against two very well-regarded drivers. A trio of retirements followed, where Williams faced cooling issues in the races. Regardless, Albon has been a consistent barometer of the FW47’s pace and has been a huge factor in its revival.

Bahrain was unlucky – Hulkenberg’s Q1 lap deletion came too late for Albon to take part in Q2 – and Spain was sloppy before his power unit-enforced retirement. 

Nico Hulkenberg: B+

#27 Sauber
Championship position: 9th

Hulkenberg’s Silverstone podium broke an unenviable record and was a standout general season highlight

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Although he’s been outshone in qualifying by rookie team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto, Hulkenberg’s battle-hardened veteran status has afforded him a great deal of situational awareness in races, which has yielded a series of excellent results.

He kept the car on the island in Australia to ensure Sauber’s account was opened at the first race, but had to wait until Barcelona in June for more points. There, he took advantage of wilder moments in the race to rifle past Isack Hadjar and Lewis Hamilton to take sixth (fifth after Verstappen’s professional foul).

Top-10 finishes in Canada and Austria followed as Sauber’s prudent approach to upgrading its C45 started to bear fruit, but it was Hulkenberg’s Silverstone race that finally ended an unenviable streak – he took his first podium in F1 at the 239th attempt. In that wet/dry British GP, Hulkenberg called his own strategy perfectly and maintained strong race pace to end up finishing third.

Pierre Gasly: B+

#10 Alpine
Championship position: 14th

Gasly has excelled at extracting results where possible against a background of a team in flux

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Given the tough task of leading a team through a transitional year, amid continual managerial and personnel changes, Gasly’s class has been able to shine through.

His A525 chassis promised much after Alpine’s strong end to 2024, but the team’s early call to move development to 2026 means that Gasly has lived on a mantra of “maximising and extracting” over a weekend.

That hasn’t always been possible as the car struggles with tyre preservation over race distances, but the Frenchman has been excellent at digging the results out where possible – particularly over one lap. Qualifying fifth and finishing seventh at the Bahrain GP looked to have kickstarted his year, but points-scoring finishes have proven to be sparser than hoped for.

He hit the heights of sixth in the wet-dry British GP, against all expectations. Gasly is very much waiting for 2026 and Mercedes power – his talent is deserving of more than battling for minor points.

Esteban Ocon: B

#31 Haas
Championship position: 10th

The chance to take a lead role at the Haas squad has been seized with relish by Ocon

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

After leaving the Alpine set-up, Ocon took the chance to become the senior driver at Haas, a role that he has come to relish. He immediately endeared himself to the team with his run to seventh (fifth after disqualifications ahead) in China, followed by his rise to eighth in Bahrain.

On both occasions, the Frenchman was given off-kilter strategies to work to, either through alternate starting tyres or in stretching out stints, but he made them both work. Monaco was also impressive – he claimed seventh with his team opportunistically feeding off the other teams’ hold-up play.

Qualifying has been very hit or miss, however; Ocon has made Q3 twice but has also faced Q1 eliminations on seven occasions. But races seem to come to him and Haas – and that’s where he’s been able to shine.

Has he been able to dominate Ollie Bearman as much as some might have expected given his experience? Perhaps not, but the combination is showing the potential to be a good one for Haas.  

Isack Hadjar: B

#6 Racing Bulls 
Championship position: 13th

French rookie Hadjar has surprised with a commendable start to his Formula 1 career

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

There wasn’t much expectation when it came to Hadjar’s arrival in F1, which makes his starring turn this season at Racing Bulls a welcome surprise. The Frenchman – “Petit Prost”, as Helmut Marko calls him – has demonstrated some rapid qualifying pace that, over a lap, put Yuki Tsunoda under pressure in their first two races together.

In fact, Hadjar has not experienced Q1 elimination all year, such is his efficacy on Saturdays. Qualifying sixth at Monaco was tremendous, and he benefited from Liam Lawson’s hold-up play in the race to convert that season-best finish.

But he’s come undone when race strategy has been spotty (China, for example). And when he’s qualified out of the top 10, he’s struggled to break into the points, which suggests Hadjar has a little more to find in race pace and in overtaking bravery.

Otherwise, he’s had a very commendable start to his F1 career with few real mistakes, learning quickly after his Oz formation-lap faux pas. 

Andrea Kimi Antonelli: B-

#12 Mercedes
Championship position: 7th

Mercedes should be able to help Antonelli through his current tricky patch

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Let’s start with the best bits: the 18-year-old took the sprint race pole in Miami and then secured the first podium of his F1 career at Montreal after defending from Piastri in the final stages of the Canadian GP.

And let’s not forget his fourth-place finish on his debut in Australia, recovering from a Q1 exit and a spin at Turn 3 in damp conditions. Aside from the standard rookie mistakes: wide moments at crunch times, or defending too hard in the Miami sprint and losing more than the lead, Antonelli showed steady progress in the early part of the season.

Yet progress stalled slightly as the Mercedes package has fallen to its usual habits, and Antonelli sustained a period of poor luck in the first part of the European season: failures at Imola and Barcelona, and then his crashes in Monaco qualifying and with Verstappen in Austria.

He’s going through a tricky patch, but it’s surely one Mercedes knew could happen and will doubtless help the Italian through so that he can continue his learning curve.

Lewis Hamilton: B-

#44 Ferrari
Championship position: 6th

Hamilton’s first season at Ferrari has, with the exception of his Shanghai sprint win, fallen short of expectations so far

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

For a move that was so stratospheric in its reach that it spanned the global media lexicon, Hamilton’s first half-season with Ferrari has not been without its troubles.

After a decade with Mercedes, there’s been a lengthy adaptation to the Ferrari way, and that’s brought about moments of occasional tension as the seven-time champion has delivered – and faced – a few hard truths. Of course, the China sprint win was the highlight, and he looked his collected self in front of the field.

Qualifying form has been more volatile versus team-mate Leclerc, with high points being fourth at Monaco and Austria, but he also fell out in Q1 at Spa after losing a lap to track limits. Race results have generally been consistent, but a top-three result is conspicuously missing from Hamilton’s collection this year.

He’s not far behind Leclerc in the championship, and we can all agree that the Monegasque has been excellent this season. The Briton, however, has been missing that little flourish of star power so far.

Gabriel Bortoleto: B-

#5 Sauber
Championship position: 17th

Sauber rookie Bortoleto has already shown he’s a wise head on young shoulders

Photo by: Lars Baron / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Arguably the driver who came into F1 with the least experience of top-level machinery, given he stepped into an F1 car for the first time in the 2024 post-season Yas Marina test, Bortoleto has been a wise head on young shoulders since entering the championship with Sauber.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first: he’s had a couple of crashes, particularly in difficult conditions in Australia and at Silverstone (twice that weekend), but the Brazilian has not been frightened by those less felicitous moments.

He’s shown great qualifying pace and outqualified team-mate Hulkenberg at the first time of asking, progressing to Q3 results by the time the Sauber package improved.

In the early races, perhaps he could be seen as missing the killer instinct versus his team-mate, but he’s put that right of late, demonstrating better race pace in Austria and Belgium. He’s already shown fine progress, and his results while the car was still the slowest arguably went underappreciated.

Fernando Alonso: C+

#14 Aston Martin
Championship position: 11th

Alonso may think he’s Formula 1’s unluckiest driver, but the old magic emerges given half a chance

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images

It took an uncharacteristically long time for Alonso to score his first point of the year, which he eventually claimed at his home race at Barcelona (round nine) after a spell of misfortune – to the point where the two-time champion rued his luck as the worst in Formula 1’s history.

A crash in the wet at Melbourne, a brake temperature issue on lap five in China, and a powertrain problem at Monaco while running sixth compounded his misery, but Spain began a more fortuitous run.

Ninth at his home GP kickstarted a streak of four consecutive points finishes; hardly an illustrious sequence of results versus his 2023 heroics, but it shows the team’s regression to the mean of late.

Alonso’s gap to Lance Stroll has grown significantly over the season in terms of pace, but the Canadian remained ahead in the points until Hungary thanks to Australia and more fortunate strategy at Silverstone. The Hungaroring race showed Alonso can still deliver when given a sniff.

Ollie Bearman: C+

#87 Haas
Championship position: 19th

Haas appreciates how Bearman fits into the team, and his form has improved as the season’s progressed

Photo by: Haas F1 Team

The Briton’s full rookie season has been inextricably linked to the rollercoaster-like form of his Haas. On the high-speed, the Haas tends to find a few more difficulties with delivering consistent downforce, although updates have mitigated some of this.

Bearman’s qualifying averages had, for the early phases of the season, been low, but his form has improved as the season has continued, and he’s generally matched the more experienced Ocon for pace.

There have been the occasional rookie slips; Bearman’s Australia weekend was a disaster and, since then, he’s picked up two 10-place grid penalties for red-flag infringements. But Haas likes the way that he operates. A string of 11th-place finishes shows that, even in races where Haas hasn’t been able to capitalise on conditions, Bearman can still be in the mix.

The crashes have been ironed out, but the occasional penchant for contact with other drivers now needs to be tidied up.

Carlos Sainz: C+

#55 Williams
Championship position: 16th

Sainz will want to close the considerable points gap to his Williams team-mate in the final 10 races of the season

Photo by: Williams

There have been moments over 2025 when Sainz has shown his genuine class, but his adaptation to the Williams set-up has not been entirely smooth.

He reckoned that his overall progress with the car itself had been relatively swift, and qualifying 10th first time out in Australia seems to support this, but the difficulties have been in moments of process.

Indeed, Sainz outqualified Albon four times in a row between Bahrain and Imola, but the results on a Saturday have tailed off with unfortunate Q1 eliminations and 50/50 tyre calls at weekends with the C6.

Still, Sainz has shown good races too and battled heartily with the Ferraris at both Miami and Imola, but he’s found it difficult to move forward if qualifying goes badly – an issue that Albon hasn’t really had.

That he’s 38 points behind Albon does make it difficult to put Sainz in the B-tier as the Williams is clearly capable of more, but there’s time for the results to improve. Can the four-time F1 winner get the better of Albon over the remaining 10 races?

Liam Lawson: C

#30 Red Bull, then Racing Bulls
Championship position: 15th

Lawson is rediscovering his mojo with Racing Bulls after the travails of his opening stint at Red Bull

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

If this was based purely on Lawson’s most recent races, he’d be worthy of a higher grade, but we have to take the full 14 events so far into account. He was thrown to the sharks at Red Bull and never had a chance to impress, having qualified at the back across his two grands prix and a sprint with the team.

Lawson at least got a soft landing at Racing Bulls, where he’s been steadily recovering his form after a bruising time at the senior team. Against Hadjar, who has demonstrated a mighty turn of pace in qualifying so far in 2025, Lawson has had to raise his game on Saturdays.

He outqualified the Frenchman for the first time at Jeddah (round four), and finally got his points breakthrough this year with his dutiful hold-up play at Monaco to help Hadjar get his pitstops in.

A star in Austria, qualifying and finishing sixth, although still lacks a tenth or two to Hadjar over one lap. But he is regaining his mojo in races and has outperformed the Parisian in recent weeks, and is just two points behind.

Yuki Tsunoda: C-

#22 Racing Bulls, then Red Bull
Championship position: 18th

Car-related difficulties have done Tsunoda no favours, although Mekies’s arrival should help smooth his path

Photo by: Tim Clarke

Possibly the most difficult driver to score, simply because 99% of his struggles are car-related.

Tsunoda was at his best in the opening rounds of the season with Racing Bulls, only to have hefty points paydays denied by iffy team strategy. For example, a potential fifth-place finish in Australia was undone by a late call for intermediate tyres, and China was nixed by a rigid adherence to a two-stop – but he’d at least finished sixth in the sprint.

He was thrust into a Red Bull seat with no testing before round three in Japan, but looked to have acquitted himself well to finish 12th, to suggest a clear upgrade over Lawson. He finished ninth in Bahrain, 11s behind Verstappen, then collected solid points in Miami, but a confidence-sapping streak followed his heavy Imola qualifying shunt.

Barcelona was poor, then he cost himself a good grid position with a red-flag overtake in FP3 in Montreal. The Japanese should now feel more supported under Laurent Mekies’s stewardship.

Lance Stroll: D+

#18 Aston Martin
Championship position: 12th

Stroll’s characteristically strong form in tricky conditions contrasts with anonymity elsewhere

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

There have been moments when the Canadian has enjoyed genuinely good races, particularly in wet or low-grip conditions. The problem is, it was ever thus; it’s not that he’s wildly inconsistent, but more that he’s anonymous 80% of the time, with the other 20% interspersed as good results in tricky conditions.

Stroll started the year at his wet-weather best in the mixed-surface Australian GP, in which he quietly clambered up to sixth, and then made his way up to ninth in the GP in China. But form swung away from him; Japan was a disaster and he qualified and finished last, slow in Bahrain, then tried a tyre switch in Saudi Arabia in the hope of a safety car.

The Miami weekend exemplifies his season so far: in the wet conditions of the sprint, he rose to fifth from 16th on the grid but he was nowhere in Sunday’s dry race. Stroll also missed Barcelona after requiring further surgery to the hand he fractured in 2023. Seventh in Hungary was solid.

Franco Colapinto: D

#43 Alpine
Championship position: 20th

Colapinto needs to turn things around after failing to deliver on the hype whipped up by his outings last year

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Against all expectations, the talkative Argentinian impressed in his nine-race spell with Williams in 2024. He also picked up a reputation for being slightly too eager to transgress his FW46’s limits, but he nonetheless set tongues wagging and courted the attention of other teams.

When Alpine made the offer to bring him in as reserve, it felt like a move to put pressure on Jack Doohan – and the inevitable came to pass when the Australian was sidelined after six GPs.

But the facts are this: Colapinto simply hasn’t lived up to the hype that he generated last year; although he got to Q2 in his opening appearance of 2025 at Imola, it was only after he’d shunted during Q1 and brought out a red flag.

He looked like he’d kicked on in Canada by qualifying 12th and finishing 13th, but his performances have been muted since. He also appears to have a problem with rear-view mirrors, if Austria and Imola are anything to go by. Needs improvement, lest Alpine shuffle its deck again.

Jack Doohan: D

#7 Alpine
Championship position: 21st

It could be argued that Doohan wasn’t allowed a proper crack in F1 before his demotion back to reserve driver role

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

There was an unfair level of pressure on the Australian before a wheel was even turned in 2025, amid rumours of a five-race contract before Flavio Briatore prised Colapinto out of his Williams third driver role.

Doohan showed well in qualifying in his six-race spell with Alpine but endured messy moments in his opening races with the team: he crashed out during Australia’s wet start, then picked up penalties for forcing drivers off the road twice in China.

After his infamous DRS-open crash in Japan, where he’d apparently tried to push the low-drag mode into Turn 1, he settled down and qualified 11th in Bahrain to show the embers of strong pace.

Two rounds later, he outqualified Gasly for the Miami GP, but then ended up coming to blows with Lawson at the start of the race. Days later, he was demoted back to a reserve role and replaced by Colapinto.

It’s probably fair to say that he wasn’t given a particularly fair crack in F1, but nor were his six races mistake-free.

Autosport average driver ratings for F1 2025 so far

Piastri 8.3
Russell 7.4
Leclerc 7.4
Verstappen 7.3
Norris 7.3
Hulkenberg 6.6
Alonso 6.5
Albon 6.4
Hamilton 6.1
Ocon 6.1
Hadjar 6.1
Antonelli 6.1
Bearman 5.9
Gasly 5.8
Bortoleto 5.8
Sainz 5.8
Lawson 5.3
Stroll 5.2
Tsunoda 4.9
Colapinto 4.6
Doohan 4.3

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the September 2025 issue and subscribe today.

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Photo by: Erik Junius