F1 DRIVER RATINGS: NORRIS MISSES OUT ON TOP SPOT AS HAMILTON BEATEN BY THREE ROOKIES
The 2025 Formula One season is over and Lando Norris has been crowned world drivers’ champion for the first time. There were ups and downs for most of the grid across a gruelling 24-race campaign.
Throughout the season, Telegraph Sport has sifted through the data to come up with ratings for each race. For our final rankings these have been combined across the year, with bonus points given for how drivers fared in qualifying against their team-mate, minus any penalty points they accrued in the season, which also acts as a tie-breaker on points total.
Here is how they all stack up.
Jack Doohan was simply not given enough of a chance in Formula One. He did show the occasional glimpses of raw pace that hinted at why Alpine selected him in the first place. The problem was that he racked up a substantial crash damage bill in a short period of time. Harsh but understandable that he was dropped. But was Franco Colapinto that much of an improvement?
It is difficult to be too harsh on any of the Alpine drivers given the decisions the team made and the quality of the car. Franco Colapinto was also under significant pressure from the moment he came in, with suggestions that he could lose his seat.
The team’s decision to retain him for 2026 looks just about justified but, really, the car was too slow for his potential to amount to anything. Pierre Gasly is a good benchmark and he occasionally pushed him, but not enough. A far cry from his Williams stint last year.
It appears that Yuki Tsunoda’s F1 career has come to an end after a chastening season alongside Max Verstappen. Should we – and Red Bull – have expected him to get more from the RB21 than he did? Probably a little, but the issues with the second driver are now well documented and Tsunoda simply did not show enough to deserve an extension.
Twenty-two races is more than enough to improve and, although he did show progress across the season, it was neither frequent nor significant enough. That is probably true across his whole career.
Every time I come to assess Lance Stroll’s season I write almost the same thing. Stroll is not a terrible F1 driver, but if Aston Martin are serious about competing at the front they need to find someone capable of delivering on more than a handful of occasions each season. He is flattered by only finishing 23 points behind team-mate Fernando Alonso. Incredibly, next year will be his 10th in F1.
It is hard to be too critical of Liam Lawson because of how appallingly he was treated by Red Bull, being dropped after just two races. Since moving back to Racing Bulls he has looked the part as an F1 driver, something he was never given the chance to do alongside Max Verstappen.
Still, the Kiwi has been beaten fairly roundly by stand-out rookie Isack Hadjar – who had no F1 experience compared to his own 11 grands prix – and that cannot be ignored. Has earned another go next year with six top-eight finishes.
Again, it is difficult to judge Pierre Gasly’s season all that accurately because of the quality of the Alpine car, which was clearly the slowest on the grid. Despite this, on tracks where it was not awful, he was able to haul it into Q3 or SQ3 on 11 occasions. That is almost heroic.
Could he have achieved a great deal more than the 22 points he finished with? I am not sure. His season was not entirely without blemish but some of that surely comes down to frustration with the machinery at his disposal. Firmly in the group of “middling drivers” in these rankings.
Gabriel Bortoleto’s ranking gives the impression that he has had a poor season. This was his first year in F1 and a qualified success. He started slowly but then put in a strong run from Austria to Italy with four points finishes in six rounds.
His qualifying record against Nico Hulkenberg (15-14 ahead) is a stand-out mark of his quality. A few too many crashes and was then second best to his team-mate towards the end of the year, but he has done more than enough to secure his seat in 2026.
Brutally, Esteban Ocon was outclassed this year by his rookie team-mate Oliver Bearman. That does not make it a poor season for Ocon, with 38 points overall, but it is impossible to deny that Bearman was easily the faster driver in both qualifying and race trim towards the end of the season.
The pair were fairly evenly matched until the final third of the season, but Ocon struggled to get what Bearman could from the Haas, a strong seventh in Abu Dhabi aside. He has regularly put his struggles down to struggles with the brakes, but that is no real excuse.
What was looking clearly like Alexander Albon’s finest season in six years in F1 finished with question marks. Eleven points finishes in the first 16 rounds left him with 73 points and a clear eighth in the standings. Yet after Azerbaijan his results declined and he ended the season with a run of eight pointless finishes. Some of this was down to bad luck, but a few too many crashes and mistakes did not help his cause.
As the season progressed it was team-mate Carlos Sainz and not Albon who got the best from the Williams. As such, he has been overtaken by the Spaniard in the rankings and has dropped down from sixth in July. Still a commendable season, but less emphatically so than it was four months ago.
This is not what Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes for, is it? It is not an understatement to say that 2025 was a bitter disappointment and his worst season in nearly 20 years in F1. It was not quite as bad as he so frequently claimed, calling it a “nightmare” and himself “useless”. It was better than that, with a decent run in the middle of the year, but his form and demeanour tailed off dramatically.
He was roundly beaten by Charles Leclerc in all categories, failing to get on the podium once whilst the Monegasque did seven times. Worse still is how he ended the year, outscored by even Oliver Bearman in the last five rounds. You worry about how he might fare next year.
In the middle of the season there would have been a worry at Mercedes that they acted too hastily in promoting the Italian teenager. After a promising start, the errors crept in and he failed to deal with either the pressure or demands of F1, as his team-mate was shining. He even admitted that the pressure was difficult to deal with.
It took a public dressing down from Toto Wolff and a change in suspension, but the way Antonelli ended the season suggests that George Russell – despite his best year in F1 – needs to keep a close eye on his team-mate. After two points finishes in nine rounds, Antonelli took 83 points in the final eight, which included two podiums. He had even started to outpace Russell at times.
The 242-race wait for a podium in F1 ended for Nico Hulkenberg at Silverstone. It was the standout result of the season, but there were plenty of other moments that show the veteran still has life in him yet. They continued throughout the season, as he often charged from a lowly grid position to pick up points.
In truth, there was a period in the middle of the season where Hulkenberg was coming off second best to his rookie team-mate in both qualifying and races. Yet he turned that around in a tightly packed midfield. Finishing where he did with the points total he has in the ninth fastest car shows that he is a good bet to help the new Audi project from 2026 onwards.
At our last round of ratings after Silverstone, Bearman was in 15th due to a poor run of form and two unforgivable red-flag infringements at Monaco and Silverstone. That he has leapt into the top 10 underlines how successful he has been since the summer break.
In the 10 races between Bahrain and Zandvoort he failed to score a point in a grand prix – though did pick up two points in a sprint and finished 11th four times. In the final 10 races, though, he scored 33 points with six top-10 finishes including a superb fourth in Mexico.
As another rookie, Bearman is showing a promising trajectory. Beating Esteban Ocon (a decent F1 driver) in all areas as he did is further evidence of his potential. Would it be a surprise to see him in a Ferrari in 2027? Not if he carries on like this.
Carlos Sainz’s start to life at Williams was both underwhelming and unlucky. Yes, he scored six top 10s in the first 10 rounds, but never really looked that close to matching team-mate Alexander Albon. Poor fortune hampered him, but as the season progressed he showed his potential.
Podiums in Azerbaijan and Qatar were the highlights, but he started to get the better of Albon over one lap as well as a race distance, too. Clearly, leaving Ferrari for Williams was a step down but not drastically so in the final reckoning. In fact, in the second half of the season he even matched Lewis Hamilton’s points total.
Of the group of rookies in 2025 there have been some promising debut seasons. Isack Hadjar’s might be the most impressive of the lot. Better than Kimi Antonelli? For consistency, yes. He crashed on the formation lap of what should have been his F1 debut but then bounced back to take eighth two races later at Suzuka. From that point on he strung together a series of impressive qualifying and race performances, peaking with a podium in the Netherlands.
Team-mate Liam Lawson was not exactly a tough benchmark, but neither was he a pushover. It is testament to his consistency (and perhaps the driver-friendliness of the Racing Bulls) that of his 21 finishes, only four were outside the top 13. Tougher tests await alongside Max Verstappen in 2026.
For the first part of the season, Fernando Alonso’s position in the standings was misleading. In fact, it was not until after Singapore that he overtook the total of team-mate Lance Stroll. This, however, belied the total domination he had over the Canadian. He outqualified him 29-1, his average qualifying position was more than five places better and his average finishing position was more than three places higher.
In short: despite reaching the age of 44 – now the oldest active F1 driver since Graham Hill in 1975 – Alonso continues to operate at the highest level and is still worthy of a place in F1. His desire to compete does not appear to be diminished, either, despite a middling car.
Oscar Piastri should look back on his 2025 season with pride. Although he lost the title from a winning position, he showed enormous improvement in almost every aspect from his first two years in F1 and won seven grands prix. Clearly, he came up short in the title battle largely because of a woeful run from Singapore to Las Vegas where he failed to finish on the podium, losing ground to Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
He might look back and rue that period where things started to get away from him quickly, but there were external factors that hampered him too. Knowing his phlegmatic demeanour he will probably not beat himself up too much about it and nor should he.
How fed up with Ferrari must Charles Leclerc be? In his seventh year at the team, he has been given another car that can fight for podiums at best, but not victories – certainly not championships. The frustration from the Monegasque was tangible throughout the year.
It is difficult to fault Leclerc’s season, though. Whatever you think of Lewis Hamilton’s waning powers, Leclerc put him in his place and confirmed he was Ferrari’s top man. Seven podiums and 242 points is a tremendous return in the fourth fastest car. The final round in Abu Dhabi, causing Lando Norris trouble when he had no right to do so, sums up his year.
Lando Norris’s season has, at points, been torturous yet he emerged from it all with bruises, scars even, and ultimately a maiden world championship. Small but significant mistakes in the first part of the season meant he lost his early advantage over team-mate Oscar Piastri. Smashing into the back of the Australian in Canada was the low point. After that shunt he found confidence and results followed, aided by a change in suspension that addressed his earlier issues.
In a fairer world he would have been world champion much sooner with a total of 33 points dropped from an engine failure in Zandvoort and the technical disqualification in Las Vegas. On his day (Saturday or Sunday) he can beat anyone and to deliver as he did at the end of the season under the most intense pressure is the mark of a mentally resilient driver. He might not top our rankings, but he deserves all the praise he gets and is a thoroughly worthy champion.
Just one point between George Russell and his friend and rival Lando Norris in the final reckoning shows a) how closely matched they are and b) how impressive they were in 2025. Yes, Norris came out of it with the title but Russell won two races (the only man other than Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri and Norris to do so) and brought home a host of podiums. He is starting to look like a complete driver.
Would Russell, in the McLaren, have won the title before Norris? I am sure he thinks so but we cannot be so definitive. Whatever you believe, this has been Russell’s finest season in F1. It is a shame that the Mercedes was not up to a title challenge this year because it would have been fascinating to see what Russell could have done. Maybe next year?
Before the race this weekend I wrote that, whoever won the championship, one man stood out above the rest: Max Verstappen. The near 40-point gap in our ratings shows that even more. That he was even in title contention was remarkable given how far away he was in September and how bad the Red Bull was in August. True, no man enjoys quite as advantageous a standing within their team, but I do not think that detracts from his brilliance.
Once Red Bull sorted out the balance issues that blighted the first part of their season, Verstappen went on a golden run: six victories, two second places and two thirds in the final 10 rounds. It was unwavering brilliance that put McLaren under pressure, magnifying their mistakes. Was the Red Bull even the fastest car in that period?
The one black mark came at the Spanish Grand Prix in June when he lost his cool and crashed into George Russell. It is easy to say that without this penalty he would have won the championship. Still, perhaps his finest season even if he finishes empty-handed.
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