The 2025 F1 Retrospective
Celebrating Formula 1's 2025 season
Hell hath frozen over, pigs are taking to the skies and I’m writing about something that isn’t video games or old hardware.
With early December’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix concluded and a much-deserving Lando Norris crowned the World Drivers’ Champion, Formula 1’s 75th season has come to an end. Listen, I’m a Ferrari fan: a red-blooded, Leclerc shouting, prancing horse-loving tifoso, so much of this season has left me looking like Felipe Massa but it has undeniably been a strong one for the sport: probably the best since Verstappen and Hamilton’s epic 2021 battle.
In today’s post I’ll be looking back on some of my favourite moments of the season, picking the best and worst races of the year and celebrating all things Formula 1 that have taken place since March. I understand this post won’t be everyone’s cup of tea: 48% of my readers are from the USA where Formula 1 has always struggled to gain traction but I’m writing this one for fun as the Winter marches on and we approach the end of the year.
Not Supermen
After the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, McLaren team-mate and #3 in the championship: Oscar Piastri stated that Norris had not ‘become Superman’ and the driver was no doubt referring to how the title was all to play for up until the very end but Piastri’s words are a microcosm of the entire season for me. 2025 Was defined by Norris’ fallibility and having the courage to wear his heart on his sleeve even when he faced backlash for it, by Max Verstappen’s clawing back to the top in an unstable team and refusal to give up and by the still relatively new Oscar Piastri’s character being tested as his lead slipped away and what looked to be a set-in-stone title faded over the horizon.
Formula 1 is a sport in which human drama and advanced technology are its 2 most-defining characteristics yet 2025 has stood out as a year that felt perhaps more defined by humanity than ever. For months and months the public and media speculated on when the amicable Piastri-Norris partnership was going to devolve into bitter feuding and the day never came.
Get yourself a friend like Gianpiero Lambiase. I’m not going to speculate on potential personal troubles for Lambiase but by all-counts, this has been a brutal season for Max’s race engineer and he seemed more upset by Verstappen’s loss than the driver himself. I can’t think of another Racer/Engineer pairing on the grid as potent and as close as this one.
The one who will be feeling the sting the most is undoubtably Oscar Piastri, the Australian driver was the favourite to win the title for the first half of the year but suffered a collapse in the second half and a string of costly errors. Piastri has likely not hit his prime yet and is widely-expected to seize his own championship in future… but nothing is set on stone. I hope the changing of the regulations and McLaren’s not-so-subtle preference for Norris doesn’t turn Piastri into another Leclerc: a championship-level driver who never gets the right car or strategy to compete with the best.
In the immortal words of Max Verstappen ‘If my mum had balls, she would be my dad.’ We can debate on how things would have turned out if Piastri had driven a better second half and if Verstappen hadn’t lost his cool at George Russell in Spain but the fact of the matter is that the championship is a set of 24 races, not a string of binary choices; Norris has won a convincing championship against 2 talented drivers, un-tainted by FIA interference or team orders.
Verstappen’s reign has come to an end and so has the ground-effect era, 2026 is a season to look forward to, it’s all to play for.
The Highs
In any season of Formula 1 8/10 races are going to be forgotten, and the few remaining will either be diabolical or instantly classic. Here are my picks for the best races of the 2025 season.
Abu Dhabi ‘25 has every reason to go down as a classic. All 3 championship frontrunners stood a chance at bringing it home, the two McLaren teammates Piastri and Norris were both grappling with tough questions regarding their loyalty to each other and the team versus their own championship bids and the race saw some stunning overtakes, aggressive moves from Alonso, a ruthless charge by Hamilton and Leclerc a lurking threat behind the frontrunners with some serious pace.
I wanted Piastri to win this year but the grand finale was a great watch nonetheless.
This season’s opening race wasn’t the most exciting on track but it will remain memorable to me for a couple of key reasons. Isack Hadjar’s pre-race crash and Anthony Hamilton’s comforting of the young driver set the tone for the rest of the season’s personal vulnerability in regards to the drivers. Furthermore, the heavy downpour created a number of crashes and errors including a late-race spin off for Oscar Piastri that generated some great drama before the chequered flag.
From the polling I’ve seen, this year’s race at Silverstone seems to be the highest rated of the season and it’s clear to see why. Silverstone ‘25 saw Nico Hulkenberg’s long-awaited and much-celebrated first podium, Lando Norris’ first home win and an absolutely torrential downpour that turned the race into a visual spectacle.
There was a lot of jostling under the safety car this year and the 10 second penalty for Piastri did feel like a culmination of all that, unfortunately my favourite for the championship happened to be the guy punished.
The Lows
Verstappen Rams George Russell’s Mercedes
Max Verstappen is easily the most skilled driver of the current generation and is one of my personal favourites on the grid for his straight-talking, criticism of the FIA and winner’s mentality but the Dutch driver undeniably has a fiery temper. This came to a head in the 2025 Spanish GP. After a scuffle with Leclerc and being ordered to give back his place to George Russell, Verstappen deliberately rammed the British driver as he passed; it was a pretty pathetic attempt to disguise an intentional attack.
The 10 second penalty felt a bit light and the use of a vehicle as a weapon in my opinion should warrant a disqualification but what’s done is done. These two have a very topsy-turvy relationship and if the rumours about Mercedes next year are true, I’d love to see them compete for the championship.
The Entire Monaco Grand Prix
The 2025 Monaco GP will go down in history as an absolute farce. The enormous and long modern F1 cars yet again made overtaking at the circuit impossible, turning the race into a procession with the only highlights being drivers’ mistakes and bending of the rules including a cheeky attempt by George Russell to play off what was quite obviously an overtake by leaving the track.
Red Bull Racing’s Internal Politics
The trio of Helmut Marko, Christian Horner and Jos Verstappen and their internal struggles have made Red Bull look like the early Soviet Union this season. It was common knowledge that Marko and Horner despised each other so in retrospect, perhaps we should have seen Horner’s shock exit coming after a dismal first half of the year for Red Bull.
For most of the year rumours were swirling about Max moving to Mercedes next year but that all simmered down when the time began to drastically improve.
To top this very messy saga off, rumour has it that RBR is not going to have the top engine next year potentially straining the relationship once more and Marko also departed once the season was over. Not a good look for Red Bull.
2026 Predictions
Next year will be an especially silly season with the engines in-use since 2014 being phased out along with DRS; the cars will be a good deal smaller too. Amongst the usual tabloid dreck and baseless rumours one constant has emerged: that Mercedes are looking sharp heading into 2026.
George Russell has a Verstappen-like drive, immense talent and the backing of both a premier team and an exciting new prospect in team-mate Kimi Antonelli. Provided the rumours about next year’s Mercedes are true, I would not be surprised at all if we see Russell as a second consecutive British champion.
Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.
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Tough to branch out on here and so you (along with basically anyone else I follow) will always have my support when you try it.
F1 is in kind of an odd gray area in the US where it's certainly more visible and popular than ever before but it's sort of a stretch still to claim it's "broken through" anywhere but Netflix and the summer box office. They definitely have momentum, though, there's a lot of space left to fill by a weak NASCAR and Indycar. I've begun seeing people rocking the team apparel (mostly McLaren) when out and about. Reminds me a bit of how the Premier League was before it properly became "a thing" among urban Americans.
Despite me not being an F1 fan (or sport at all really), I do get to hear a lot about it at home because my teenage son loves it and follows it too, I believe he really likes Norris too.
I'm of the opinion that you should be able to write whatever you want to, you're more than just one particular interest. To me, the important part is that it is well written, which this was and I followed along just fine with my limited knowledge of the sport. When you show your passion clearly, that makes it interesting too.