The 2025 season

Three Contenders, Two Points

Two McLaren teammates shared the lead for most of the year, Max Verstappen surged late, and Lando Norris took his first title by two points.

Three drivers went to the final race of 2025 with a chance of the title, a situation the championship rarely allows. The 75th anniversary season ran over twenty four Grands Prix, from Australia on the 16th of March to Abu Dhabi on the 7th of December, and the grid had a new look. Lewis Hamilton had moved from Mercedes to Ferrari after twelve seasons, Kimi Antonelli stepped up from Formula 2 to take his seat, and Red Bull Racing replaced Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda after only two rounds.

McLaren set the pace, and for much of the year its drivers raced each other for the lead. Lando Norris won the wet opener in Australia, but Oscar Piastri won four of the next five races and took the championship lead in Saudi Arabia, the first Australian to lead since Mark Webber in 2010. He kept it for fifteen rounds. Norris won Monaco, the first run under a mandatory two stop rule, and his home race at Silverstone, where Nico Hülkenberg finished third at his 239th start for his first podium, proof that patience is occasionally rewarded. In Canada the McLarens touched while fighting for position; Norris retired and took the blame. At Zandvoort Piastri led every lap while Norris stopped late with an oil leak.

Then the balance shifted. Max Verstappen set the fastest pole lap in the sport's history at Monza and won, won again in Azerbaijan, where Piastri crashed on the opening lap, and kept going: Austin, Las Vegas, Qatar and finally Abu Dhabi. McLaren secured a second straight constructors' title in Singapore. Norris retook the lead in Mexico City, and in Las Vegas both McLarens were disqualified for excessive skid wear, a costly blow so late in the year. Verstappen arrived at the final round twelve points behind, having once trailed by 104.

In Abu Dhabi Verstappen won from pole and Piastri finished second, but third place was enough for Norris. He was champion on 423 points, two ahead of Verstappen and thirteen ahead of Piastri, the eleventh British champion and McLaren's first drivers' champion since 2008. Hamilton, meanwhile, finished his first Ferrari season without a Grand Prix podium, something that had never happened to him before.

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