🇺🇸 F1'25, R06: The Announce Table

The Miami Grand Prix might not live long in the memory of most F1 fans, but the pit lane crash between Red Bull and Mercedes will be featured in every dramatic montage the sport puts out in the next couple of seasons. In a race upstaged by the LEGO drivers’ parade, Oscar Piastri drove a near-perfect race to take victory as the McLarens continue to dominate.

But there were a few laps of that hidden drama. The stuff that doesn’t really affect the result in Florida, but opens up a few wounds and adds context to things that might happen later in the season.

I’m talking about the Ferrari switcheroos and Williams’ Carlos Sainz - having his own personal drama - getting to see the whole thing unfold.

If F1 was scripted, this would be a great narrative device of seeing Ferrari’s past (Sainz) watching on while Ferrari’s present of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc tried to devise a strategy to overtake Kimi Antonelli. For all the thinly-disguised product placement of Netflix documentaries about the youngster, he is starting to separate himself from the other rookies on the grid. The car obviously helps, but Antonelli is going to be in F1 for a long time.

Lewis Hamilton, the man he replaced is not having a fun time at Ferrari. The seven-time World Champion thought he could make it eight, and become only the second driver to win the title with more than two teams (Juan Manuel Fangio is the other) and while he may still be right, 2025 is proving to be a frustrating year for him. Although he has a sprint win in Shanghai and a sprint podium in Miami, this is the second consecutive season he has raced the first five Grands Prix and not had a podium. The only other time that has happened was 2009.

So what went wrong? 

Hamilton and Leclerc were on split strategies as the race entered the later stages. On mediums, Hamilton asked to be let through with the aim of chasing down Antonelli for a top-six finish. However, he got a variation of the dreaded “we are checking” that has become an F1 meme, and not a particularly complimentary one. 

It’s not like Ferrari have a call centre, but they were telling Hamilton that his call was very important to them, and that they were experiencing higher than usual call volumes.

Like anyone hearing the same hold music on loop, this frustrated Hamilton who advised his team to take a “tea break” and got more and more sarcastic as the race developed with not being able to catch his former team. After switching back with Leclerc, he was advised that Sainz was 1.4s behind, prompting Hamilton to ask “do you want me to let him through too?”

I don’t think there’s anything major in these messages. Hamilton was very pleased with his crew after the sprint, praising the pit stop and the strategy that got him third, and that seems to be forgotten in favour of some sort of prevailing narrative about angry radio messages. To my ears, these felt like frustration, sure, but nothing that most drivers wouldn’t have said. It just felt like good old fashioned British sarcasm, which might not be understood fluently in Italy, but seemed clear to me. 

Hamilton’s reaction to Ferrari’s actions have seen him put into the spotlight, rather than the strategy itself.

And that’s fine. The bigger question is why is Ferrari squabbling over the bottom half of the points standings rather than fighting for podiums? 

All of this then allows us to look at the driver behind the team battle with Carlos Sainz lurking but, despite a late attempt, was unable to get past Hamilton settling for ninth in the end, while his team mate Alex Albon secured a superb fifth. Watching the Ferrari’s overthink everything might make the Spanish driver feel like he has dodged a bullet, but he was cross at his team after strategy and communications mix ups that ultimately saw Sainz express his own frustration at the end of the race.

I never got around to writing it, because real life etc. but I was going to write some bold predictions for F1 2025. One of them was that Albon would be exposed by having a competitive team mate for the first time in a number of years. So far, it would seem that prediction is being firmly shut in a locked room with Albon’s confidence picking up more and more. The Thai driver now has 30 points. Not only is that in comparison to Sainz’s seven, but is also his best total for Williams, having previously scored 27 across the whole 2023 season.

For Williams, there are two types of consistency they need to fight for. The first is getting in the points and higher into the top 10 more often. The second is doing it with both drivers. Again, it’s getting better, with three double points finishes so far in 2025. The last time Williams had three of those in a season was Lance Stroll’s rookie year and Felipe Massa in 2017.

At the moment, Williams are happy to finish fifth and ninth and Ferrari are not content with seventh and eighth. While that’s a big difference between these two historic teams, the one thing they have in common is that they cannot risk alienating a driver, especially with 2026’s regulations being a new throw of the dice for everyone. Hamilton moved to Ferrari to win the title that has eluded the team since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007. They cannot lose sight of the long-term goal while they fail to chase down 2025’s Kimi.

It’s the start of another triple header, and it starts with what is likely to be F1’s final tour of Imola. The track returned during the pandemic and stayed on the calendar until now, but its expiring contract and proximity to Monza is going to make it difficult to sustain, especially as new countries to F1 express interest. Here’s an idea for F1 that is going to go right into their shredder: Bring back the European Grand Prix and rotate the venues you don’t use. Portimao, Nurburgring, Paul Ricard, Imola and Hockenheim would all be candidates for this. The twist is that F1 should be the promoter for the race, taking on the risk and the reward for it. 

Currently, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri leads the championship by 16 points with no car able to match him or Lando Norris for race pace. That’s what should have the team principals and drivers being sarcastic on the radio, not team orders for sixth in a race.