🏁 F1'25: The final boss (Rankings, Part Two)

🗓️ What’s coming up…

Hello, and welcome back to one person’s completely subjective power rankings (what even are power rankings anyway?) of the 2025 Formula 1 season. If you missed part one, click below, or just look at this easy table below.

21) Colapinto 20) Doohan 19) Stroll 18) Lawson

17) Hamilton 16) Tsunoda 15) Ocon 14) Gasly

13) Bortoleto 12) Antonelli 11) Hulkenberg

We’ll move into the top 10, where I really struggled on the ordering of the Williams drivers, and where to place Bearman.

10) Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin - 56 points

Alonso had a disgusting start to 2025. He didn’t score a point until Round 9 in Barcelona. He has had two seasons that started as badly - his first F1 season with Minardi in 2001 and the fabled size zero McLaren in 2015 aka the GP2 engine.

That was a Honda power unit, and it’s the Japanese manufacturer who will be supplying Aston Martin in 2026. Adrian Newey is the team principal, and he has had incredible success throughout his career. Lawrence Stroll has all but gone all in for 2026, and Alonso will be one of the stories to watch in the new era, especially what happens at the end of the season and whether he stays on.

9) Carlos Sainz, Williams - 64 points

Despite finishing lower in the standings than his teammate, it might be Sainz’s team now. A couple of flashy results towards the end of the season may have tipped the balance while Albon failed to build on a good start.

This was the most difficult intra-team ranking to put together. The fact that they were so close is great for Williams, but it really was the 30 points (nearly half Sainz’s total) from podium finishes in Baku and Las Vegas that saved Sainz’s season. Take those away from him, and Sainz’s Williams liferaft is in Stroll/Ocon points territory. 

8) Alex Albon, Williams - 73 points

My initial draft of this had Sainz and Albon flipped. But the Thai driver and Sainz are a good way of showing how being quietly competent is sometimes not as good as being inconsistently flashy. 

I also had a theory that this would be the first time Alex Albon had a name-brand teammate, after anchoring the team through the Nicholas Latifi and Logan Sargeant eras. The theory was that Albon would shrink in the face of competition from Carlos Sainz. He needs to hit 2026 running. Williams finished fifth, and Albon’s opening races were great, but no Grands Prix point finishes from Azerbaijan are a warning sign that Albon needs a fast start in 2026 to avoid the perception that this is Sainz’s team now.

7) Ollie Bearman, Haas - 41 points

Bearman’s five race scoring surge from Singapore to Vegas also had a brilliant fourth place in Mexico City. A podium would have really had people take notice, but was just a bit too much to ask.

If you look at his results, he finished 11th in four consecutive races from Canada to Belgium - the same number of 11th-placed finishes as Fernando Alonso and Isack Hadjar. Bearman has had a superb rookie year where scoring 41 points almost feels like a disappointment.

Let’s write this now so we can come back to it. Oliver Bearman will be a full-time Ferrari F1 driver someday, probably to replace Lewis Hamilton. He’s already learning a little bit, as heard during the Shanghai race.

6) Isack Hadjar, VISA Cash App RB - 51 points

After a DNS in Melbourne, no one would have thought the Frenchman would be rookie of the year, at least in these rankings. Hadjar had a strong 2025, capped with a third place in Zandvoort.

That podium came off the back of five consecutive non-scoring Sunday finishes too, showing his ability to put a result behind him and push on. Qualifying was Hadjar’s real strength, beating Liam Lawson 16-6. If Hadjar had managed to convert a couple of those Saturday performances to the race, a top-10 finish could have been on the cards.

Hadjar faces a move to Red Bull to partner Max Verstappen. Hadjar has spoken about never spending more than one year in the same team. It will be an achievement if he manages to break that streak in 2026.

5) Charles Leclerc, Ferrari - 242 points

This was a difficult rating. What is more difficult to believe with Leclerc - is it that he didn’t win a race this year, or that he had seven podiums in 2025? This was a down year for Leclerc and yet had some superb highlights, especially in one-lap pace.

I still think Leclerc’s best days lie outside the Ferrari program. This will be his eighth year at the famous team, and in 2025, they signed Lewis Hamilton. If that doesn’t say “we’re going in a different direction” then what does? I wonder if he’d look good in racing green?

4) Oscar Piastri, McLaren - 410 points

Nothing seems to phase Piastri and that’s his biggest strength and his greatest weakness. If you spend your life drifting between 2-3 on the anger scale, how can you ever be fired up? 

Laid back is an unusual quality for someone who drives one of the most expensive cars in the world around the globe at 200mph. Chilling out and recovering from setbacks by going to the supermarket gives me something in common with an F1 title contender. That says more about Piastri than it does about me.

Four wins in the opening six Grands Prix helped the Aussie take an early lead, but incidents in Texas and Baku, as well as his non-reaction in Singapore to Norris’ move on the opening lap shows that Piastri needs to develop some anger to be taken seriously as a contender, especially after hitting rock bottom in the final third of 2025.

3) George Russell, Mercedes - 319 points

This is an exceptional season from the Mercedes driver. Wins in Canada and an exorcism in Singapore were the only non VER, NOR, PIA wins in 2025. He had a total disaster in Monaco that meant that he missed 100% of laps completed in 2025. And even then, that was his only non-points finish of the year. 

Consistent and strong results have been his trademark since moving to Mercedes from Williams. He’s entering his fifth year there, and like Piastri, developing that killer instinct is his best chance of competing with the ultra-friendly and ultra-aggressive pair ahead of him. The problem with Russell is that his team radio messages sound like a bad day on a motorway and his media attacks sound like being told off by a prefect. There’s a potential world champion here just waiting to be unlocked.

2) Lando Norris, McLaren - 423 points

Although he’s the F1 World Champion, there’s an argument to put George Russell here too. An ill-timed mis-step in Canada, a DNF in Zandvoort and a DSQ in Las Vegas his only real errors as he took the title. As Max Verstappen surged forward, Norris barely left the podium, let alone the points, slowly wrestling the title away from his teammate and holding it at a distance from Verstappen.

Title defence mode will be fascinating, in a new era, no one is really sure who will be at the front. Lando Norris is much more than someone able to drive the best car to victory, and wherever McLaren fall in the new era, Norris will be near the front.

1) Max Verstappen, Red Bull - 421 points

I really thought he was going to do it. Coming back from over 100 points as the summer break began to win a fifth consecutive world title would have been the greatest comeback story in sports history. No, I don’t use that phrase lightly either.

If McLaren’s great strength - and weakness - was the consistency between their drivers, Max’s was a single-minded belief that he could take on McLaren’s fruity rules and win, and 421 points would have been enough to win the 2024 title.

For all the talk of Antonelli being overtaken late in Qatar, eyes need to be pointed towards the Spanish Grand Prix when Max lost points through a lack of discipline. But I think we’re seeing a new Max, a new number and the Dutchman’s revenge tour is going to be fascinating to watch in 2026.

📖 Good reads

News you may have missed…

• How the team principals rated the drivers from F1

• Get your IndyCar start times here, including the ambitious 10am EST for the Indy500. I assume that’s the pre-pre-pre show. (Reminder, it’s the same day and time as the Canadian Grand Prix, potentially)

• Nothing else was going to be photo of the year than Gabriel Bortoleto’s deconstructed Sauber

🪦 The headline reference 

All the headlines in 2025 are wrestling references. In 2026, they will be gaming references, so this one acts as a crossover.

The Rock’s return to WWE in 2024 and beyond has seen him take on a character known as The Final Boss. There have been several incarnations of Dwayne Johnson, as this article tells you, although it misses out Flex Kavana.

Thanks for reading