🇦🇪 F1 '24: R24 - The Rookie Monster

Unlike last year, where the 20 F1 drivers that finished the season started the next one, teams are shaking things up with changed driver line ups. Only McLaren and Aston Martin have the same lineup in 2025 that started the 2024 season. 

You might have seen that Lewis Hamilton will be in Ferrari red, and Williams enticed Carlos Sainz over to Oxfordshire, which means six teams with rookies on the 2025 grid. 

This blog defines rookies as someone who has not completed a full season in F1. You’ll have seen some of these drivers before, with Oliver Bearman (Haas) deputising for Ferrari and Haas last year, Jack Doohan finishing the season with Alpine and Liam Lawson stepping up from VCARB to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull.

But there are three true rookies who are all joining after stints in Formula 2. The series champion Gabriel Bortoleto has been released from the McLaren junior programme as he takes a Sauber seat, the runner-up Isack Hadjar gets a shot at VCARB and - in an exciting and intriguing move - Kimi Antonelli replaces Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.

Rookies being placed at top teams is a rarity. The last one I remember was Hamilton himself when he was a couple of points away from winning the drivers’ title in his first season all the way back in 2007. The fashion has normally been to move a promising driver at a smaller team and then promote them forwards once they’ve proved themselves, knocking off any rough edges along the way. It is a real statement of intent that Mercedes didn’t swap Sainz and Antonelli for a year to give the younger driver F1 experience.

It makes sense that around a third of the grid is new in 2025, with one year to get used to the cars and living like an F1 driver, just before the new regulations start in 2026 and the great unknown that new rules bring, not to mention the even more unknown when the dilution fee clears the bank and Cadillac arrives.

So, it would seem that the future is bright, but two of the drivers have supposedly raised eyebrows with their choice of driver numbers. Let us rewind a step first.

In the older days, and by that, I mean pre-2014, F1 teams had a different way of putting the numbers on their car. The Drivers’ champion would use 1, their teammate 2, and then pairs of numbers depending on where their team finished in the Teams’ championship the previous season, with 13 being skipped. If the champion didn’t return, 1 would be left dormant and 0 would be used (as Damon Hill did for a couple of years).

If you have 10 minutes, there’s a video here that explains it really well.

Obviously, this sort of system doesn’t work when you compare it to other sports. F1 would have seen Beckham 7, Jordan 23 and any Brazilian footballer wearing 10 and somehow thought, ahhh, we can live without that. Casual F1 fans would put up with different drivers carrying different numbers from year to year. 

In 2014, that all changed and drivers would take a consistent number across with them from year to year and team to team. The number 1 is still reserved for the world champion, and only the Red Bull champions have used it since it was allowed.

Once a driver retires, their number goes into the pool after two years, ready for any driver to carry it. Yuki Tsunoda is one example, carrying 22 on his car, made available after 2009 World Champion Jenson Button was assigned it on his Brawn (I would recommend the Keanu Reeves documentary on this btw) and then, when allowed a choice, took it as a tribute.

Back to the 2025 rookies. Gabriel Bortoleto has chosen to run with number 5 and Jack Doohan will use 7. Some F1 fans think that these numbers should be retired in tribute to Sebastian Vettel (or Nigel Mansell to older readers? and Kimi Raikkonen respectively, with some recoiling in horror at the thought of another driver, one day, might use the number of their current favourite driver.

I don’t agree with retiring numbers in most cases in F1. This isn’t like most other sports, where there are 99 numbers available to each team in the league. Numbers get retired by teams, but league-wide retired numbers are rare and should remain so.

At any one time, 20% of the numbers available in F1 are being used. However, I can see the issue in a former champion’s number being used so shortly after the end of their career.

Therefore, one compromise I had thought of was The Champions’ Rule. Simply that if you win the World Title, your number can’t be used for five years after you retire, as opposed to two. This would protect Hamilton, Verstappen and Fernando Alonso from their numbers being reused for the rest of the decade if they retired tomorrow.

Retiring numbers isn’t the answer for F1 (with one exception) and the sport and its participants will have many ways to remember the greats. Silverstone and Snetterton have parts of their track named after Lewis Hamilton, for example. F1 can do so much more. Instead of losing numbers, preventing anyone else using it as a tribute, naming corners, or awards or other things in the sport means we say their name, repeatedly, remembering their greatness each time.

About that one exception. Formula 1 does have one retired number. After Jules Bianchi’s death in 2015, the number 17 is off the board - it was the number on his Marussia when he suffered critical injuries from a crash at Suzuka 2014. Retiring this one number gives us some perspective on why a number might not be used anymore, and why calls to retire a number in F1 - while well-intentioned - miss the mark a little bit.