Formula 1 is back, and there’s everything still to play for.
The title fight between championship leader Oscar Piastri and teammate Lando Norris enters a new phase. Freed from any pretence that some other driver might pinch the crown from them, this is now a straight fight to the finish.
Who wins? With only nine points between them after 14 rounds, it’s anyone’s guess.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
But that’s not the only question to be resolved in the final 10 weekends of the season.
CAN McLAREN KEEP A LID ON THE TITLE FIGHT?
The battle for the 2025 drivers championship is the headline act of the final 10 rounds.
Piastri and Norris have equal machinery and equal opportunity to seize the title. With only nine points separating them with 10 rounds remaining, it’s anyone’s to win.
Arguably Norris has the momentum, having won three of the last four races to slice his deficit down from 22 points.
But Piastri was unlucky not to have won two of those events, in Great Britain and Hungary. Even in Austria, a nailed-on Norris weekend, he was on the pace in the race and might have won with more strategic freedom.
In that sense it’s difficult to say certainly that either driver in the ascendancy, and the battle is tipped to continue like this through to Abu Dhabi.
That will ramp up pressure not only on the drivers as the chequered flag draws nearer but also on the team to manage the inevitable tension.
Piastri and Norris get on well. They could even make it to the end of the season without the sort of ugly rift characteristic of most intrateam title fights. But there will undeniably, necessarily, be internal stress as the proximity to triumph and bitter defeat draw nearer.
Preventing that from manifesting on track and harming the team overall — through unsportsmanlike driving, through car damage, through race-ending crashes — will be the team’s critical challenge.
Piastri has perhaps hinted at the way McLaren is approaching this positive problem.
Often he’s said both drivers want to remain at McLaren for a long time and that the only way to do that is to keep relations cordial. Implicit is something team boss Andrea Stella warned last year — that any driver who acts contrary to team interests has no place in Woking.
But there’s a further inevitable conflict point the team is already weighing up.
“They both can smell the championship, and only one can win it, so I’m sure it’ll be hard on the one that doesn’t win the championship,” CEO Zak Brown said, per the BBC.
“We’ll just sit down and actually have a conversation and go, ‘Right, one of you is going to win and it’s going to be the best day of your life. One of you is going to lose and you’re going to be [devastated]. How do you want us to handle that, how do you want us to act?’.
“We’ll be very considerate about that approach, because that’s the way we think. It comes back to thinking about our people.”
It will be McLaren’s sternest test. But with its first double title since 1998 all but assured, it’s also sure to be its sweetest victory.
PIT TALK PODCAST: With just 10 rounds to go and only nine points in it, what’s the title outlook for Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris? Listen to Pit Talk below.
CAN LEWIS HAMILTON GEL WITH FERRARI?
Lewis Hamilton promised to be the biggest story of 2025 with his sensational Ferrari switch, but so far it’s proved true only for the wrong reasons.
Hamilton’s transition to life at Ferrari has been slow and inconsistent, and on the balance of the season to date he’s been comprehensively beaten by teammate Charles Leclerc.
There have been some high points, most notably his sprint win in China, but there’s never been any sense of regularity in his performances.
And he ended the first part of the season despondent after back-to-back failures to make the top 10 in qualifying and after failing to score at the Hungaroring, a track at which he holds every meaningful record.
It’s put him within reach of some dire unwanted records.
He’s now gone 14 races without a podium at Ferrari. The longest run without a maiden podium in red belongs to Didier Pironi, who stepped onto the rostrum at the 19th time of asking.
That also speaks to how big of an outlier performance this has been for Hamilton himself. He’s never gone a season in his racing life without at least one podium trophy.
His current barren run of 16 races off the podium — stretching back to the last two rounds of last season — is already easily his longest period without silverware. His previous longest stint off the podium was 12 races between 2023 and 2024.
Where’s it gone wrong?
Part of the story is matching his driving to the Ferrari in one of the most particular technical eras in modern Formula 1 history. After an entire career backed by Mercedes, this jump shouldn’t be underestimated.
It’s why his Ferrari story was always going to be about 2026 anyway, when massive rule changes will reset the game for everyone.
But there’s also a story of Ferrari underperformance here. The car hasn’t been anywhere near as competitive as the team had hoped, and that stems largely from compromises that have had to be made during the season to try to keep the SF25 near its performance window without damaging the floor.
Some upgrades brought to the final rounds before the break had some effect in improving matters, but Leclerc seemed to take more benefit from the better functioning car.
Hamilton ended the first part of the season declaring grimly that Ferrari should change drivers if it wanted better results.
Of course it’s too early for him to throw in the towel. But the scale of the mountain is significant if Hamilton wants to end this season feeling any sort of accomplishment.
Marquez cruises to 10th GP win of 2025 | 00:56
CAN YUKI TSUNODA SAVE HIS SEAT — AND SAVE RED BULL EMBARRASSMENT?
With Cadillac’s driver line-up settled, attention now turns to Red Bull Racing and the perpetual question of its second seat.
Yuki Tsunoda is the fifth driver in succession to struggle to get anywhere near Max Verstappen in the sister car, a problem that dates all the way back to Daniel Ricciardo’s departure at the end of 2018.
Tsunoda’s strong form at Racing Bulls over the last two seasons in particular has failed to translate into the difficult RB21, a car so perplexing to drive that even Verstappen himself is lost for regular podiums.
It puts the team in a difficult situation that could quickly prompt deeper embarrassment.
Given Tsunoda’s form is no better than Pérez’s last year, by rights he should expect to be axed at the end of the year, at which point Isack Hadjar will – somewhat reluctantly – take his place.
But it isn’t quite so simple.
There’s now no escaping the fact that the team has some very real, very significant design problems. They’re clear enough that even Cadillac looked into Pérez’s dire end to 2024 and decided the Mexican was still worth signing.
In this case can Tsunoda, who the team has invested in for years, really be so easily tossed aside, especially with new regulations coming next year?
Further, can the Red Bull program afford to make a big driver shuffle with Verstappen’s future at the senior team still in doubt?
The Dutchman is believed to have a 2026 contract exit clause even more favourable than it was this year, with reports suggesting he need be only outside the top two in the drivers championship to break away.
If Red Bull Racing fails to deliver a competitive car – and if Mercedes, for example, emerges as a leader – the Dutchman could walk, leaving the team with yet another seat to fill.
Hadjar would have only two years under his belt by then. Even assuming he keeps his head above water, would pairing him with, say, current F2 rookie Arvid Lindblad be a line-up befitting Red Bull Racing’s aspirations?
This isn’t to say Tsunoda will be retained, only that the team will surely look for reasons to keep him.
It got some in the two races before the break. While he scored in neither, in qualifying he was much closer to Verstappen thanks to the team, under new principal Laurent Mekies, upgrading his car so that it was closer in specification with his teammate’s machine.
The green shoots were real. If he can keep growing them, he could save his seat and his team further embarrassment.
Piastri to get his own grandstand! | 01:11
CAN COLAPINTO HOLD ON — AND DOES ALPINE HAVE ANY ALTERNATIVES ANYWAY?
It was a year ago yesterday that Franco Colapinto became a Formula 1 driver when Williams announced it would promote the Argentine into the place of the sacked Logan Sargeant.
The first-year F2 driver impressed immediately. He was on the pace at his very first race in Italy, and he scored his maiden points just one round later, in Azerbaijan.
It was an outstanding first impression, and even though his results tailed off as the season continued, in part thanks to a series of costly crashes, Alpine was sufficiently interested to sign him first as a reserve driver and eventually as Jack Doohan’s replacement after just six rounds of 2025.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore said that Doohan had been dropped because he was out of form. Colapinto, he argued, would be an immediate improvement who could score regular points alongside Pierre Gasly.
But Colapinto has been on almost every metric a match for Doohan, and after eight rounds he’s still without his first points of the year. Alpine is now last in the championship.
Even Briatore could see at some point that his gamble – which came with lucrative backing from Argentine sponsors – wasn’t paying off. The team sounded out Mercedes over whether Bottas could be free to drive later this year. Pérez was also contacted too.
But it’s a sign of the dire state of the Alpine squad that both chose Cadillac, a team that barely exists, over the French-owned constructor.
It leaves Alpine stuck with Colapinto for the rest of the season.
It’s obviously good news for the 22-year-old, but not simply because his skin has been saved by a lack of alternatives.
While he’s clearly been unimpressive, he’s effectively a rookie driving one of the least competitive cars in the sport. To expect anything other than toil is folly.
But assuming he really is safe to the end of the season, he now has a clear stretch of races to prove he can get back to his sizzling best of 2024 and retain his drive next year.
There are several possible threats to his seat in 2026.
Tsunoda would be an obvious alternative were he cut loose by Red Bull Racing. Liam Lawson could even be sold as an upgrade given his recent improvements if he were squeezed out.
And if neither were available but Colapinto’s performances remained stubbornly patchy, even reserve driver Paul Aron could be worth a shot next year.
Doohan didn’t deserve to be sacked in May for all the same reasons Colapinto doesn’t deserve to be sacked now.
But now the Argentine has what the Australian didn’t: time. It’s up to him to use it.
Feeney eyes off Bathurst | 01:32
WHO WILL WIN THE MIDFIELD BATTLE – AND THE LUCRATIVE PRIZE MONEY?
While McLaren and its drivers absorb interest at the front of the field, the matter of the lucrative constructors championship order remains in doubt.
Ferrari and Mercedes are in a tight battle for second place that will likely hinge as much on their cars as it will their second drivers — Hamilton and Andrea Kimi Antonelli respectively — increasing their scoring rate.
But there’s an even closer battle brewing just behind them.
In fifth place and with 70 points in the bank, Williams has already scored more points than it had at the end of any of the last seven seasons.
In fact it’s scored more points than it had in the last three years combined — and it’s only 14 points shy of matching its combined score over the last seven years.
Yet it might still not hold onto fifth in the championship — which would be its highest finish since 2017.
After looking unexpectedly comfortable in fifth early in the year, when its midfield rivals were fumbling with slow cars or mismatched drivers, it’s suddenly under pressure.
Aston Martin has finally pulled itself together — perhaps with a small amount of Adrian Newey magic dust — to score five times from the last six rounds. It was the equal second highest scorer in Hungary last time out, a track similar to this weekend’s Circuit Zandvoort.
The green team is only 18 points behind Williams.
Sauber, the future Audi team, has also picked up the pace. After going seven rounds without a point, it’s scored at the last six rounds to rocket up the order, thanks in part to Nico Hülkenberg’s maiden podium in Silverstone, where the Swiss squad was the outright second highest scoring team.
Sauber is only 19 points behind Williams.
Even Racing Bulls, which is a more substantial 25 points adrift, could be a threat. Lawson finally looks to have shaken off his post-Red Bull Racing funk to pick up 20 points over the last seven rounds, just two short of teammate Hadjar’s total.
While Williams reasserted some control with a much-needed upgrade in Belgium, momentum feels like it’s with all its rivals.
And momentum is important in this fight. With all teams now focused on next year’s rules, the form guide is effectively set. Things won’t simply go back to the way they were at the start of the season.
Why is it important?
Quite apart from pride — Williams and Aston Martin expect to take the next step next year, and Sauber is also buoyant it can be competitive in the Audi era — constructors championship position decides the prize money.
Last year the prize pool was worth just over $2 billion.
McLaren took an estimated $283 million back to Woking for winning the championship — more than the value of the cost cap, which is set at around $215 million.
Fifth place — which went to Aston Martin last season — was worth approximately $211 million. Every subsequent position on the table was worth approximately $18 million less in prize money.
Given F1 revenue is growing at quite a clip, the 2025 prize pool is likely to be bigger still.
Development may have all but dried up, but the midfield teams have every reason — at least 211 million reasons in fact — to fight to the final race.
Discussion about this post