Eight of the 10 Formula 1 teams have a new driver line-up for the 2025 season, but which of them has the best driver pairing?
That’s the question we put to The Race’s F1 team, asking them to justify their choices before using the F1 points system to create a combined ranking. We’ve also noted the position change versus last year’s ranking.
The ranking is based on the quality of the line-up alone, irrespective of the machinery that each pairing will have at its disposal this season.
Our panel: Edd Straw, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Ben Anderson, Glenn Freeman, Samarth Kanal, Matt Beer, Jack Benyon, Josh Suttill
Its drivers might end up providing the most entertaining radio messages of 2025, but Red Bull’s slightly renamed second team takes the wooden spoon on this list, with only one contributor placing the Racing Bulls duo higher than ninth.
In fact, the majority of our line-up placed it 10th, with many citing doubts about rookie Isack Hadjar, who Red Bull arguably only promoted because it needed Liam Lawson in the senior team and its interest in capturing Franco Colapinto from Williams waned.
“Isack Hadjar feels like a driver Red Bull has had to promote without really wanting to,” Ben Anderson wrote.
Anderson felt Hadjar was the “least convincing” driver on the grid for now while Scott Mitchell-Malm feared Hadjar will be 2025’s weakest rookie to begin with because of the last-minute nature of his
There was praise for incumbent team leader Yuki Tsunoda but when compared to other number-one drivers in the midfield, Tsunoda was considered the weakest – and few felt he’s good enough to offset Hadjar’s rawness in what is the worst of a really stacked set of line-ups.
But that isn’t because of Pierre Gasly, who has become one of F1’s standout midfield drivers, having won a bitter intra-team battle with the now exiled Esteban Ocon. The drop in this line-up’s position is all because of Alpine’s lack of faith in the driver it chose to promote for 2025 in August last year
