Ahead of the new 2025 Formula 1 season, Sky Sports’ digital F1 journalists have selected their top five driver line-ups.
Just two teams have kept the same driver pairing from 2024 to this year – Aston Martin and McLaren – with 10 changes compared to the grid from 12 months ago.
Lewis Hamilton’s shock move to leave Mercedes and join Ferrari is the biggest change, while Liam Lawson replaced Sergio Perez at Red Bull over the winter.
Italian teenager Andrea Kimi Antonelli has taken over Hamilton’s seat at Mercedes and is one of six drivers who are set to complete their first full season in F1.
Britain’s Oliver Bearman has joined Haas permanently, F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto has been signed by Sauber, Isack Hadjar will make his debut with Racing Bulls and Jack Doohan will drive for Alpine.
Elsewhere, Carlos Sainz was snapped up by Williams, Esteban Ocon has switched to Haas and Nico Hulkenberg is now at Sauber.
Considering purely how they are expected to perform during the 2025 season, Sky Sports’ James Galloway, Nigel Chiu and Sam Johnston have ranked what they agree are the top five driver line-ups on the grid, and each picked a sixth ‘wild card’ selection.
You can have your say by voting where you would rank our top five F1 driver pairings and who your wild card sixth line-up would be.
JG – 1st, NC – 2nd, SJ – 1st
James Galloway: There are many reasons – statistical, historical and financial, to name but three – why the pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at Ferrari is clearly the best on this year’s grid.
Still, much of that is based on paper – now the blockbuster duo must prove it on track, too, to back that pre-season ranking up.
Given Leclerc is the known quantity in Ferrari machinery, much on whether this pairing lives up to its star billing will depend on what Hamilton brings to the Scuderia after his difficult final year at Mercedes.
If it is anything close to his very best from over the past 18 years, then this No 1 position absolutely will not be in any doubt.
Nigel Chiu: This may be controversial to put this line-up in second but Hamilton is going into 2025 on the back of his worst campaign in F1 and that is why Ferrari are not in first place.
If the field is close, Hamilton missing two or three tenths in qualifying could be costly and you cannot always rely on race pace, which is still a big strength, to get you out of trouble. Leclerc is absolutely ready to win a title, though.
Sam Johnston: No other line-up on the grid boasts such a combination of speed and experience. Lewis Hamilton does not need an introduction and the still fresh-faced Leclerc is now entering his eighth season in F1.
Despite his qualifying struggles during his final season with Mercedes, Hamilton showed he remains a formidable force on Sundays and could be a major title threat if he regains his mojo over one lap.
Leclerc in 2024 continued his evolution towards becoming a complete driver and will surely only benefit from both the wisdom and motivation provided by having a seven-time world champion as his team-mate.
JG – 3rd, NC – 1st, SJ – 2nd
SJ: Max Verstappen put himself in a league of his own at the top of F1’s current driver pecking order as he battled his way to a fourth successive world championship but even that was not enough to keep Red Bull in the constructors’ title mix as his team-mate Sergio Perez struggled badly.
Given the gap between champions McLaren – whose line-up is unchanged – and Red Bull was 77 points, the question is whether the arrival of Liam Lawson in place of Perez bridges that gap.
It is a tight call as Lawson remains somewhat unproven after his cameos for RB, but I think the gritty Kiwi has what it takes to provide Verstappen with far superior support than he has become accustomed to.
Max Verstappen and Lando Norris had a hilarious response when asked how their relationship is now after their clashes on the track last season
JG: Like all the truly great drivers at their peak over the years, Verstappen is clearly worth a little bit more to Red Bull than simply being just ‘one’ of their two drivers. After all, he easily scored enough points on his own in 2023 for them to be constructors’ champions.
A driver of this calibre can certainly carry a team and an underperforming team-mate to a decent extent, which is why I have their 2025 pairing of Verstappen and Lawson in third.
But that only goes so far and even Verstappen’s latest drivers’ title win in 2024 could not keep Red Bull afloat at the head of the team standings when the dual problem of sliding car competitiveness and a crisis in form from Sergio Perez saw them drop behind not only champions McLaren but Ferrari too.
That competition is not likely to get any easier in 2025 and so it is up to the promoted Lawson, who is obviously untested at the very sharp end in his very short F1 career to date, to bring a little more balance to Red Bull’s point-scoring ability.
Jack Whitehall poked fun at Max Verstappen and George Russell in reference to their war of words from the end of last season
NC: This could be a controversial choice to put Red Bull first but it is mainly due to Verstappen being a step clear of the field when it comes to putting together a title campaign.
Other than a below-par weekend at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Verstappen has not been off the mark in terms of pure performance for the last six seasons. He has raised the consistency levels to new, unseen heights.
Lawson should be an upgrade on Perez and if he was driving the Red Bull in 2024, you could argue the Milton Keynes-based team would have won the Constructors’ Championship.
JG – 2nd, NC – 3rd, SJ – 3rd
NC: Lando Norris has the ingredients to become a world champion if he can improve his starts. Norris vowed to get his “elbows out” against Verstappen so that extra punch in his racing will be fascinating to watch this year.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri does lack some of the outright speed compared to Norris but he has only got two seasons under his belt so hopefully has more to come because he’s not quite the finished product right now.
The McLaren duo get on very well but if they have the car to beat, the team dynamic will inevitably change…
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri say they have a ‘lot of confidence’ in themselves to fight for an F1 championship title this season
SJ: McLaren’s youthful pairing ended the team’s constructors’ title drought last season but some might argue it should have been more comfortable than it was.
Norris showed encouraging signs of development but has admitted himself he is not yet the complete package, while the promising Piastri still must prove he can consistently match his team-mate’s elite speed.
Following some well-documented tensions last season, this feels as though it is the team-mate rivalry most likely to blow up in 2025 as both eye a drivers’ title charge, and that could actually work against the Woking squad.
JG: The pairing that took McLaren to their first Constructors’ Championship in 26 years last season underlined why the team had gone to such efforts to tie them down to long-term deals over the previous year.
With an average age of just 24, Norris and Piastri proved they can win races – and impressively so too – while still also acknowledging there is room for further individual improvement again in 2025.
What this line-up currently misses, of course, is a driver with world-champion status – although the new MCL39 should give each of them the chance to put that right in the season to come.
Whether a drivers’-title battle featuring both makes such a competitive pairing a hindrance rather than a help for McLaren against a Verstappen-led Red Bull, for instance, remains to be seen, but you sense Zak Brown truly would not be up for changing his duo for any other right now, despite the risk of further flashpoints along the lines of Budapest and Monza last year.
JG – 4th, NC – 4th, SJ – 5th
JG: However far away from his best he was on a consistent basis in 2024, it is very difficult to mount a case to suggest that Mercedes’ line-up has not been weakened by Lewis Hamilton’s departure. How could it not be?
But that is not a slight on Kimi Antonelli, who clearly has bags of promise and at 18 will not be reaching his peak for a number of years yet, whatever he does in his first year of F1.
The intriguing thing to see this year will be how quickly Antonelli starts to unlock some of that potential and delivers big results, should the new W16 allow.
George Russell certainly solidified his own status as one of the grid’s top operators during 2024 after an inconsistent second year at Mercedes, and should now kick on as the experienced driver of their line-up.
There will inevitably be times in 2024 when that experience proves particularly crucial for Mercedes as his young team-mate gets to grips with F1, and others when it is simply the icing on top of the cake amid a good weekend for both, meaning the team’s team-mate ranking could swing higher or lower from here before we get a true read on Antonelli.
Watch as Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli has his say on a range of hilarious scenarios by rating them with different racing flags
NC: Antonelli could seriously stun the F1 world. There is a feeling he will make mistakes but the teenager is rapid, and that’s the most important factor for a rookie as, with experience, you should make less errors.
The Italian has three races to break Verstappen’s record of the youngest winner in F1 history. That’s a tall order but do not be surprised to see him win a race this year.
Russell comfortably had the upper hand on Hamilton last year and will need to deal with the new dynamic of being the team leader.
The big question surrounding Russell is how will he fare in a title race? Most of the other drivers in the top teams know what it is like, apart from Piastri and both Mercedes drivers.
SJ: He might be the most hyped rookie in the sport’s history but it is impossible to know what we are going to get from Antonelli in his debut F1 campaign after the 18-year-old was fast-tracked into Hamilton’s vacant seat.
I do not think Russell has received enough credit for his performances since joining Mercedes in 2022 so I would not be at all surprised if he steps out from Hamilton’s shadow to truly establish himself at F1’s top table.
This line-up cannot go any higher for now but this time next year things could look very different…
JG – 5th, NC – 5th, SJ – 4th
SJ: Is there a more solid driver on the grid than Carlos Sainz? The Spaniard’s quality and calmness following his arrival from Ferrari will surely help take Williams forward.
It has been hard to judge Alex Albon since he joined Williams due to the lack of quality of his team-mates, but he now finally gets his first proper measuring stick since coming up short alongside Verstappen at Red Bull in 2020.
I think he will be up to the task and prove that Williams have a formidable line-up that could make them a threat if the team can deliver a competitive car when the sport’s regulations drastically change in 2026.
Williams team principal James Vowles says he ‘welcomes’ the pressure and scrutiny that Carlos Sainz joining the team has brought
JG: Is the Sainz and Albon pairing at Williams deserving of a higher placing than fifth? Quite possibly given the regard these two are held in the sport and the fact it is a frankly stunning line-up for a team that finished ninth in last year’s standings to have.
Neither operate at superstar-driver status, despite Sainz’s impressive and consistent tenure at Ferrari, but it is clearly a formidable pairing that should serve the team very well.
Whether or not Williams give them the 2025 car to challenge every week for points remains to be seen but what James Vowles certainly can be sure of is that Sainz and Albon will not be leaving too much on the table race in, race out.
NC: This is the easiest driver pairing to rank. You have a proven race-winner in Sainz, who pushed Leclerc hard at Ferrari and is very clever in terms of his driving.
Then there is Albon, who has done so well to bounce back from his torrid time at Red Bull but will be seriously tested by Sainz this season, and could be blown out of the water.
This line-up is Williams’ best for a couple of decades and deserves a top-five spot.
SJ: Haas – Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman
The considerable ability of Esteban Ocon the driver has perhaps got a little bit lost over recent years amid occasional failures to manage his emotions in a team environment.
The Frenchman remains very capable and arrives at a team on the up in Haas, and perhaps more importantly, in a new situation as the clear senior driver, with his team-mate being the 19-year-old Oliver Bearman.
A ‘big brother’ role has the potential to bring the best out of Ocon, while Bearman showed more than enough in his three 2024 race appearances to suggest he can immediately deliver points.
JG: Sauber – Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto
Blending youth and experience, Sauber have got themselves quite the pairing for 2025. At 37, Nico Hulkenberg’s stock in F1 has arguably never been higher after two strong years back on the grid at Haas, while 20-year-old rookie Gabriel Bortoleto arrives at the top level with sky-high promise thanks to the Brazilian’s consecutive championship title wins in F3 and F2.
The 2025 Sauber may not be the car to propel them to consistent top-10 finishes but it is a line-up that may well cover all bases for the weekends the car is more competitive and one which, the team will hope, is nicely in the Hinwil groove by the time 2026 and the Audi revolution rolls around.
Craig Slater and Ted Kravitz give their predictions as to which team will be quickest this season – and who will be slowest – after testing in Bahrain
NC: Aston Martin – Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll
Tricky answer but, similar to my decision of putting Red Bull first, I think the lead Aston Martin driver bumps up the overall pairing ranking.
I still believe Fernando Alonso can challenge for a championship in the right car. The longevity of his F1 career, which started in 2001, is remarkable and he is the best of the midfield drivers.
Lance Stroll has moments of brilliance but lacks consistency and when he is off the pace, it can be a real struggle. Nevertheless, Aston Martin would score the most points if you take out the top five teams and everyone had equal cars. That is my thinking.
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