Reading the tea leaves from a small sample set and making wild projections into the future is often perilous. However, two races into the 2025 Formula One season, the championship has got off to a cracking start, with interesting storylines already surfacing.
Though there are 22 rounds left on the calendar, the first outings in Australia and China have served as the perfect appetiser, leaving fans licking their lips in anticipation.
For starters, McLaren, the reigning constructors’ champion, has continued from where it left off last year. Lando Norris and his teammate, Oscar Piastri, took top honours in Melbourne and Shanghai, respectively, to lay down the marker early in the season.
Over the next three weeks, we could get a good idea of the pecking order and how the title fight could unfold. If McLaren continues its good form across the next three races, starting this weekend in Japan and followed by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, it could make for an interesting intra-team battle between its two drivers.
Having had a taste of what it entails when locked in a fight for the title in 2024 — albeit a long-shot attempt — Norris will feel now is his best chance of achieving his dream. This is the last year of the current regulations and most teams will switch focus development for 2026 midway through the year. He needs to do what Max Verstappen did the previous year: build up a massive lead and then play the percentage games towards the closing stages.
More importantly, Norris can’t have weekends like in China, where he was not in the fight for pole in both the Sprint and the Grand Prix. Though he finished second behind his teammate, his performance was far from convincing. This brings us to another intriguing sub-plot. Norris not only needs to worry about his rivals in Ferrari and Mercedes but also has to watch over his shoulder to the other side of his garage.
Piastri put in his most complete weekend of his nascent F1 career in Shanghai to take his third career win. The Australian, who will turn 24 on Sunday, has shown improvement year-on-year since his debut in 2023. However, one area where he has consistently struggled has been in single-lap pace during qualifying. Last year, it was a lopsided 20-4 in Norris’s favour.
The early signs in 2025 point to the fact that Piastri has taken a step forward in qualifying. The most impressive aspect of his win in China was that he outqualified Norris (Sprint and main race) and controlled the race from pole position without breaking a sweat. Even at his home race in Melbourne, Piastri was slower by less than a 10th of a second. He was running second and had the pace to even challenge for the win but ultimately made a mistake when rain hit the track, and he fell to back of the grid before finishing ninth.
If he can avoid such mistakes and regularly puts his car ahead of his teammate, Piastri could be a genuine title contender. The Aussie has already shown he is clinical in wheel-to-wheel battles and possesses immense mental strength, as evidenced by his calm and composed approach inside the cockpit.
While having two top drivers capable of fighting for the crown in the same team can be exciting, it could also quickly unravel and affect the harmony inside. If history is any indication, having two alphas under the same roof is often a recipe for disaster. McLaren has first-hand experience of this, considering that in 2007, its drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso fought acrimoniously between themselves, allowing Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to nick the title in the last race of the year, with both drivers finishing just one point behind the Finn.
This is why most teams prefer a clear number one driver, as Red Bull does. Speaking of the energy drink giant, its lead driver, Verstappen, has dominated the sport since 2021, winning four titles on the bounce. The Dutchman has been the standout driver in the last half-decade and has already cemented his place in the pantheon of greats of the sport.
Early evidence from the two events showed that Red Bull doesn’t have the pace to fight for wins yet. For the first time in the last four years, Verstappen has started the season not knowing whether he has the machinery to fight for the big prize. Yet his relentless nature has meant he has managed third and fourth place so far, putting him second in the standings, eight points behind leader Norris.
His impressive driving came to the fore last year, where he extracted results from a machinery that was at best third or the fourth-fastest car for more than half a season. The 27-year-old maximised everything when his Red Bull was rapid in the first half of the season. He then consolidated his championship lead by consistently finishing on the podium despite some serious threats from Norris in the last two-thirds of the season.
This weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at the iconic Suzuka circuit could be an early indication of where exactly Red Bull lies in the pecking order. The fast-flowing figure-eight layout is one of the most challenging ones on the calendar for the driver and the car. The high-speed sections in the initial part of the lap required millimetre-perfection from the driver as the track snakes through a series of fast S-bends, which also puts a premium on the car’s aerodynamic performance.
Historically, this has been the Milton Keynes outfit’s strong suit, and it can give an idea of whether the weakness in the first two races was circuit-specific or something more serious. A disappointing result here could threaten Verstappen’s vice-like grip on his crown.
If Red Bull’s car woes weren’t enough, the biggest news in the paddock has been the team’s revolving door policy regarding its second driver. Post the Chinese GP, the squad sacked Liam Lawson after giving him just two races, in which he qualified last and failed to score points.
Now, Red Bull has promoted Yuki Tsunoda from its sister outfit Racing Bulls, after ignoring him for the second seat at the end of last year to replace Sergio Perez. The Japanese driver couldn’t have asked for a better place than his home race to make his debut for a championship-wining outfit.
The mess surrounding the second driver cost the team the constructors’ championship last year, even as Verstappen sealed the drivers’ crown. Red Bull has a history of promoting young drivers too early into the sport, throwing them in the deep end and then chucking them out mercilessly if they fail to swim.
Ever since Daniel Ricicardo left in 2018, the team has struggled to find the right candidate alongside Verstappen. For Red Bull, the 63-time Grand Prix winner is the lodestar; the whole unit is built around him and his needs. What it looks for in a driver for the other seat is one who can play the perfect rear-gunner, qualifying and finishing a few places behind Verstappen while taking points off his rivals and also help the team in the constructors’. But that kind of driver has proven elusive.
“There’s a wider question around how the Red Bull programme is run and the Red Bull drivers are being developed on the whole,” says former F1 driver and commentator Karun Chandhok.
“We have now seen this is the fourth different driver after (Pierre) Gasly, (Alexander) Albon and Perez who have done well in a different team or done well either before or after Red Bull. Perez was good at Force India before. Gasly and Albon are doing good jobs in other teams. But we haven’t seen them being able to deliver the same results in the Red Bull,” added the second Indian to drive at the highest level.
“There are two different things to consider. One is whether the Red Bull car is that tough to drive and specialised for Max. That’s a difficult problem to solve because, to be honest, they have to make the car as fast as possible for Max. He is the best bet for the World Championship. Making a car easier to drive normally makes it actually slower. They have got themselves into a slightly tricky position because with Max as their lead candidate, the car works for his driving style and he can get the results that others cannot. It’s a challenge to find a way that works for everyone.”
Karun elaborated that Red Bull missed a trick in not looking at someone like Carlos Sainz last year. The Spaniard is someone Red Bull knows well, is a proven race winner, and compared well against Charles Leclerc during his four-year tenure at Ferrari. However, Sainz and Verstappen had a frosty relationship when they were teammates during their rookie year in 2015 at Toro Rosso (now Racing Bulls), which might have gone against him.
“I believed Red Bull should have signed someone experienced. Sainz would have been an obvious choice because he was available. They’ve had a previous history with him, and I think they could have got him. Albon had a tough time earlier against Max, but he’s now got much more experience now and is driving very well. I think they need someone mentally strong, mature and experienced to be alongside Max,” said Karun.
The next three races could indicate whether Red Bull has finally made the right decision, or if Tsunoda could join the latest in a long line of drivers whose careers have been torched by the six-time constructors’ champion.
Published – April 04, 2025 08:17 pm IST