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THE 2025 Formula One season has all the makings of a white-knuckle 24-race celebration to mark 75 years since the inaugural seven-race championship back in 1950.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen appears to have his work cut out to seal a fifth straight title with Lando Norris poised to knock the Dutchman off his perch.
Hamilton’s move from Mercedes to Ferrari is just one of numerous intriguing sub-plots in a season that gets underway in Australia this weekend with six rookies gracing the grid.
Seventy-five years after Giuseppe Farina claimed the first F1 world championship at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo, Max Verstappen embarks on the 2025 season in pursuit of a fifth successive title, a feat only achieved once before, by Michael Schumacher.
If he succeeds, it will cement the Dutchman’s place as a titan of the sport.
He hoovered up seven of the first 10 races in his rampaging Red Bull last year, before a 10-race win-less run as McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari ran riot.
But Verstappen had the last word, fighting back to win in Brazil and clinch title number four in Las Vegas with two races to spare.
McLaren prised the constructors championship away from Red Bull to seal their long road back to the F1 summit.
The tough task facing Verstappen is underlined by the betting, which has him as only second favourite behind Norris (who ended 2024 63 points behind) for the 2025 crown, with Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Hamilton leading the rest of the pack.
An Italian teenager who only passed his driving test in January is among the six-strong 2025 season’s rookie intake.
Kimi Antonelli is an exciting 18-year-old who uses the nickname of his uncle- who was a fan of Ferrari’s last world champion, Finn Kimi Raikkonen — takes Lewis Hamilton’s seat alongside George Russell at Mercedes.
“I really want to make my own story” insists last year’s multiple Formula 2 winner, brushing off suggestions he is the seven-time world champion’s ‘replacement’ at the Silver Arrows. Kiwi Liam Lawson, a ‘veteran’ of 11 grand prix already, makes his fully fledged debut as Verstappen’s new wingman at Red Bull. Ferrari’s British academy driver Ollie Bearman was thrown into the F1 deep end when he was called up as a last minute replacement for appendicitis-victim Carlos Sainz at the Saudi Grand Prix last year, becoming the youngest ever driver to compete for the Scuderia. — AFP.
Online Reporter