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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
10 Racing Bulls (down 3)
Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar
13 points
Best ranking: 8th (Matt Beer)
Worst ranking: 10th (Samarth Kanal, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Ben Anderson, Josh Sutttill and Glenn Freeman)
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 call-up.
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.
9 Alpine (down 4)
Pierre Gasly and Jack Doohan
27 points
Best ranking: 6th (Samarth Kanal)
Worst ranking: 10th (Matt Beer)
No team has suffered as big a drop year-on-year as Alpine.
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.
Get our takes on the 2025 F1 driver line-ups in person when The Race F1 Podcast goes LIVE in London and Birmingham
Jack Doohan did a respectable, if unremarkable job during his surprise early debut at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
But already before then, there was speculation that Alpine could turf him out before he'd even made his debut in order to make space for Williams's star stand-in Franco Colapinto.
That speculation cooled but the doubts over Doohan linger for our panellists - and likely still will at Alpine too.
As Anderson put it: "I'm just not convinced that Alpine is totally convinced by Doohan!"
Alpine advisor Flavio Briatore is never shy of a cutthroat move and Josh Suttill even went as far as predicting Doohan wouldn't see out the season with the likes of Colapinto, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas all looking for a way back onto the grid.
The strongest supporter of Alpine's line-up was Samarth Kanal, who placed Alpine's duo sixth because of the strength of Gasly's late-season form in 2024.
8 Aston Martin (down 2)
Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll
36 points
Best ranking: 6th (Matt Beer and Glenn Freeman)
Worst ranking: 10th (Edd Straw and Jack Benyon)
Aston Martin is one of only two teams to keep the exact same line-up as last year but it's dropped two places in our order.
"Lance Stroll is coming off one of his worst spells in F1 where he failed to score for 11 straight races for the first time in his career," Kanal said. "The team has a costly second-driver problem."
Glenn Freeman and Matt Beer ranked Aston Martin's line-up sixth, a positioning "propped up by the brilliance of Fernando Alonso" according to Beer.
At the other end of the scale, Edd Straw and Jack Benyon both felt Aston Martin's line-up was the worst in F1 2025.
"Having Alonso spearhead the worst line-up is tragic, but it says so much more about my opinion of Stroll than it does of Alonso," said Benyon. "I think - as we stand - Doohan is the only current F1 driver I might not take ahead of Stroll in an open draft."
Straw added: "Stroll's 2024 season was probably his least impressive and he is firmly established in the solid journeyman bracket in a field with plenty of newcomers with higher ceilings."
And even Alonso didn't escape some potential criticism just because of Stroll's 2024 decline.
"We just cannot be sure how well Alonso really is doing now when the team-mate provides so little challenge," Anderson pondered.
7 Sauber (up 3)
Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto
38 points
Best ranking: 7th (Jack Benyon, Matt Beer, Ben Anderson, Edd Straw and Josh Suttill)
Worst ranking: 9th (Samarth Kanal and Scott Mitchell-Malm)
Sauber ended up bottom of this ranking last year, but what we rated as F1 2024's weakest line-up - Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu - has been binned, with the signing of Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto boosting Sauber three places.
Hulkenberg reestablished his reputation as one of the midfield's best drivers at Haas, while Straw said Bortoleto has the "approach, intelligence and speed" to make an instant impact in F1.
Suttill rated him the best F2 champion since Oscar Piastri blew his opposition away in 2021 and expects a similarly quick adaptation.
There wasn't universal support for Sauber being in seventh place, with Scott Mitchell-Malm and Kanal placing Hulkenberg/Bortoleto ninth.
"I have higher hopes for Bortoleto than Hadjar, the driver he vanquished in the F2 title fight, but I think Sauber could be a tricky environment to adapt to F1 in," Mitchell-Malm wrote.
But five of our eight panellists placing it seventh meant Sauber edged Aston Martin by two points.
6 Haas (up 2)
Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman
54 points
Best ranking: 6th (Jack Benyon, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Ben Anderson, Josh Suttill, Edd Straw)
Worst ranking: 9th (Matt Beer)
Haas's all-new line-up placed sixth in five of the eight lists, boosted by what Ollie Bearman showed in his trio of F1 cameos in 2024.
Straw felt Bearman has shown his ceiling is higher than either of Haas's 2024 drivers, while Freeman said placing Haas sixth was more of a reflection of Bearman's star quality versus other rookies than Ocon.
Beer was dubious about Ocon's true form, too, meaning he placed Haas ninth behind RB, Sauber and Aston.
"A general lack of faith in last year's Alpine drivers means Ocon's transfer to Haas pulls it down a bit even given all the F1 promise Bearman's shown so far," said Beer.
But there was praise for Ocon elsewhere. Mitchell-Malm predicted Ocon will "thrive" at Haas as "plucky underdog driver meets plucky underdog team".
Ocon had a horrific end to his Alpine stint with complaints of a slower car compared team-mate Gasly and a series of hefty intra-team defeats, and ultimately left before the final round of the season.
"Ocon's complaints about the Alpine in 2024 made him look worse than he was but he did show many glimpses of promise last season, and is still a good driver," said Kanal, who placed Haas seventh.
We think a rejuvenated Ocon and a star young driver in Bearman make this the best line-up in the midfield - aside from the new midfield superteam, that is...
5 Williams (up 4)
Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon
96 points
Best ranking: 3rd (Glenn Freeman, Edd Straw)
Worst ranking: 5th (Jack Benyon, Ben Anderson, Josh Suttill)
Team pricipal James Vowles might believe Williams has the best driver line-up but we wouldn't go that far.
Williams is still the biggest improver on our list versus last year, though, with Carlos Sainz's arrival making this the midfield's strongest line-up by some margin.
"A team-mate duo that almost certainly deserves more than the car it will get in 2025," Mitchell-Malm wrote.
"These are two very good drivers who are maybe in a little sub-group between the Tier 1 superstars and the Tier 2 support acts. Not infallible, but they should be extremely effective in the midfield."
Suttill declared that "Sainz’s 2024 was so good, there's now somehow no guarantee Lewis Hamilton is an upgrade on him" at Ferrari.
Alex Albon's 2024 wasn't his best with some unusual intra-team Williams defeats to mid-season rookie Colapinto, fewer peaks and more crashes than we're used to. Those were three things that hurt Williams's placement on some of the lists.
But most of our panel still thought of Albon as one of the best operators in the midfield and this combination was even placed third, ahead of Red Bull and Mercedes, by both Straw and Freeman.
"It's one of very few teams that has two proven, bankable, high-level performers who can be counted on to perform consistently well," Straw said.
It ultimately fell just short when the rankings were combined, with Williams falling to fifth.
4 Red Bull (no change)
Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson
100 points
Best ranking: 3rd (Matt Beer and Samarth Kanal)
Worst ranking: 5th (Scott Mitchell-Malm)
Max Verstappen has a brand-new team-mate but that hasn't helped Red Bull move up our rankings - something that has nothing to do with the four-time world champion.
"Verstappen is doing the heavy lifting in this partnership but is still incapable of driving two cars simultaneously," Straw pointed out.
There was universal agreement that Verstappen is an all-time great; he's topped our individual driver rankings four years in a row and it's going to be incredibly tough for any driver to topple him in a title fight without a clear-cut car advantage.
Red Bull is only as low as fourth because of Lawson, who after just 11 grands prix is going up against F1's toughest team-mate. Mitchell-Malm placed them fifth, writing "Lawson is a big question mark and I'm just not sure what his ultimate level will be", while Kanal said there could be "another mismanaged second driver situation at Red Bull".
You could make the argument that, whoever the team-mate is, having Verstappen means you have the best line-up in F1 by default. But Lawson's level being such an unknown and the lesson of Red Bull's constructors' championship defeat in 2024 means this line-up just can't match the top three.
3 Mercedes (down 2)
George Russell and Kimi Antonelli
103 points
Best ranking: 2nd (Ben Anderson)
Worst ranking: 5th (Samarth Kanal, Matt Beer, Glenn Freeman, Edd Straw)
Mercedes loses the number one spot it has held throughout F1's ground effect era, slipping to third and only just beating Red Bull overall despite placing lower than it on five of the eight lists.
It beats Red Bull in part due to Anderson placing Mercedes' line-up in second.
"This is a bit of a punt, based purely on Kimi Antonelli being every bit as good as Mercedes clearly thinks he is," Anderson explained.
"If Antonelli is bare-minimum on Bearman level straight away then this is a really potent line-up when you consider the Hamilton-destroying level George Russell reached by the end of 2024."
Not everyone is so convinced. Straw said Russell is ready to lead Mercedes, but for now felt there was a big question mark over Antonelli's performance level for 2025.
"He has a huge amount of ability and potential and the chances are he will establish his F1 credentials quickly, but until he does that he drags down the Mercedes ranking," Straw wrote.
Beer agreed, believing Antonelli is "a concept version of a future great rather than a guaranteed F1 game-changer right now".
Benyon said Mercedes should have picked Carlos Sainz and loaned Antonelli to Williams, believing impressing across a full 24-race season is very different to shining in private testing.
"Antonelli may achieve great things but I think Mercedes was silly to be so convinced to pass on Sainz," Benyon wrote.
But there is just enough faith from our panel to ensure Mercedes is a distant third-best behind the two standout line-ups.
2nd McLaren (up 1)
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri
158 points
Best ranking: 1st (Ben Anderson and Jack Benyon)
Worst ranking: 2nd (Samarth Kanal, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Josh Suttill, Glenn Freeman, Edd Straw and Matt Beer)
McLaren's Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri line-up climbs one place in our ranking for the second consecutive year and is the only pairing that made every contributor's top two.
This is a well-balanced, now title-winning line-up with Piastri a proven race winner and Norris getting closer to Verstappen than any other driver last year.
So why isn't McLaren our number one?
"Norris is still lacking that final edge to make him one of F1's elite drivers," Suttill wrote. "The scene of his title challenge collapse in Brazil last year was the perfect microcosm of Norris's remaining weaknesses.
"A blindingly quick pole lap that was progressively undone, first by a poor start and then a critical error on the safety car restart later in the race on a day when Verstappen was a class above."
Beer added: "Maybe in a year or two when Piastri has more F1 experience and Norris is a bit more title-battle seasoned I'll feel like I underrated them going into 2025.
"But right now, Norris feels like a very fast soft touch and Piastri feels like a mega talent who goes missing too often. Huge upsides to both, but key doubts about them too."
Piastri not taking the necessary step with his one-lap speed in 2024 was another factor in McLaren missing out on top spot this year.
But for Anderson and Benyon, McLaren has the best line-up right now.
"Had Sainz remained at Ferrari, the contest for number one spot in this ranking would have been a closer-run thing, but now I think McLaren’s line-up stands apart as the most proven - especially considering the capacity both drivers have shown to learn and improve, allied to their obvious natural speed,” was Anderson’s justification.
Benyon more reluctantly placed McLaren top of his list, with reservations about both drivers.
"I've ranked this line-up first but under duress!" he said.
"I think Verstappen would have won last year's title had he been in the McLaren, so Norris still has work to do to justify being at the top table. And Piastri has showed flashes of brilliance but his baseline still feels like a kind of Sainz-esque not-elite-but-very-good level.
"On balance, the best line-up, but very much with lots to prove."
For the majority of our panel, there was one more line-up that was just that little bit better right now.
1 Ferrari (up 1)
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton
183 points
Best ranking: 1st (Samarth Kanal, Scott Mitchell-Malm, Edd Straw, Glenn Freeman and Josh Suttill)
Worst ranking: 3rd (Ben Anderson)
F1's most successful driver ever plus arguably F1's fastest driver over a single lap equals what we think is the best line-up in F1 2025.
This would have been an easy pick at the start of 2024 but Hamilton's largely miserable end to his Mercedes stint inevitably leaves a question mark hanging over this line-up. Particularly considering his perceived worsening one-lap speed with this generation of cars.
Yet there was still enough faith from our panel for this line-up to be number one in five of the eight lists.
"This should be the most complete line-up on the grid this year. But that's assuming Hamilton gets on with the car," Freeman summarised.
Mitchell-Malm pondered: "Is Ferrari acting more out of hope than expectation that it'll get the best out of Hamilton again? Maybe. But I think a fresh start is exactly what he needed. For now, this is the line-up to beat."
For Suttill, it was "champion-in-waiting" Leclerc who tipped a tight battle with McLaren for the number one spot.
"If Ferrari has a title-winning car in 2025, it will be Leclerc not Hamilton who wins it," Suttill said, with Straw adding Hamilton is an "accomplished, proven performer" even if his qualifying troubles continue.
Anderson was the least convinced, placing Ferrari's duo only third on his list.
"This is a bit of a punt based on whether or not Hamilton rediscovers the best version of himself in a new environment," Anderson explained.
"The track record of both drivers speaks for itself - but that lingering doubt about Hamilton in this generation of F1 car specifically drags Ferrari's line-up down until he shows us 2024 was an aberration rather than the first sign of terminal decline."
But for the majority, the guaranteed huge upside of Leclerc combined with the potentially superteam-forming quality of Hamilton makes this line-up impossible to overlook as F1's best.
