A remarkable 17 in-season Formula 1 driver changes have already taken place in the 2020s - with varying degrees of success.
They range from a series of last-minute changes necessitated by a positive Covid-test to multiple in-season chopping and changing from Red Bull and Alpine.
We’re ranking the changes based on the quality of the stand-in or replacement in that season alone, how they compared to the driver they replaced and held up against their new team-mate.
17th - Pietro Fittipaldi for Romain Grosjean
Haas 2020
Races: 2
Best finish: 17th
Romain Grosjean’s frightening fireball crash in the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix brought his F1 career to an end two races early and gave an unlikely F1 chance to Haas reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi.
Fittipaldi hadn’t driven an F1 car for a whole year before making his surprise stand-in appearance at the Sakhir GP - remember that was the one time when F1 raced on Bahrain’s ‘outer loop’ circuit in one of the decade’s wildest F1 races.
He found it tricky to adapt his late braking driving style to a tricky Haas VF-20 - F1’s slowest car that year - and his first F1 qualifying was compromised by needing to give team-mate Kevin Magnussen a tow as Fittipaldi had an engine grid penalty, which partly explained the hefty seven-tenth deficit.
But Fittipaldi did a solid job in the race, bringing the car home in last place in Sakhir and repeating that result in Abu Dhabi one week later - where an engine cooling problem that necessitated an extra pitstop potentially cost him a chance of avoiding that fate.
The fact that Fittipaldi wasn’t given the nod when Haas suddenly needed a new driver to replace Nikita Mazepin at the start of 2022 was telling that this two-race stand-in was far from star-making.
16th - Jack Aitken for George Russell
Williams 2020
Races: 1
Best finish: 16th
Like Fittipaldi, Jack Aitken would have never raced in F1 without a positive Covid test for another driver, in this case Lewis Hamilton, who George Russell replaced, which in turn gave Aitken the chance to replace Russell at Williams.
Aitken had a perfectly solid junior career, albeit never in the same class as some of his F1-bound contemporaries like Russell and Charles Leclerc.
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He was faster than team-mate Nicholas Latifi after the first two qualifying runs, but a small mistake at the final corner on his final run left him a tenth behind.
He had another off-track moment at Turn 2 in the race that cost him a place to Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Romeo (which he’d later re-pass) and an even bigger moment at the final corner, which caused him to spin and break his front wing.
Unfortunately, that smashed up Williams is the stand-out memory of Aitken’s one-off outing and has to hurt his ranking, even though his strong recovery thereafter showed a glimpse of what could have been.
15th - Robert Kubica for Kimi Raikkonen
Alfa Romeo 2021
Races: 2
Best finish: 14th
During his two stand-in appearances for Alfa Romeo in 2021, Robert Kubica had the largest qualifying gap to his team-mate of any other in-season driver change on this list, so why isn’t he last?
OK, we’ll admit it, there is an element of the emotional story helping to boost the raw numbers, but what Kubica achieved was mighty impressive in the wider context of his career and that simply cannot be ignored.
Kubica fought tooth and nail for years to get back into an F1 drive after his rallying accident in early 2011, and when he finally achieved that goal for 2019 despite the right-handed Kubica needing to drive “70% left-handed”, it was a monumental achievement and a testament to Kubica’s resilience, having lost a near certain shot in a Ferrari for 2012.
Unfortunately, it was tragic that his eventual comeback happened to be with a Williams team that was at its most shambolic low, late to pre-season testing and unable to consistently run two cars to the same specification.
Kubica spent the year being battered by rookie team-mate George Russell, his only real competition given the Williams FW42 was easily F1 2019’s worst car - and the worst car Williams ever produced.
But Kubica’s surprise Alfa cameos gave him something his Williams year rarely ever did - the chance to fight with other cars.
And Kubica did that well across his Zandvoort and Monza weekends, the former of which he only found out he was racing in on the Saturday morning before FP3.
The qualifying deficits were large, but the race pace was genuinely decent, with Kubica executing a nice last-lap move on Nicholas Latifi’s Williams to follow team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi home at Zandvoort, and he then finished right behind Giovinazzi at Monza too.
Even if Giovinazzi had clashes early in both races, which flattered the final deficit, it was a far more satisfying and deserving end to Kubica’s F1 career than his tricky year with Williams.
14th - Jack Doohan for Esteban Ocon
Alpine 2024
Races: 1
Best finish: 15th
Jack Doohan was able to make his F1 debut one race early in Abu Dhabi so that outgoing Alpine driver Esteban Ocon could test for his new Haas team in the post-season test.
But all that did was start the ticking clock on Doohan’s future with a respectable but underwhelming maiden weekend, far from the high 2024 stand-in bar set by others placed higher on this list.
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Doohan was last and five and a half tenths slower than Pierre Gasly in Q1, while Gasly went on to qualify sixth.
Gasly converted that into a seventh place in the race while Doohan had a fairly anomalous run to 15th.
The results are harsher than the reality, with Doohan only a tenth slower than Gasly after the first runs of Q1, and the treatment that followed from Alpine was particularly harsh given the pace got much better than this, but this debut simply wasn’t strong enough to stop the rumours of Doohan losing his seat, which would become true just six races later.
13th - Franco Colapinto for Jack Doohan
Alpine 2025
Races: 8
Best finish: 13th
The first of two Franco Colapinto entries on this list and unsurprisingly, this one is ranked much lower, given his Alpine stint so far is yet to live up to expectations.
In fact, when he gave him Jack Doohan’s seat, Flavio Briatore set Colapinto the goal of driving fast, scoring points, and not crashing. He’s hardly passed those three tests with flying colours.
There have been some positive signs, like beating Gasly across the Canadian GP weekend and repeating that just before the summer break in Hungary. Plus, the Alpine is a much trickier car to drive than last year’s Williams.
But Colapinto has also made too many mistakes - the crash at Imola was a big early confidence hitter and the needless Silverstone qualifying shunt thwarted a real breakthrough.
Colapinto still has time to turn things around, but he knows the same unpredictable looming axe that gave him the chance in the first place could just as easily and suddenly take it away.
12th - Yuki Tsunoda for Liam Lawson
Red Bull 2025
Races: 12
Best finish: 6th (Miami sprint)
Another ongoing change that hasn’t delivered what was initially hoped for after its first 12 weekends.
In fact, with just seven points in 12 events, Yuki Tsunoda has the lowest points per race average (0.58 points per race) of any Red Bull Racing driver since Robert Doornbos failed to score during his three-race stint at the end of 2006.
It started strongly enough with Tsunoda close to Max Verstappen through practice at Suzuka, but disappointment after disappointment has followed.
He’s in the midst of an unthinkable seven-weekend point-less streak, but qualifying a tenth and a half slower than Verstappen at the Hungaroring at least offers some glimmer of a potential turnaround.
11th - Liam Lawson for Yuki Tsunoda
Racing Bulls 2025
Races: 12
Best finish: 6th
Racing Bulls lost its star driver when Red Bull Racing finally gave Tsunoda a shot in the senior team after two rounds of the 2025 season.
But it instead regained a solid operator with Lawson dropping into the team mid-season for the third consecutive year.
This stint has so far been Lawson’s most productive in terms of points-scoring, with 20 points delivered in the last seven races - only Verstappen has scored more points during that time within Red Bull’s driver pool.
That came after a shakier start to life at Racing Bulls, where he struggled to match his high-flying rookie team-mate Isack Hadjar.
But Lawson has compared strongly to Hadjar in recent races and after his 2025 started in the worst possible way, with his dream Red Bull move crumbling into agonising disappointment, Lawson’s looking like a very respectable and consistently fast grand prix driver.
10th - Liam Lawson for Daniel Ricciardo
AlphaTauri 2023
Races: 5
Best finish: 9th
The first of Liam Lawson’s stand-in stints came in the middle of the Dutch GP weekend when Ricciardo injured his hand.
He did a respectable job in place of Ricciardo, slotting in at a similar level despite his inexperience and particularly impressing in Singapore (where he reached Q3 and scored two points) and Suzuka (where he passed and later undercut his way back past Tsunoda).
His stint ended with a disappointing Qatar weekend, but overall, this was a solid spell which helped ensure he’d replace Ricciardo permanently one year later.
9th - Nico Hulkenberg for Sebastian Vettel
Aston Martin 2022
Races: 2
Best finish: 12th
Nico Hulkenberg had set the bar high for stand-in appearances with his own 2020 heroics for Racing Point (see later in the list), so his two weekends for the same team now rebranded as Aston Martin in 2022 were slightly disappointing.
Jumping in for the first two races of a new era without any pre-season testing was always going to be tricky, plus this was a much less competitive car than the 2020 Racing Point (or should we say 2019 Mercedes), but two finishes well outside of the points and two Sundays where he was clearly outshined by Lance Stroll was disappointing and far short of what Hulkenberg would later show in the ground effect era.
8th - Daniel Ricciardo for Nyck de Vries
AlphaTauri 2023
Races: 7
Best finish: 7th
This was a momentous driver change that marked Daniel Ricciardo’s return to F1 just 10 races after exiting a McLaren team that had paid him not to drive for it in 2023.
Ricciardo had wowed behind the scenes at Red Bull, who thought they’d helped him untangle some bad habits he’d picked up during his tough two years with McLaren.
Ricciardo started strongly, outqualifying Yuki Tsunoda at the first time of asking at the Hungaroring, but any early momentum was stifled when he injured his hand during a crash on the banking at Zandvoort.
That ruled him out of five races (more on his stand-in later) and when he returned, he only scored points once, albeit in an outstanding Mexico weekend where he qualified fourth on the grid and seventh in the race.
The rest was a frustrating microcosm of his F1 comeback - flashes of the Ricciardo brilliance of old, marred by the inconsistency that doomed his chances of ever being Verstappen’s team-mate again.
7th - Liam Lawson for Daniel Ricciardo
RB 2024
Races: 6
Best finish: 9th
Liam Lawson was given a very clear mission: perform in the final six races of the 2024 F1 season, and you’ll be rewarded with the 2025 Red Bull seat.
And that’s exactly what Lawson did as he scored points in two of his first three weekends and was even routinely fighting for positions with (and irritating) the man he wanted to replace, Sergio Perez.
Lawson was also outqualified by Tsunoda at every round and only finished ahead of him once - when he charged from 19th on the grid (after engine penalties beyond his control) to ninth in Austin and set a peak he wouldn’t reach again.
But it was still a more consistent run of results than what his replacement Ricciardo had achieved and he got close enough to Tsunoda for Red Bull to believe he was the right pick to partner Verstappen.
Even if things didn’t work out at Red Bull and he needed a big slump from Perez to create the opportunity, it was a strong audition.
6th - Ollie Bearman for Kevin Magnussen
Haas 2024
Races: 2
Best finish: 10th
Ollie Bearman ensured he had a hard act to follow when Haas called him up to replace the banned Kevin Magnussen for Baku, Bearman’s second F1 race after his starring debut with Ferrari at Jeddah.
And somehow Bearman turned things up a notch, already looking like a full-time F1 driver by outqualifying Nico Hulkenberg and racing to score a point for a 10th place finish on Sunday.
It was a remarkable return, and while his full-time 2025 seat was already announced off the back of his impressive FP1s with Haas and Ferrari debut, it just confirmed Bearman was the right driver for Haas.
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Based on Baku alone, Bearman’s Haas cameo would have troubled the top of this list, but we’re pairing it with his Brazil stand-in, once again in place of Magnussen, where Bearman wasn’t quite as impressive.
He still outqualified Hulkenberg for both the sprint and the grand prix, meaning he outqualified Hulkenberg three times across the year - something Magnussen only achieved eight times in 27 attempts.
But the Interlagos races were scrappier as Bearman struggled in the rain-affected conditions and looked out of his depth for the first time in an otherwise remarkable trio of 2024 weekends.
5th - Nyck de Vries for Alex Albon
Williams 2022
Races: 1
Best finish: 9th
Let’s get the caveats out of the way first.
Yes, this took place at Monza, probably the circuit that the Williams FW44 suited the most and is a great circuit for an F1 debut. Yes, grid penalties for other drivers elevated De Vries from 13th to eighth on the grid. Yes, De Vries 'only' had Nicholas Latifi as a benchmark. And yes, De Vries subsequently struggled to make his mark in F1 with AlphaTauri and was quickly fired by Red Bull.
But none of that can take away from the fact that De Vries’s F1 debut was so strong at Monza that it left multiple teams courting his services for 2023 on the basis of one weekend, when his entire career thus far - including titles in F2 and Formula E - hadn’t been enough to do so.
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De Vries had just one practice session to get up to speed after Albon was ruled out with appendicitis on Saturday morning and yet fired the Williams out of Q1 at the first time of asking.
His race was really strong as he only lost out to the recovering frontrunners and came home ninth.
4th - Nico Hulkenberg for Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll
Racing Point 2020
Races: 3
Best finish: 7th
Everything about the 2020 F1 season was something of a fever dream with shock results - a Stroll pole position, Pierre Gasly winning in an AlphaTauri - and chaotic races aplenty.
But Nico Hulkenberg returning to the Silverstone-based Racing Point outfit he’d spent four seasons with previously under its previous Force India guise, and performing so well, has to be right up there.
His first Silverstone weekend was a big ‘what if?’ as car troubles meant he couldn’t even take the start, but we got an answer to that theoretical one week later with another race at Silverstone.
There, Hulkenberg remarkably outqualified eventual race winner Max Verstappen to take third on the grid. Despite an extra pitstop due to tyre concerns, he still finished seventh the next day.
But the most impressive race was to come as at the Nurburgring - where he was only called up at 11am on Saturday, meaning qualifying was his first session of the weekend.
He predictably qualified last, given the lack of track time, but delivered a superb charge to eighth the next day to prove he still had plenty more to give in F1.
3rd - Ollie Bearman for Carlos Sainz
Ferrari 2024
Races: 1
Best finish: 7th
No driver on this list was placed into a higher-pressure environment than Ollie Bearman, who had to make his F1 debut in a Ferrari at F1’s highest-speed street circuit, where confidence is key and the walls are ready to punish any error.
But then 18-year-old Bearman did an exceptional job in getting up to speed with a single practice session on Friday morning - having taken F2 pole one day prior - as he was only just over half a second slower than one of the fastest drivers over one lap in F1, his team-mate Charles Leclerc.
That his 11th place in qualifying was an underperformance relative to his underlying pace was a testament to how quickly Bearman adapted to the challenge and the raw speed he demonstrated.
He was able to flex more of that strong race pace - which compared very well to Leclerc - on Sunday as he battled back into the points and came home in seventh.
It’s a result that not only confirmed Bearman was destined for F1 the following season, but one which highlighted why he’s Ferrari’s leading protégé and a driver capable of being a full-time Ferrari driver one day and this superb one-off outing was the first glimpse of that.
2nd - Franco Colapinto for Logan Sargeant
Williams 2024
Races: 9
Best finish: 8th
Is there a more slam dunk success of a mid-season driver change than Williams dropping Logan Sargeant mid-season for Franco Colapinto?
Probably not, especially given Colapinto was a far from obvious choice and Williams simply could have waited for Carlos Sainz’s arrival in early 2025 to have two points-scoring cars.
Williams didn’t wait and Colapinto rewarded it with four points in Baku and a further point in Austin.
If Colapinto’s stint ends after Austin, he’s potentially topping this list on pure shock value of ‘wow, this driver who has never looked like an absolute F1-certain talent on the junior ladder is performing so well in F1, he’s giving Alex Albon a hurry-up’.
He was even a contender to go straight into Red Bull for 2025 to be Verstappen’s team-mate. Has there ever been a more shocking surge in stock value than Colapinto in the autumn of 2024? De Vries (Monza 2022) set a high bar but Colapinto probably cleared it given he almost ended up earning himself the Red Bull seat.
Of course, Colapinto’s stock then did take a small knock with big crashes at Vegas and Interlagos, but he’d still done more than enough to catch Briatore’s eye and line himself up to be at the centre of an early 2025 driver change at Alpine.
1st - George Russell for Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes 2020
Races: 1
Best finish: 9th
George Russell’s 2020 Sakhir GP weekend is the gold standard for F1 stand-in opportunities that are also future seat auditions.
Lewis Hamilton’s positive Covid test meant Russell was able to swap from a Williams car that didn’t score a point in 2020 to one that scored 59% of the points available to it.
It was an unexpected audition for then-Mercedes junior Russell to show he was ready to be Hamilton’s team-mate and gave him a direct head-to-head battle with incumbent Valtteri Bottas.
Bottas narrowly fended him off in qualifying, but Russell only fell 0.026s short after just two days of driving the Mercedes W11 that Bottas had been driving all year - and would have been on pole but for a snap of oversteer on his entry into Turn 1.
Russell made amends by seizing the lead at the start of the race and looked comfortable there until tyre confusion during a precautionary pitstop necessitated an extra stop to fix the error.
Even that wasn’t enough to stop Russell, who charged from fifth to first via a jaw-dropping pass on Bottas into the chicane that screamed ‘I’m your future Mercedes, not Valtteri’.
But it wasn’t to be for Russell as a puncture - ironically suspected to be triggered by debris from his Williams replacement Aitken’s crash - dropped him out of the points.
His recovery from 14th to ninth, along with the fastest lap bonus point, was further proof that Russell should have easily won on his truly remarkable Mercedes debut.
