Alpine ended the F1 2025 season with three of its drivers \u2013 Pierre Gasly, Franco Colapinto and Jack Doohan \u2013 in the bottom four and Yuki Tsunoda ended up without a seat for F1 2026.<\/p>\n
But who was the worst driver of the season? After picking the best driver of F1 2025<\/a>, our writers turn attention to the worst\u2026<\/p>\n Clear winner: Yuki Tsunoda!<\/p>\n By Michelle Foster<\/p>\n This is actually a difficult one to evaluate as it is very car-dependent, more so than the best driver.<\/p>\n Yes, the Alpine A525 was an awful car, handling, speed and drivability all lacking.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean the drivers were the worst? No. In fact, Pierre Gasly deserves a top-10 finish for the season.<\/p>\n But Yuki Tsunoda \u2013 Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda \u2013 now there\u2019s a different story. And a not-so-difficult choice.<\/p>\n Max Verstappen vs Yuki Tsunoda: Red Bull Racing head-to-head scores for F1 2025<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n His list of transgressions as noted by the stewards, and this isn\u2019t including track limits, exceeded the rest of the field \u2013 even Liam Lawson, who Tsunoda was often complaining about.<\/p>\n But given Tsunoda was in the Red Bull and Lawson the Racing Bulls, they should never have been on the same piece of tarmac for the Japanese driver to bang wheels with.<\/p>\n As much as Tsunoda is a character, a personality, he isn\u2019t up to the job.<\/p>\n I wish Tsunoda all the best for the future, but five years into Formula 1 and scoring just 30 points in Red Bull colours is a sure sign that this is not for you.<\/p>\n \u304a\u5e78\u305b\u306b <\/p>\n With others waiting in the wings, Franco Colapinto has to improve<\/p>\n By Mat Coch<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to preface my opinion by stating categorically that every driver who reaches Formula 1 level is phenomenally talented. The days of simply buying one\u2019s way onto the grid are gone.<\/p>\n Perhaps an element of that remains, but you still need to be good enough to put yourself in that shop window, and the vast majority of youngsters simply don\u2019t reach that marker.<\/p>\n And so by identifying Franco Colapinto as the \u2018worst\u2019 driver of the season, that is absolutely not the same as saying he\u2019s a bad driver. He is extremely talented, but he didn\u2019t have a good season.<\/p>\n One might hypothesise that his performances were a result of desperation, itself a by-product of uncertainty and turmoil within Alpine.<\/p>\n Drafted in after six races, Colapinto never rose to the level he demonstrated at Williams in the latter stages of F1 2024. His stock has fallen as a result, and one can fairly question whether he was even a step up in performance terms from Jack Doohan.<\/p>\n Of course there were other considerations at play, Colapinto brings with him some healthy investment where Doohan did not, but that needs to be translated into points.<\/p>\n But Colapinto didn\u2019t manage that at any point during the course of F1 2025; he and Doohan were the only two drivers with that unfortunate record.<\/p>\n While one might look at the disparity between Yuki Tsunoda and Max Verstappen as a failure by the Japanese driver, the points delta from Colapinto to Gasly was immeasurably more significant.<\/p>\n Red Bull is a team built around Verstappen; Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson, and more latterly Tsunoda all struggled to live with the Dutchman because there\u2019s simply something extraordinary there.<\/p>\n And good as Gasly is, he\u2019s not a generational talent; he doesn\u2019t pose a great a challenge for a prospective teammate. And so, to comprehensively out-pace Colapinto (and Doohan) points to a failing in the second car.<\/p>\n Alpine heads into the F1 2026 campaign with a settled line up but, should things continue as they did this season, it\u2019s difficult to continue justifying Colapinto\u2019s position. Especially with Paul Aron waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n One dishonourable mention as Yuki Tsunoda chosen again<\/p>\n By Henry Valantine<\/p>\n I hate to say it, but Yuki Tsunoda takes my vote as well.<\/p>\n A pre-season would probably have helped him immensely had he been chosen first time around.<\/p>\n And although he improved significantly in the final rounds, that doesn\u2019t stop him from lifting himself off the bottom.<\/p>\n Around other teams, for the fact he didn\u2019t get a point this year, Franco Colapinto can take encouragement from how he drove at times against Pierre Gasly, matching up relatively well, being 11-7 down in the race head-to-head and losing 13-5 in qualifying, but the lack of competitiveness in the car speaks louder than his performances probably.<\/p>\n There is a somewhat dishonourable mention, which might feel harsh: Esteban Ocon.<\/p>\n He was the only senior driver to have been outscored by a rookie teammate this year.<\/p>\n He lost the qualifying head-to-head (though edged the race head-to-head) at Haas and explained how braking issues had been hindering his progress in the latter part of the year, with his brakes not giving him the feedback he wants.<\/p>\n Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu said that Ocon and Oliver Bearman have different driving styles on an identical setup, and while the team tried different brake materials to help the French driver, he prefers a car \u201cbehaving in a certain way\u201d to get the most out of it, and is \u201camazing\u201d when he finds that window \u2013 but he did not find it as much as he would have liked in the second half of the year.<\/p>\n That will be a battle to watch unfold over the course of next season, but in the here and now, it\u2019s still hard to see past Tsunoda for not living up to expectations at Red Bull.<\/p>\n I genuinely wish him nothing but the best as there\u2019s a very strong driver in there.<\/p>\n Hopefully he can do as Gasly and Alex Albon have managed and secure a seat elsewhere for 2027 to potentially give him a better platform to perform.<\/p>\n Hard to look past Jack Doohan<\/p>\n By Oliver Harden<\/p>\n Yes, Yuki Tsunoda wasn\u2019t good.<\/p>\n But his struggles in Red Bull\u2019s second seat were entirely predictable \u2013 hence the team\u2019s great reluctance to give him a chance before this season \u2013 so he deserves more sympathy than criticism.<\/p>\n Even with a sample size of six races, it\u2019s hard to look beyond Jack Doohan \u2013 currently crashing left, right and centre in Super Formula testing \u2013 as the worst driver of the season.<\/p>\n The abiding image of Doohan\u2019s short stint at Alpine is the sight of him spinning into the barriers at high speed in FP2 at Suzuka having made the error of leaving his DRS open as he tipped the car into Turn 1.<\/p>\n That incident, easily the most basic misjudgement by a driver all season, came to encapsulate his shortened stint as a full-time F1 driver.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t so much his performance level \u2013 never hugely behind Pierre Gasly on pace, never really bettered by Franco Colapinto \u2013 but how overawed he seemed to be by the whole experience.<\/p>\n For someone who literally grew up in the business of motor racing, and had been on the verge of an F1 seat for some years, it was surprising how\u2026 wide-eyed he appeared during his spell with Alpine.<\/p>\n