{"id":366227,"date":"2025-12-24T16:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T16:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366227\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T16:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T16:05:10","slug":"pick-your-top-10-f1-drivers-of-2025-plus-how-red-bulls-mekies-got-his-start-in-the-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366227\/","title":{"rendered":"Pick your top 10 F1 drivers of 2025. Plus: How Red Bull\u2019s Mekies got his start in the sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today we\u2019re still looking back on the 2025 Formula One season just gone, but with a different, more debatable twist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Alex, and Patrick Iversen, Madeline Coleman and Luke Smith will (sort of) be along later.<\/p>\n

But before we go any further, I just wanted to say a quick thank you for subscribing to Prime Tire in 2025. I hope you get plenty of rest and merriment during this festive period, and we\u2019ll soon be heading into 2026 with plenty more sizzling F1 stories to fill your inboxes. (One more edition to come next week, though, with Patrick at the helm.)<\/p>\n

Cheers!<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Rank \u2018EmHave your say about 2025\u2019s best F1 drivers<\/p>\n

This time of year can mean seeing people you haven\u2019t for a while. So, once the catch-up chat has settled down and, perhaps, to assuage any arguments with difficult relatives, why not reach for what is surely F1\u2019s best debate, keeping the conversation flowing away from difficult topics?<\/p>\n

After all, no one has\u00a0ever\u00a0fallen out over selecting the best driver of a season or era, or even choosing the all-time great. Nope. Not a single disagreement.<\/p>\n

OK, now that we\u2019ve dealt with the sarcasm, here\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do in this festive PT:\u00a0First, each of myself, Madeline, Luke and Pat are going to present our picks for the top 10 drivers of 2025 \u2014 a year when the title contenders\u00a0thrilled and spilled<\/a>, this era\u2019s top driver ended up with\u00a0a defeat for the ages<\/a>\u00a0and his predecessor had a\u00a0shocking first season<\/a>\u00a0with Ferrari.<\/p>\n

Here goes:<\/p>\n

Madeline\u2019s top 10<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen
\nGeorge Russell
\nCharles Leclerc
\nLando Norris
\nOscar Piastri
\nCarlos Sainz
\nIsack Hadjar
\nAlex Albon\/Fernando Alonso (Editor\u2019s note: Wait, is this a top 11?!)
\nOllie Bearman
\nPierre Gasly<\/p>\n

Toughest call: \u201cOne of the harder calls to make was which rookie \u2014 if any \u2014 made it into our top 10 and in what order. What bumped Hadjar ahead of the rest for me was that\u00a0Zandvoort podium<\/a>, combined with his qualifying consistency in a midfield car. He advanced to Q3 15 times this season \u2014 impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luke\u2019s top 10<\/p>\n

Verstappen
\nRussell
\nLeclerc
\nNorris
\nPiastri
\nAlonso
\nSainz
\nHadjar
\nAlbon
\nKimi Antonelli<\/p>\n

Alex\u2019s top 10:<\/p>\n

Verstappen
\nLeclerc
\nRussell
\nNorris
\nPiastri
\nAlonso
\nSainz
\nGasly
\nHadjar
\nNico H\u00fclkenberg<\/p>\n

Toughest call: \u201cNorris ahead of Piastri in fourth\/fifth. They were\u00a0so close all year<\/a>, but Norris was there or thereabouts (and often faster before messing up in qualifying) when Piastri was doing all his winning. But during the Monza-Vegas run of races, Piastri\u2019s pace gap to the other McLaren was surprisingly big, and that ultimately cost him the title. And the others ahead in the rankings were just better, overall, despite driving worse cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pat\u2019s top 10:<\/p>\n

Verstappen
\nRussell
\nLeclerc
\nPiastri
\nNorris
\nSainz
\nBearman
\nHadjar
\nAntonelli
\nAlonso<\/p>\n

Head here\u00a0to see the final top 10<\/a> that Luke and Madeline selected together to form\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s official driver rankings of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0here\u2019s your chance\u00a0to vote<\/a>\u00a0on the best performers of the season, which we\u2019ll publish in a future PT edition coming your way early in the new year.\u00a0You can go all the way down to last place and give every driver a rating from 1-10.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering here that F1, perhaps more than any other sport, is usually decided by the equipment on offer to each competitor. So, where drivers ultimately finish in the championship standings doesn\u2019t truly reflect their performances as individuals.<\/p>\n

You can toil in a bad car (see Gasly\u2019s 2025, or\u00a0Alonso famously in 2012<\/a>) and even with fine work not be rewarded with the most attention-grabbing results. That\u2019s what rankings such as these usually try to correct, taking into account the context of a full season.<\/p>\n

Anyway, hopefully that was a bit of fun and everyone is still firm friends!<\/p>\n

Lovely stuff. Now, speaking of which \u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Kym Illman \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Meet MekiesHow Red Bull\u2019s team boss got his F1 break<\/p>\n

Luke filed one final feature to end the year this week: a profile of\u00a0Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mekies took over after Christian Horner\u2019s surprise axing following this year\u2019s British GP and quickly earned the respect of not just critical pieces of the Red Bull squad (aka Verstappen\u2019s camp), but also many outside F1 observers.<\/p>\n

His words were just blissfully straightforward compared to the constant, cynical mind games of his predecessor.<\/p>\n

The 48-year-old Mekies has a long history in F1, starting out with the Arrows team in 2001, where he worked with a certain Jos Verstappen. Check out Luke\u2019s piece to discover where Mekies went next along his route to one of F1\u2019s top jobs, and to spot how many times\u00a0he charmingly calls himself a \u201cfan\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of the championship.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a feel-good story to end the year \u2014 on someone once described as \u201ca rare example of an engineer with a heart.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside the points<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Christmas, so, of course, there is an F1 technical rules\u00a0controversy brewing<\/a>\u00a0over the new engines coming in 2026.<\/p>\n

Get ready for\u00a0much more of that<\/a>\u00a0next year, as the start of any new rules cycle means teams can quickly find big gains buried in the\u00a0wording<\/a>\u00a0of the new regulations, which can often leave their rivals scrambling.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udceb Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic\u2019s other newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-366227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}