Bold predictions as F1 2025 resumes: Hamilton engineer swap, Russell to Red Bull, Colapinto out
Could Lewis Hamilton push for a change of race engineer at Ferrari?
The F1 2025 season will finally resume at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, sparking a run of 10 races until December’s finale in Abu Dhabi.
Who will come out on top between McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris? And will Lewis Hamilton finally crack the Ferrari code? Here, our writers cast some bold predictions for the second half of the season…
McLaren tensions spill over
By Elizabeth Blackstock
It may seem like it would be easy to dominate a championship, but I have a feeling we’re going to see some tempers fly at McLaren during these final 10 races.
Because Lando Norris is trailing Oscar Piastri by only nine points in the drivers’ standings, it’s highly likely we’ll see both drivers emerge from summer break refocused and ready to perform, with both coming to the conclusion that they need to be more decisive in defending or snatching the title lead.
I have a feeling we’re going to see more instances of the team’s composure cracking like it did at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: McLaren head-to-head scores for F1 2025
? F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
? F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
I wouldn’t call this a “bold” prediction if it involved any other team, but McLaren has been phenomenal about keeping its drivers cool, collected and level-headed this season.
It’s clear that both are able to fight without any favouritism in the battle and it seems as if both drivers are wholly conscious of the overall good of the team.
However, I just can’t see that lasting much longer.
We’re getting to the sharp end of the season; opportunities to score points are winding down, and the sport is on the cusp of a regulatory transformation that won’t guarantee McLaren emerges on top of the field in 2026.
For Piastri and Norris, it’s do-or-die, and I have a feeling they’ll both go down fighting.
Alpine drops Franco Colapinto, but not for Jack Doohan
By Mat Coch
With Franco Colapinto having failed to deliver after he stepped into the Alpine previously occupied by Jack Doohan, the pressure is on.
Colapinto was impressive during his stint at Williams last year, but has thus far failed to replicate that form in F1 2025.
There are likely a myriad of reasons for that and a difficult, uncompetitive car must certainly be one of them, but the inescapable truth is he hasn’t been close enough to Pierre Gasly – just as Doohan wasn’t.
And while Colapinto is likely to remain in the car for now, I see a very real prospect of a new driver being parachuted in towards the end of the year, in much the same way as happened with Doohan at the end of F1 2024.
That’s not to say it will be the Australian who gets another chance. Sadly for him, I think the F1 door has been closed on his career.
Alpine has another driver among its ranks who looks a strong candidate.
Paul Aron is well regarded in the team and I can see a situation where he is handed a late-season call up to assess him for next season.
However, whether he gets that chance will come down to Colapinto, who is the master of his own fate.
If he continues as he is, he’ll be at risk for the final two events (Qatar and Abu Dhabi), but should he improve…
Performance is everything in F1 and memories are short.
George Russell agrees to join Red Bull
By Jamie Woodhouse
We are not getting Max Verstappen and George Russell at Mercedes for F1 2026.
No matter, let’s have it at Red Bull instead.
Verstappen has affirmed his continued commitment to Red Bull, but Russell is yet to pen a new Mercedes deal.
Is he, like Martin Brundle has suggested, slowing negotiations down, knowing he is now the biggest player in the driver market?
Russell was floating around the Red Bull radar previously when Christian Horner was at the helm.
Looking ahead to the all-change F1 2026 season, Russell may be the ideal, experienced, multi-race-winning talent to put alongside Verstappen in a bid to end its second seat curse.
If Yuki Tsunoda is heading for the exit as Red Bull’s Honda ties expire, the replacement options within its pool are not exactly undeniable.
Liam Lawson has stabilised his form since that brutal demotion back to Racing Bulls, but Red Bull rarely offers second chances for dropped young drivers to have a part two with the senior team.
Isack Hadjar was excelling and has impressed key Red Bull figure Helmut Marko, but his form has cooled somewhat. Arvid Lindblad is looking like he would benefit from a second F2 season.
All that considered, I predict Red Bull to announce Russell as Verstappen’s F1 2026 team-mate before the 2025 season ends.
Sure, the duo has not always gotten along, and it would be a key difference for Russell to step into Verstappen’s team, rather than the other way around.
But stranger things have happened.
Lewis Hamilton will get a new Ferrari race engineer
By Oliver Harden
The first port of call when a big move isn’t working out as hoped? Change the race engineer.
It’s an easy fix. Low-hanging fruit, as F1 types say.
Quite why Lewis Hamilton is struggling to gel with Riccardo Adami, when Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz both had no trouble with the poor man, is anyone’s guess.
Yet the soundtrack of Hamilton’s first season with Ferrari has been those cringeworthy exchanges – sometimes tense, often really quite awkward – with his new race engineer.
This relationship surely cannot continue if a similar theme emerges in the second half of 2025 too.
One of the few times Hamilton has looked happy with life at Ferrari came after the Belgian Grand Prix, where he spoke of being reunited with one of his engineers from “my previous team.”
It is unclear exactly who Hamilton was referring to at Spa, but could the answer be right under his nose in the shape of Jock Clear?
Clear, strangely underused by Ferrari since he arrived at Maranello in 2015, is known to be close to Charles Leclerc.
But he also served as Hamilton’s performance engineer in his first two seasons with Mercedes back in 2013/14.
This has the feel of a swap that’s just waiting to happen.
Read next: Five F1 2025 drivers with a point to prove after summer break
