Five ridiculously early F1 2025 predictions: Hamilton’s Ferrari debut, World Champion picks

Editor 01 Jan 2025 6:00 AM

Liam Lawson, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc

Happy New Year, everyone! And welcome to our first look at what could be one of the best F1 seasons ever. Not like we’re hyping it up or anything…

Whilst drivers and teams enjoy their remaining downtime, we’ve polished up our crystal balls and seen the future…let’s dive in.

Liam Lawson to be back at Racing Bulls after the summer break

By Henry Valantine

Liam Lawson is more than welcome to pin a photo of this contribution to a dartboard if he’s so inclined, but I’m concerned his promotion to Red Bull may have come too soon.

You only need to look at the examples of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon before him as cases of drivers who were put alongside Max Verstappen early in their careers, only to find it too much of a jump and end up elsewhere.

Now, both have flourished since moving teams so it’s proof that it is possible to rebuild your career after being Verstappen’s team-mate, but unless he hits the ground running, I reckon we could see Lawson back at VCARB after the summer break.

I want to make clear this is not me writing him off before the season starts – far from it – and I’d happily take my hat off to him if he succeeds.

No driver in his position would ever turn down such an opportunity, and nor should he.

To be placed alongside the four-time reigning World Champion after only 11 grand prix starts, however? That is a huge challenge.

McLaren will struggle to mount a World Championship challenge

By Elizabeth Blackstock

Raise your hand if you’re one of the many folks expecting a McLaren domination in 2025!

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest you’re on the right path. After the team’s upgrades in Miami in 2024, the team turned a corner in performance and actually began to threaten Max Verstappen and Red Bull. The team took its first World Constructors’ Championship in 0ver 25 years, and it has its sights set on a title for one of its drivers in 2025.

Except, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown recently claimed that the team is looking to take a “brave risk” in designing its 2025 machinery, rather than refining the (successful) car at hand.

Brown continued on to say, “We’ve got to out-develop them, out-drive them, and out-strategize them, as opposed to this mindset of, ‘just don’t make any mistakes.’ That’s just not competitive enough.”

But when does a “brave risk” become a foolish error?

We’ve seen some teams take brave risks in the past, like Mercedes with its zero-sidepod concept, or Red Bull straying in the wrong direction with its RB20. Even the most competent engineers in the world can be led astray by a big idea or a flaw in the data.

Now, personally, I’d like to see as many teams be as risky and competitive as possible in 2025, so if McLaren makes this work, then good on ’em! But the skeptic in me wants to see the proof in the pudding, not just the PR bluster.

Lewis Hamilton will win on his Ferrari debut in Australia

By Oliver Harden

If McLaren have had a weakness over the last couple of years, it is that their winter development has fallen short compared to their in-season upgrades.

The Constructors’ Champions may have ended 2024 with the fastest car, but it would be no great surprise if they slip back slightly at the start of F1 2025.

And with Red Bull an unknown as they enter the uncertainty of the post-Newey era, and Mercedes’ focus likely to be entirely on the 2026 rules, it is entirely feasible that Ferrari will start the season with the quickest car.

There is a touch of 2021-spec Red Bull about Ferrari’s approach to 2025 (see Fred Vasseur’s recent hint that the new car will be 99 per cent new), prepared to throw everything at the final season of the current regulations having gone so long without a sustained title challenge and unsure when the next opportunity will come after this year.

After having everything from his motivation and his one-lap pace to his age questioned throughout his final season as a Mercedes driver, it would be so typical of Lewis Hamilton to win in Melbourne on his debut for Ferrari in a riposte to his critics.

It’s precisely the sort of thing he’d do.

Want some more early F1 2025 content? We’ve got you covered

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Charles Leclerc to win the World Championship

By Sam Cooper

As a man who won £150 thanks to backing McLaren for 2024, I am feeling rather emboldened when it comes to 2025 so for that reason, I am going to go with Charles Leclerc to win the Drivers’ title.

Call it a hunch but I do think there is some logic behind it. McLaren may have won the Constructors’ title but Ferrari were a consistent threat, save from that run after Monaco, and arguably had the quickest car to end the year.

I think that superiority could continue into 2025 and with Lewis Hamilton being a question mark at a new team, I would back Leclerc to go on and do it.

Toppling Verstappen is not an easy feat but of all the drivers on the grid, I think it is Charles Leclerc that is most likely to do it.

Lewis Hamilton wins his eighth title and retires from F1

By Jamie Woodhouse

Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo probably stand as reasons why not to expect a driver showing signs of falling from their peak to return to full power, but I’ll do it anyway.

This year, we will find out whether in 2024 we saw a Hamilton just struggling for motivation, bruised by being absent from the title scene and a near year-long Mercedes goodbye, who can bounce back to form as a reinvigorated Ferrari driver, or, if we did see the start of the Hamilton decline.

But, while Hamilton’s “definitely not fast anymore” woes were focused on qualifying, race pace remained there or thereabouts.

Sure, if a driver is not qualifying where they should, more often than not, it is going to seriously hinder race results, and Hamilton is going up against one of the fastest one-lap F1 drivers in Charles Leclerc at Ferrari, but, I’ll predict Hamilton re-finds enough one-lap pace to compete at the sharp end of the grid.

From there, in a year where focus will quite quickly transition to the F1 2026 revamp, I’m backing Hamilton’s racecraft – which took him to a record 105 grand prix wins – to shine through and end his wait for that elusive eighth World Championship, at which point he decides he is not sticking around to see how the F1 2026 ruleset plays out.

And as Hamilton bows out to end a historic F1 career on the highest of highs, to give you a part two to this prediction (because why not), Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman replaces Hamilton at the Scuderia after his rookie season with Haas.