Ranked: Every F1 2025 driver by their career decisions made so far

Being a good driver will only ever get you so far and often picking the right team can be just as important as your skill behind the wheel.

The exclusive nature of Formula 1 means the best team will only ever have two vacancies so even if a driver is better, they may never have a chance to compete for world titles.

Ranking every F1 2025 driver for their career decisions

D Tier

Fernando Alonso

Where else to start than with one of the most talented drivers of his generation?

On skill merit, Alonso should perhaps have more than the two titles he currently has but he is the leading example of what can happen to a driver who does not choose the right move.

The start of his career was strong enough with Minardi giving him his debut before back-to-back championships but from there, it makes for pretty grim reading.

In 2007, he moved to McLaren but clashed with Lewis Hamilton and left a year later to return to Renault, coming fifth while Hamilton won the title.

A P9 in 2009 saw him move to Ferrari at precisely the time that Red Bull began to dominate and after overplaying his hand in Maranello, he returned to McLaren only to find them in the worst shape of their existence.

In fairness to the Spaniard, his choices of late have been a little better with a return to Alpine getting him back on the grid and a move to Aston Martin saw him finish fourth in the 2023 standings.

However, he will hope that 2026 will provide one final chance for another championship or it will be a career of what could have been.

Franco Colapinto

Colapinto is quickly learning that jumping at the chance for any F1 seat can also bring about an early end to a career.

A surprise move up to Williams earned him a chance to shine in the spotlight but perhaps he should have been better sticking with the Grove team, if only in a reserve capacity.

Since moving to Alpine, who are comfortably the worst team on the grid, Colapinto has gone from a promising talent to one some say is not at the level of F1.

Should he be dropped at the end of this year, it is hard to see a route back into the grid for him.

C Tier

Charles Leclerc

Having Leclerc this low down is perhaps a little harsh but it is easy to see another reality where he is a World Champion by now.

In the era of drivers that include the likes of Verstappen, Russell and Leclerc, the Ferrari driver could make a case for being the best of them but he has not been in an environment to show it.

Since moving to Ferrari from Alfa in 2019, Leclerc has been met with difficulty after difficulty and had it been any other team, you get the sense he would have left by now.

2026 is yet another new opportunity for Ferrari but the team is just as likely to mess it up once again as they are to emerge as the frontrunners.

Leclerc has always said he does not want to leave but that dedication has sure been tested in recent years.

Nico Hulkenberg

After his GP2 success, perhaps more was hoped of Hulkenberg’s F1 career.

His big break came at Williams but having lost his seat after just one year, he moved to Force India to become reserve driver. A year on the sidelines preceded a full-time seat but he left in 2013 to join Sauber.

A year later and he was back again at Force India.

His best move was to leave Force India and join Renault in 2017 but that also nearly cost him his job when he was kicked out in favour of Ocon.

His best career decisions then have come in his second stint in F1, first returning with Haas and now joining a Sauber set to transform to Audi and perhaps give Hulkenberg his best seasons in F1.

Pierre Gasly

Gasly’s career is a classic example of too much too soon, as he was promoted up the Red Bull order only to not be given the backing needed to succeed.

When ranking the current top 10 drivers in the sport, Gasly has a claim to be amongst them but he has just one win and five podiums in his career.

Joining the Red Bull academy was his route into F1 and he had no say in being shoved back down to the sister team but it is his move to Alpine that has got him into this category.

In 2022, Alpine finished fourth in the Constructors’ and was a team full of ambition but Gasly’s arrival coincided with a sharp decline in performance.

Chaos would be the best way to describe the environment at Enstone over recent years and with an underwhelming engine, Gasly has not been given much to work with.

His hope is that with a Mercedes engine in the back, the 2026 car will be much more competitive but Gasly is 29 now and could easily have had a career like Carlos Sainz’s had he played his cards a little differently.

B Tier

Kimi Antonelli

Not much career choice for Antonelli so far after he was signed to Mercedes in 2019 but he has been rewarded with an F1 drive perhaps far earlier than he would have done at another team.

This current iteration of Mercedes is not the best of their history but there’s every reason to think they could be a leading contender again in 2026.

Yuki Tsunoda

Red Bull may well have been Tsunoda’s only path into F1 through his Honda relationship but it could also be the cause of his exit.

Having spent a number of years at the sister team, Tsunoda was thrown in the Red Bull deep end this year and has struggled to make an impact, posing a question as to whether he will still be in F1 next year.

But even if he isn’t, he at least made it to F1 which is more than can be said for most.

Liam Lawson

Lawson is a similar story to Tsunoda in that Red Bull was the one to give him an F1 opportunity.

His career trajectory has been shuffled around more than he would have liked but he is in F1 now and has a seat to keep hold of.

Isack Hadjar

Another Red Bull driver comes in the form of Isack Hadjar with the Frenchman just 18 races into his F1 career.

Like others, Hadjar’s biggest career choices are yet to come.

Lance Stroll

It is hard to judge Lance Stroll’s choice of teams as they have always come with the caveat that his dad is either heavily sponsoring or owns the team.

At least now at Aston he is at a team with ambitions to be at the front of the grid.

Esteban Ocon

Ocon could have very easily disappeared from F1 after leaving Racing Point at the end of 2018 but to his credit, he chose to stay in the sport with a reserve driver spot at Mercedes.

The next year, he moved to Renault where he would stay all the way through to 2024 during one of the Enstone team’s better periods, before making the switch to Haas for this season.

Oliver Bearman

Like other rookies, Bearman took what he was given when it came to joining academies but Ferrari is certainly a choice that will open doors for you.

He has not had many career decisions to make but agreeing to move to Haas for a rookie year was a smart move.

A Tier

Lando Norris

Norris has been rewarded for his faith in McLaren as he went from a driver with zero wins and six podiums in three years of racing to one with seven victories and 40 podiums.

The Briton has been with McLaren on the journey back to the top of F1 and is now reaping the benefits of sticking with the team despite reported interest from Red Bull a few seasons ago.

Norris could well have left but it is hard to see a team where he would be as valued and even if he is a step behind his contemporary Verstappen in terms of titles, he is now being rewarded for that patience.

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Alex Albon

When you become the latest in a line of Red Bull junior drivers to be dumped out of the main team, what do you do? In Albon’s case, that was taking a different kind of risk.

When Albon agreed to leave the comfortable surroundings of a test driver at Red Bull, he was doing so to move to a team near the back of the grid and one with few signs of upward momentum.

It was not Vowles who convinced Albon as he arrived a year later but the hierarchy at Williams who showed they had plans for the future and with Vowles in place, they are taking steps towards that.

Albon could then find himself a leading member of a top team, something that did not look likely when he lost the Red Bull seat.

Carlos Sainz

Looking through Sainz’s career, it is hard to spot a time when a move did not bring obvious benefits.

He came up through the Red Bull academy but rather than perhaps face a fate like Albon or Gasly, he chose to move to Renault for the promise of a permanent seat and even if he was replaced by Ricciardo in 2019, Sainz made the smart call to join a McLaren on the rise.

His stint in Woking put him on Ferrari’s radar as a Sebastian Vettel replacement and even when he was kicked out in favour of Hamilton, Sainz appears to have made a good call to join Williams with the Madrid-born driver scoring the team’s first podium in four years at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

While others have had the luxury of choosing which team they join, Sainz is a great example of making the best of the available options.

S Tier

Lewis Hamilton

While we will get onto his Ferrari move shortly, there is no doubt that Hamilton knows when to move and where.

His decision to join McLaren was more the decision of the team but in signing with Ron Dennis, he was put on a course to be a title challenger in his very first season. His ratio of wins to races is testament to the fact that Hamilton never had a season or two to warm up.

But undoubtedly his best career move was swapping McLaren for Mercedes in 2013. It may have taken some convincing from Niki Lauda but Hamilton did agree to leave the established title contender of McLaren for the new Mercedes and he was rewarded with six world titles.

During Hamilton’s peak years, it was Mercedes that dominated and he was a Nico Rosberg or a Michael Masi away from being a record-breaking eight-time World Champion.

As for Ferrari, you could argue it’s been a great move from Hamilton with his marketability elevating even higher but the verdict from a racing perspective will have to come next year with the new regulations.

Max Verstappen

Even when there has been so much talk about his future, it is hard to see Max Verstappen wearing any other colour than Red Bull’s blue, red and yellow.

While other rookies sign with whatever academy will have them, Verstappen’s junior career and his father gave him the luxury of choice and it is hard to deny he chose well.

Red Bull have made Verstappen their clear number one, affording him luxuries that few other drivers on the grid have, and given him multiple title-winning cars.

Things could have been oh so different had Toto Wolff got his way and signed the Dutchman in 2014 but would Verstappen have progressed as quickly if he was playing second fiddle to Hamilton?

Instead, they chose Red Bull and four championships later, that decision has been vindicated.

What comes next may well be the biggest choice of his career but the goal was always to become a World Champion and with that achieved, Verstappen has other factors to consider when it comes to if he wants to leave.

Oscar Piastri

Talk about dodging a bullet.

In an alternative reality, Oscar Piastri is on zero wins, zero podiums and potentially out of the sport altogether. That is the fate that could have awaited him had he started with Alpine.

In hindsight, moving to McLaren from Alpine is an obviously good move but it was anything but that at the time. The French outfit finished ahead of McLaren in the 2022 Constructors’ and as a power unit supplier, looked to be a team on the up.

McLaren finished fifth that year with Piastri’s compatriot Ricciardo struggling to rediscover his ability but, under the guidance of Mark Webber, Piastri jumped at the opportunity.

While Otmar Szafnauer questioned his “integrity as a human being,” the seven winner’s trophies he has at home show it was the correct call.

Piastri is now in a title fight, something only he, Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton can have seriously claimed in the last nine years, and has proven to be one of the best drivers on the grid.

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