Looking back over the 2025 season of Formula 1 (F1), it would be pretty easy to say Lando Norris was the best driver, as he won the Driver’s Championship, and McLaren was the best team because they sealed up the Constructor’s Championship several rounds early. They are not my pick for either best driver or best team though. Who is? Read on!

Best team

McLaren had the best car for most of the season, hands down. Week in and week out, they were the team to beat with their own drivers often going head-to-head to see who could pull off a race win. However, they had constant strategy errors and their efforts to appear fair between their drivers forced them into several bad decisions. While I won’t be quite as brusque as Max Verstappen was in insulting McLaren for their strategy blunders, I agree with him in the sentiment that they should’ve had the driver’s championship wrapped up much earlier. And, to me, it should’ve been Piastri who won.

At any rate, if not McLaren, then surely I’d lean towards Red Bull and Verstappen? Nope. Their inability to put someone in the second car who can drive it anywhere near Verstappen’s level continues to be a head scratcher. Yes, that man is a once in a lifetime talent level, but surely there is a way to get talent in the second seat that can score more than 30 points compared to Verstappen’s 421.

It actually wasn’t until I looked holistically at the entire 2025 season of F1 that I figured out who I thought the best team actually was. Mercedes. Yes, they were able to secure second in the Constructor’s Championship, but that isn’t the full reason behind the choice. They actually did a great job throughout the season nurturing their drivers, particularly rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Several other teams showed the wrong way of doing things, like Red Bull switching drivers after just three races. Alpine takes the cake as the worst though as they axed rookie Jack Doohan after six races and then kept telling Franco Colapinto that he was on a race-to-race contract, his uncertain future always dangled in front of him to try to improve performance.

Antonelli had some bad days with Mercedes in 2025, but Toto Wolff, team manager, was always on the radio letting the youngster know things would be okay. After losing Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari, many people thought Mercedes wouldn’t be able to compete. I looked at Hamilton’s performance the last few years and wondered why people thought it was going to be a huge loss… The future of Mercedes looks pretty great as far as the drivers are concerned.

Best driver

I already said Norris isn’t my choice for the best driver. Verstappen nearly secured his fifth consecutive driver’s championship, overcoming a 104 point deficit halfway through the season. He also managed to win the most races with 8 out of 24, a result that actually improved his net winning percentage which was sitting at 30% before the season. Another obvious choice… that I’m also passing over.

My pick for driver of the year in F1 for 2025 actually came in ninth out of the 21 drivers this season, scoring 64 points total. To put that in perspective, Norris scored 423. My choice scored in only 10 of the 24 races this season. Verstappen missed out on points only once in the season when he was taken out by another driver on the first lap. Piastri wrecked on the first lap in Azerbaijan and was disqualified from Las Vegas, but otherwise scored in every race. Surely I must be crazy?

My choice for best driver is Carlos Sainz. He was shown the door by Ferrari once Lewis Hamilton came knocking, and that was something that never sat right with me. Sainz was doing a great job for Ferrari, and he absolutely had a chip on his shoulder about his treatment. Unfortunately for him, that chip meant the beginning of his 2025 season was absolutely torrid.

In the first four races of the season, he scored one point for his tenth-place finish in China and wrecked out of both Australia and Bahrain. After that, he calmed down, refocused himself, and had four points scoring finishes in the next four races.

His refocusing was key here as he talked about needed to adjust his expectations. He was still thinking of himself as a race winner, something he did four times in his tenure at Ferrari. Repeating that feat in a Williams, the team he was able to find a drive with this season, was unlikely to say the least.

On track, Sainz was fiercely defending positions and making bad choices when other drivers in clearly faster cars came to pass him. Once he realized his fight was with the teams lower down the pecking order, his race results improved dramatically. Sure, he still made some audacious moves in the latter part of the season, but that was Sainz being Sainz and taking some calculated risks to get into the points.

While he still had an up and down season as far as results were concerned, his racecraft became as stellar as we witnessed in 2024, and he even drove his Williams to not just one, but two third place podium finishes. Looking back to his early season non-finishing results, he didn’t give up even then.

Despite the fact he couldn’t do anything on track after wrecking his car, he went to the pitwall and worked with the strategists to get the best result for his teammate, Alex Albon. That team player dynamic really impressed me, as did his double podium result. Of particular interest to me is comparing Sainz to Hamilton who replaced him at Ferrari. Yes, Hamilton scored far more points than Sainz, but one would expect a Ferrari to outperform a Williams. Where Sainz outperformed Hamilton was in attitude and in being a team player.

Congratulations, once again, to all the F1 drivers on completing a stellar season. As I already congratulated McLaren back in Singapore and the winner Lando Norris a few weeks ago, I’d like to give a hearty congratulations to Carlos Sainz and the Mercedes teams, my two standouts for the 2025 F1 season.