Reflecting on the first half of the 2025 F1 season
FINAL CORNER, CHEQUERED FLAG: 12 down, 12 to go
We’ve reached the halfway point of the 2025 F1 season and it’s worth taking the time for some reflection before the last double header this side of the summer break.
The title battle is incredibly close at this stage of the campaign, and it’s a genuine coin-flip as to who wins between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, with the Aussie currently ahead by a meagre eight points after Silverstone. But the other 18 drivers have all been putting in just as much effort each week as the title challengers, just without getting the same rewards.
The purpose of the Driver Power Ranking Championship has been to try and level the playing field a bit to attempt to measure how all 20 men stack up against each other irrespective of their machinery. While it’s not an exact science, using the points scoring system from actual F1 races to rank the drivers’ performances from each grand prix weekend does still make for interesting reading.
Of course, this is just my opinion and I am by no means suggesting this is the correct order of how the drivers stack up against each other, but now seems as good a time as any to check in with how things stand. I will keep updating this as the season goes on and I will take a full reflection once we’ve done all 24 races. However, I will also challenge my own ranking by thinking of what a top 10 drivers of the year list should look like without using this “data” to tell me.
Without looking now, I’d roughly say that a top 10 for this year so far should look like (in no particular order): Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Esteban Ocon, Fernando Alonso & Lewis Hamilton.
Here I will now break down the full 20-man championship from bottom to top and see how it’s really shaking out:
The bottom of the pack
(Ranking - 21st: Colapinto, 20th: Doohan, 19th: Lawson, 18th: Tsunoda, 17th: Bortoleto, 16th: Stroll)
It should be no real surprise to anyone that Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto are last, and they are also the only two drivers to fail to score points in both the real championship and the DRP Championship. Doohan wasn’t hopeless at Alpine but he wasn’t given enough time to really show what he can do. Meanwhile, Colapinto has struggled and does stand out at the back of the pack for all the wrong reasons at the moment.
The next few have all picked up a decent amount of points in the DPR Championship, even if they are still 15th-18th, and that’s Lance Stroll (19), Gabriel Bortoleto (18), Yuki Tsunoda (18) and Liam Lawson (10). It is notable that both of the drivers to partner Verstappen at Red Bull are this far down, and neither have actually been ranked in the top 10 in a weekend where they were with that team. The second driver issue remains a massive problem for Red Bull, and it will be interesting to see how that seat fares next year with the reset of the rules. Meanwhile, Bortoleto and Stroll have both done an okay, if unspectacular, job this year. Bortoleto has done well in qualifying, but his race pace still needs work, which is a fine place to be for a rookie. But Stroll’s performances have been mostly mediocre, with a couple of solid results breaking through.
The intense midfield battle
(Ranking - 15th: Sainz, 14th: Antonelli, 13th: Gasly, 12th: Hadjar, 11th: Bearman, 10th: Hamilton, 9th: Ocon)
Carlos Sainz is bringing up the rear of the midfield battle in 15th (31 points), which isn’t an unfair reflection of his up and down season. The move to Williams has been some vindication for Red Bull in why they didn’t hire the Spaniard, whose performances have been inconsistent, if at times slightly unlucky, compared to Albon. He is behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli (37), who has been underwhelming relative to the lofty expectations placed on him by Mercedes before the season started.
Meanwhile Pierre Gasly (39), Isack Hadjar (40) and Ollie Bearman (41) close out the bottom 10. Gasly’s stronger performances have been perhaps hidden by the disastrous pace of the Alpine, which has slid down to become the slowest car on the grid. But his Silvertone result highlighted that he has been quite strong this year. Hadjar and Bearman have been the pick of the rookies, and the fact there’s little to separate them is a fair reflection of their start to life in F1.
Bearman has perhaps the higher ceiling, but he needs to cut out the big mistakes he’s made, such as the 10-place grid penalties he received in both Monaco and Silverstone, while Hadjar has done superbly to respond to the embarrassment of his formation lap crash in the first race in Australia, comfortably beating Lawson during their time as teammates at Racing Bulls.
Also in the mid-pack, but on the right side of the top 10, are Hamilton (43) and Ocon (48). Hamilton is starting to find some form for Ferrari, and his points record is likely hurt by Leclerc being so strong for most of this season, and my tendency to judge a losing teammate quite harshly. It’s not been a vintage year by any means, but the 40-year-old has still been mostly solid. Ocon is in the opposite boat in that his pace has sometimes been lacking compared to Bearman, particularly on Saturdays, but he makes up for it with his experience. The Frenchman’s 23 real points to Bearman’s measly six bears that out.
Best of the rest
(Ranking - 8th: Hulkenberg, 7th: Alonso, 6th: Albon, 5th: Russell)
The drivers in 5th to 8th all have very good records for their performances this year, but they’re just not quite able to keep up with the top four.
Nico Hulkenberg’s 8th place standing (56 points) is the result of him benefitting from a couple of really stand out drives in Silverstone and Spain, so I might drop him out of the top 10 if I was to reward consistency in a separate top 10 list that doesn’t use the DPR Championship data. The German has still been pretty good for Sauber, and his podium drive in Britain does deserve a lot of credit, not only because it was his first top 3 finish in F1 but because of how well he handled the incredibly difficult conditions.
Alonso (60) in 7th is probably about right for his level of performance this year, but the Spaniard has become quite difficult to judge at Aston Martin with Stroll as his teammate. It’s also been a year of ups and downs, with some uncharacteristic errors, and also some very impressive drives. That it took him so long to get points in the real world was not a fair reflection of his ability in 2025. However, Albon (86) and Russell (97) have definitely earned their places above him in 6th and 5th, respectively.
Albon was putting in respectable consistent points finishes in the first quarter of the year before Williams' pace dropped off, and routinely beating Sainz is a commendable level to show, even if he has the advantage of knowing the team a lot better. Russell has the only race win outside of Verstappen/Norris/Piastri, but even that performance in Canada wasn’t his strongest given the tight gap to Antonelli. The Briton has gone quiet on a couple of occasions this year, which has been enough for his points tally to just drop below the top four.
A tight DPR Championship battle emerges
(Ranking - 4th: Leclerc, 3rd: Verstappen, 2nd: Norris, 1st: Piastri)
The gap between Leclerc (128) in 4th and Piastri (163) in 1st isn’t too big after 12 races, and shows there isn’t a massive amount separating the very best drivers in F1, even if this hasn’t been a vintage campaign from the Monégasque. Verstappen (135) would likely rank higher than 3rd if not for some really egregious moments like in Spain and Saudi Arabia, as well as an uncharacteristically poor couple of weekends in Bahrain and Silverstone, plus a lap one DNF in Austria.
Norris’ (141) high-profile errors mean he is 2nd behind Piastri, but their actual performances haven’t been that far off each other. On any given weekend, there’s very little between them and the Briton probably does have the edge in terms of pace. But Piastri’s calmness under pressure has been the difference so far, and it’s led to him having more consistent DPR Championship results, where I tend to judge big mistakes quite harshly. For example, Norris scored a 10th place result in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia because of errors on Saturday that prevented him from maximising his results on Sunday, even if he did drive well in those respective races.
There are still 12 more races to go, so it’s still all to play for at the top in both the DPR Championship, and the real title battle. Whatever happens, let’s hope it stays that way right up until Abu Dhabi in December.
Prediction corner
It’s time to make a prediction for who I think will come out on top between Norris and Piastri. I’m going to back Norris on this one, but only just.
Storyline of the weekend
It’s a sprint weekend at Spa, and the weather forecast looks like it could be wet. Those of us who remember what happened in 2021, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.