F1 2025: Who drives where?

Silly Season for 2025 is rapidly heating up, with one of the biggest transfers F1 has seen in years and half the grid looking for a new seat. So with that in mind, let's keep track of the changes in the driver market throughout the season.

Red Bull

Confirmed driver(s): Max Verstappen, Liam Lawson

Max Verstappen is still under contract with Red Bull until the end of 2028. Despite some early season rumors - which appear more like wishful thinking of people hoping to see the unbeatable Max-Red Bull combination broken - it looks like Verstappen isn’t going anywhere. 

However the same can emphatically not be said about the man who used to be his teammate. Sergio Perez was initially confirmed for two more years with the defending champions, keeping him on for into the period of new engine regulations as well. But his horrendous form in the second half of the season, which saw Red Bull fall to third in the standings, was more than enough reason for both parties to call it quits. Perez will be replaced by Liam Lawson in 2025, who will make the step up to the main team after just eleven races with the sister team.

Ferrari

Confirmed driver(s): Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari got their driver pair locked in early this year. Well before the season started, they extended Charles Leclerc’s contract for “the long term”. It’s unclear how long the contract will last, but it’s generally believed that Leclerc is locked in at Ferrari until at least 2029. Then Ferrari really shook things up by announcing that Lewis Hamilton was going to join them after driving for Mercedes for more than a decade. With Hamilton and Leclerc, Ferrari will have one of the strongest line-ups in terms of pure driving skill. What it will mean for the team dynamic though, remains to be seen…

ALSO READ: Is it actually a good idea to have Hamilton at Ferrari?

Mercedes

Confirmed driver(s): George Russell, Andrea Kimi Antonelli

George Russell got an extension of his contract last year, keeping him at Mercedes until the end of 2025. That leaves him as the new team leader, considering Hamilton is departing Brackley for Maranello next year. A lot has been said about Hamilton’s possible replacement. Team principal Toto Wolff spent most of the season openly courting Max Verstappen, but that never manifested (though 2026 is always on the table...)

That left Mercedes with only one clear favorite: the golden child from the junior academy, Andrea Kimi Antonelli. After his first FP1 outing in Monza, Mercedes wasted no time in announcing him as a new permanent driver for 2025. It's easy to see why: Antonelli has won races in his first season in Formula 2 despite skipping F3. Before that, he won the title in almost every single competition he ran in.

McLaren

Confirmed driver(s): Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri

Like Ferrari, McLaren also made sure they had their drivers locked in quickly. Lando Norris still had a contract until the end of 2025, but McLaren nevertheless made sure to extend it beyond that. Like with Leclerc, it’s also unknown how long Norris’s contract now lasts, but it’s pretty much guaranteed to be at least until the end of 2027. Alongside Norris will once again be Oscar Piastri, who already got an extension until the end of 2026 after a strong showing in his rookie season last year.

Aston Martin

Alpine

Confirmed driver(s): Pierre Gasly, Jack Doohan

Pierre Gasly signed a new contract with his team, keeping him at Alpine until at least the end of 2025. The Frenchman has had a decently succesful run at Alpine, though the team's drop in performance hasn't done him any favors.

Alpine figured that it would be time to split up the pairing of Gasly and Esteban Ocon. After five years, the team decided not to extend his contract despite Ocon delivering Alpine its only victory during that period. His replacement will be reserve driver Jack Doohan. Doohan's promotion marks the first time that a driver from the Alpine Academy actually goes on to drive for Alpine. 

For more on Alpine's historic downfall, read our three-part series here on where it all went wrong.

Williams

Confirmed driver(s): Alex Albon, Carlos Sainz

Alex Albon has signed a new contract with Williams for the foreseeable future. It's unclear for how long exactly, but the team does state that it's a "multi-year extension which takes the partnership into the new era of Formula 1 regulations". That means at least for 2025 and 2026. Albon has shown great form at Williams, but was also being linked to Mercedes and Red Bull. It makes sense that Williams wanted to keep him on board.

And then the seal was finally broken: Carlos Sainz made a decision and went to Williams. The "cork in the bottle", as Kevin Magnussen called him, picked his future team. Sainz is joining Williams on a two-year contract with an option to extend should he wish to do so.

Racing Bulls

Confirmed driver(s): Yuki Tsunoda, Isack Hadjar

Yuki Tsunoda got a one-year extension on his contract, keeping him with the Red Bull sister team for 2025. One has to wonder at this point what Red Bull's plans with Tsunoda are, because he is clearly not in the picture for that seat at the main team. That has now gone to Liam Lawson, who lost the qualifying battle against Yuki 0-6 this year. 

Driving alongside Tsunoda will be Isack Hadjar. Hadjar mounted a fairly strong title challenge in Formula 2 this year, though he ultimately lost to future Sauber driver Gabriel Bortoleto. Hadjar has been Helmut Marko's star pupil for a while now, meaning that Yuki has yet another chance to prove himself against someone the Red Bull hierarchy seems to rank higher than him.

Haas

Sauber

Confirmed driver(s): Nico Hulkenberg, Gabriel Bortoleto

2025 will be the last year of Sauber’s transition period before they become Audi in 2026. Sauber and Audi figured that it's best to start off that period with a clean sweep of drivers. Both Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou are out after three years of driving for the team. While they aren’t bad drivers by any means, they’ve also failed to really make an impression.

Nico Hulkenberg, who as a German driver had long been linked to Audi, will drive for the team from 2025 onward. Joining him will be Gabriel Bortoleto, who won F3 last year in his rookie season and is on the brink of doing the same thing in F2 this year. It's an incredibly strong line-up for a team that is, in the nicest of terms, not doing so hot right now.