Formula One 2025 mid-season review

We’ve reached the halfway point in the 2025 Formula One season.

McLaren have emerged as the dominant force over the last year of this current technology cycle, with both Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris leading the charge in the Drivers’ Championship, while the Woking-based team sit comfortably on top of the Constructors’ standings.

While none of the other competitors have been able to catch McLaren, the competitive edge among the teams ranked second to tenth — and their ever-changing pecking order week in, week out — has kept most F1 faithful on the edge of their seats.

In this article, we take a look at how the grid has shaped up at the halfway point of the 2025 F1 season.

Norris and Piastri keep exchanging blows as McLaren dominate

There is nothing to separate the two McLaren boys. When Lando Norris landed a right-hand jab in Melbourne, Oscar Piastri roared back with a left uppercut in Jeddah. The two drivers have nine wins between them in the first twelve rounds, with Piastri leading his teammate by a narrow eight-point margin in the Drivers’ standings.

While both drivers have made their fair share of mistakes this season, their superior package means they’ve been able to bounce back more often than not. Before the season began, all eyes were on Norris to be the biggest threat to Max Verstappen’s crown. However, his Australian teammate — in only his third full season — has shown he’s got what it takes to win a world championship.

The flexi-wing clampdown has failed to slow McLaren’s march, and with the team managing a three-to-four-tenths lead over the next-best car on most weekends, it is very hard to see anyone challenging them in the second half of the season.

That said, what McLaren can’t afford are mishaps like Montreal becoming regular occurrences.

Ferrari are still best of the rest despite design-specific gremlins

Despite being there or thereabouts throughout the entirety of the 2022–25 technical cycle, Ferrari just haven’t been able to create a car capable of winning them a championship. They came close in 2022 but faded away, and last season was by far the closest they’ve come to winning a Constructors’ title since 2008.

After certain design-specific issues — especially floor-related concerns botching their start to the 2025 campaign — the Maranello-based outfit simply haven’t been able to catch up to McLaren at the front.

Although the Scuderia have recovered from an uncharacteristic early-season fourth place to currently running second in the championship, their drivers remain far from comfortable with the car. Both have struggled with balance in low- and high-speed corners this season, while floor and ride-height issues have left them playing catch-up.

Also read: Can Max Verstappen be lured into joining Mercedes?

Verstappen and Red Bull are slowly fading into the distance

Since his last victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, Max Verstappen has dropped 52 points to Lando Norris and 47 to Oscar Piastri. Other than Mercedes’ one-off victory at the Canadian GP, Verstappen had been keeping the McLaren drivers in check — at least until Imola.

In Silverstone, the low-drag rear wing gave the Dutchman and Red Bull a sliver of hope, but torrential conditions on Sunday ruined Verstappen’s chance of clawing back ground on Norris and Piastri, as he slipped further behind the pair with a fifth-place finish.

Now, with Christian Horner out the door and Laurent Mekies taking over as team principal, it’s unclear which way the boat will sail in the Red Bull garage.

Mercedes are blowing hot and cold as Russell and Antonelli await new contracts

Apart from the Max Verstappen factor at Red Bull, Mercedes were genuinely in second place on race pace for the first five or so races. However, since Imola — aside from that one dominant display in Montreal under suitable conditions — the Mercs have slipped into the midfield fight in recent weeks.

Young prodigy Andrea Kimi Antonelli managed four sixth-place finishes and a fourth place in his first six races, but since Imola — aside from his maiden podium in Montreal — the 19-year-old has recorded one 18th-place finish and four retirements.

Antonelli’s senior teammate, George Russell, has also lost ground on the leaders after four podium finishes in his first six races, registering fourth-, fifth-, seventh-, and tenth-place finishes in and around his Montreal win.

Whether Mercedes have hit a roadblock in their development path — something that has often been the case in recent years — or have already turned their full focus towards next season remains to be seen.

Williams have delivered on their pre-season promise but have been fading away

During pre-season testing in Bahrain, Williams emerged as the team to watch. They flew out of the blocks and delivered consistent points-scoring performances in the first few races. Three fifth-place finishes and a run of four Grands Prix where both drivers finished inside the top ten have been the highlight of their season so far.

While Alex Albon has been ever-consistent on his side of the garage, his new teammate — former Ferrari man Carlos Sainz — has found it difficult to come to grips with the handling of the Mercedes-powered FW47. There have been flashes of his old self, though, with the Spaniard having registered five points finishes in six races from Jeddah to Montreal.

However, just two combined points finishes in the last four races have allowed the likes of Sauber and Aston Martin to close in on Williams thanks to their recent upgrades and on-track improvements.

With the team having announced ahead of the Miami GP that they would be switching their full focus to next year’s car, it may only be a matter of time before they find themselves sliding towards the back of the field.

Also read: Nico Hülkenberg dismisses “underachiever” tag with maiden F1 podium

Sauber and Mattia Binotto are showing signs of progress ahead of Audi switch

After two challenging campaigns — especially last year, when the team scored just four points courtesy of an unexpected P8 finish from Guanyu Zhou — serious allegations were levelled against Sauber for intentionally sacrificing their 2024 and 2025 seasons to start 2026 on the right foot under the Audi brand, damaging team morale in the process.

However, since bringing in former Ferrari man Mattia Binotto as CEO and former Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley as team principal, a lot has changed. One of the first items on Binotto’s agenda was to shore up short-term performance and use it as a stepping stone to develop the entire organisation, rather than treating it as two separate projects.

For Wheatley, though, the biggest boost to morale would come from proving to the team that they could overcome correlation issues and translate that into actual on-track performance. Those upgrades duly arrived in Barcelona — including a new floor, sidepods, and front wing — with further refinements following at Silverstone.

The Spain upgrade package did exactly what was expected, and those few tenths allowed the C45 to be in the mix again. Sauber have since scored on four consecutive weekends, outscoring Red Bull. They’ve climbed from last to sixth and are now beginning to challenge a stagnant Williams for fifth.

Aston Martin are starting to make in-roads after disastrous start

The AMR25 was considered to be one of the slowest cars during pre-season testing in Bahrain; Aston Martin’s on-track performances in the first few weekends did nothing to prove otherwise.

However, in April, Mike Krack, their chief trackside officer, admitted that the team wouldn’t be rushing their upgrade packages this season in favour of maintaining balance in the development of the 2026 car, given resource constraints due to the change in regulations.

As a result, Aston Martin’s first set of major upgrades arrived in Imola. The team reduced the fin size of the Halo, made wholesale changes to the floor body, flood fences, and floor edge, improved the shoulder of the diffuser, changed the curvature of the coke and engine cover, and made reductions in certain sections of the beam wing.

Although these changes didn’t fix their issues right away, since the Spanish GP the team have been on a four-race point-scoring spree. Given these changes aren’t enough to catapult them to the top of the midfield scrape, with everyone faltering in and around them, a couple of upgrade packages may swing the momentum in Aston Martin’s favour.