F1 ‘pressure cooker’ broken down as US option to spark silly season twist: ‘25 contracts state of play
The Australian Grand Prix isn’t just the first race of the 2025 season. It’s the first of 24 auditions for a 2026 contract.
For those out of contract this year, every race is crucial.
That’s particularly the case in a year like this, with so few seats up for grabs. There are no easy ways back onto the grid if the axe were to fall this year.
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Most of the grid is signed up until at least the end of 2026, biding their time to evaluate how their teams perform under the new regulations.
This is what the contractual picture looks like heading into 2025,
Not that ‘multiyear’ contacts are assumed to be at least two seasons, taking most drivers until at least the end of 2026 and possibly beyond.
Every driver under contract beyond 2025
McLaren: Lando Norris (2027) and Oscar Piastri (2028)
Ferrari: Charles Leclerc (2026) and Lewis Hamilton (2026)
Red Bull Racing: Max Verstappen (2028)
Mercedes: none
Aston Martin: Fernando Alonso (2026) and Lance Stroll (2026)
Alpine: Pierre Gasly (2026)
Haas: Esteban Ocon (2026) and Oliver Bearman (2026)
Racing Bulls: none
Williams: Alex Albon (2026) and Carlos Sainz (2026)
Sauber: Nico Hulkenberg (2026) and Gabriel Bortoleto (2026)
Cadillac: none
That leaves six drivers in play: Liam Lawson, George Russell, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Jack Doohan, Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar.
Here’s how the silly season is shaping up.
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MERCEDES ALL SET — UNLESS VERSTAPPEN COMES CALLING
Mercedes and Toto Wolff are all-in on 18-year-old rising star Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
It’s the four junior championships. It’s his rapid grappling with Formula 2 last season after bypassing completely Formula 3. It’s the private testing times that had to be seen to be believed, including one at a wet Silverstone in which Antonelli was supposedly four seconds quicker than a bevy of more experienced drivers.
There are no guarantees in Formula 1, but all indications are that he’s the future of Mercedes.
That puts its old future, George Russell, in a tricky position.
In 2025 his role is clear: he’s the senior driver and something of a mentor to his teammate while Antonelli acclimatises to Formula 1.
But it also puts him in the firing line if Wolff were to act on his long-held desire to snatch Max Verstappen from Red Bull Racing.
Of course Verstappen is under contract until the end of 2028, but last year’s political crisis in Milton Keynes had him reveal certain escape clauses in his contract. Certainly his father has been flexing that fact, having held informal discussions with Wolff about a switch before both men decided to rest the issue until this season.
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Mercedes had a chance to sign Verstappen to its driver academy as a teenager but was trumped by Red Bull, which offered him a drive with the then Toro Rosso team immediately. He was the one that got away.
So it’s hard to believe that, if the stars align, Wolff wouldn’t have a crack, particularly given the damage it would do to rival team boss Christian Horner.
Speaking after announcing Antonelli’s signing, Wolff said it was his intention to retain his current line-up into 2026 and beyond, but he added that it was up to his drivers to prove they deserved it.
“This is a pressure cooker — Mercedes always has been a pressure cooker — but this is where we stand as a team today,” he said, per Racer. “We want to go with these two.
“I think what’s most important is to see how George and Kimi settle in, and I see no reason at that stage not giving them the faith and the trust of going forward.
“What that means for the terms is something that we will discuss between ourselves, but we wouldn’t have gone for the line-up with these two if we wouldn’t believe 100 per cent that they are the best choice for Mercedes.”
You’d think that Antonelli would get the benefit of at least another season to prove himself.
Russell, however, has no room for error in what could prove to be a crucial contract year.
RED BULL RACING NEEDS LAWSON TO WORK
Red Bull Racing would dearly love Lawson to be the answer it’s been searching for since Daniel Ricciardo quit the team in 2018.
The team has struggled for six years to replace the Australian, with Max Verstappen obliterating every alternative. He almost killed the careers of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. He sent Sergio Perez into what could be an early retirement.
Part of the issue is the car. Try as it might — and one can only assume the team is trying — but RBR cannot seem to build a package to suit both drivers. Verstappen, his abilities preternatural, directs development into a borderline undriveable zone almost instinctively, from where he’s able to excel but his teammates crumble.
But Red Bull Racing needs Lawson to work.
It needs it to work not just because it needs someone to finally work in the second seat, but also because it’s all out of options.
The team evidently has no faith in Yuki Tsunoda as a frontrunner. Isack Hadjar is too inexperienced to be a candidate.
The team has flirted with Lando Norris before the Briton re-signed at McLaren last January. Both Horner and Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko have talked highly of Piastri, but he’s now tied down for the long term too.
Short of one of the Mercedes drivers coming onto the market — in which case RBR has probably lost Verstappen — it has no compelling alternatives from outside its pool.
Ironically the best long-term result might actually be that Verstappen leaves the team, finally freeing it from his orbit. It would be an immediate loss, but if Russell were to arrive as part of the deal, it would give the team a chance to rebuild in a new way, acting as a circuit breaker for this intractable second-driver problem.
But Christian Horner obviously wouldn’t be planning on that. His priority is to keep Verstappen, and given the prospect, no matter how unlikely, of the Dutchman exercising a performance clause based on team results, he must also ensure Lawson avoids the pitfalls that have cruelled so many other contenders for this seat since 2018.
DOOHAN ON THE CLOCK
Jack Doohan’s plight has been well ventilated by now. He must live with the threat of reserve driver Franco Colapinto taking his seat through at least the first five rounds and perhaps beyond.
Doohan’s place at Alpine is slightly unusual. He was an Alpine junior that the French-owned squad helped bring through the ranks. It made him its reserve driver and eventually fully embedded him in the race team to make him F1 ready. He was signed up full-time during last year’s mid-year break.
But that major milestone came as Alpine management endured its latest rotation. Out went boss Bruno Famin, who had spoken highly of Doohan’s work in the simulator and its impact on helping the team. In came Renault executive adviser Flavio Briatore and new team principal Oliver Oakes, who are remaking the team for a new future.
Colapinto, undeniably talented but also sponsor-rich, fits better into that future.
But Doohan has incumbency on his side. For at least five races — the team has danced around the issue of timelines — it’s him in the car, not Colapinto.
You’re only as good as your last race. By the time a decision could be made at the end of April, Doohan will have raced in five grands prix since Colapinto took his last chequered flag.
He’s done the hard yards in his junior career to prove he deserves his F1 chance. He may have less time than he expected to state his case, but the power is in his hands to make it forcefully.
With so few seats on the grid in 2026, it would be hard to see where Doohan could continue his career otherwise.
‘BRIDESMAID’ TSUNODA FACING CAREER CROSSROADS
Yuki Tsunoda is about to become the first driver to embark on a fifth full-time season with the team now known as Racing Bulls, and by Canada he’ll have started more races for Faenza in its Red Bull era than any other driver.
He’s the most experienced driver by any metric to have raced for the team without getting a seat at Red Bull Racing.
And that’s the problem.
“You can’t have a driver in the support team for five years,” Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner said, per The Race. “You can’t always be the bridesmaid.
“You’ve either got to let them go at that point or look at something different.”
It puts him in a mightily precarious position.
Assuming Liam Lawson doesn’t fail so spectacularly that Red Bull Racing backflips on its opposition to Tsunoda, he has no clear route to a new seat.
It had long been thought Honda, having backed him since his junior years, might take care of him, perhaps placing him at Aston Martin in 2027 after a sabbatical, but now even the Japanese company seems to be distancing itself from him.
“He [Tsunoda] needs to take action himself,” Honda Racing Corporation president Koji Watanabe told Motorsport Japan.
“There’s not much more we can do for him. He needs to solidify his support team, including his manager, and secure the necessary seat. He is a professional, after all.
“Drivers can’t rely on Honda forever. Someone of Tsunoda’s career level needs to think for himself.”
It leaves him with only one option among the current teams: another season at Racing Bulls.
“Obviously I would like to stay in the Red Bull family,” he said. “If I go to Red Bull Racing, that’s amazing. If not, still I would love to be in this part of the team.
Whether he’s successful might depend on a 17-year-old British up-and-comer.
Arvid Lindblad is the only Red Bull junior climbing the ladder who could be ready for promotion by the end of the year.
Horner has regularly sung Lindblad’s praises over the last 12 months. The Briton has already won his first title of the year — the Formula Regional Oceania series — and will line up for Campos this weekend for his first Formula 2 campaign.
If he’s sufficiently convincing for immediate promotion, one of either Tsunoda or Isack Hadjar would have to go.
Hadjar, the F2 runner-up, will make his Racing Bull debut this weekend despite Red Bull never having given the impression that its particularly thrilled about the Frenchman’s prospects during his junior career. He’s undoubtedly quick, but he needs some considerable polishing around execution and composure.
With so few other drivers on the market, Tsunoda and Hadjar’s fate hinge on Lindblad’s development.
WHAT ABOUT CADILLAC?
There’s a twist in the story of this year’s silly season, however, with Cadillac set to enter the sport next season.
That’s two more seats that need filling.
Team principal Graeme Lowdon has repeated that finding an American driver is a priority for the team, but he’s emphasised that it must be on merit rather than for their passport. IndyCar star Colton Herta has been regularly connected to one of the seats, though the 24-year-old has recently sounded lukewarm about the possibility of a career change.
If the American angle can wait, the team has no shortage of experienced options from which to choose.
Valtteri Bottas doesn’t believe he’s done with Formula 1 after being dropped by Sauber. Now a Mercedes reserve, he’d bring intimate knowledge of a title-winning set-up plus his undimmed innate speed to the fledgling operation.
Sergio Pérez’s future is less clear after being cut adrift from Red Bull Racing during the off-season. He hasn’t described this year as a retirement, but he’s also said he’s enjoying the chance to take a break from the sport.
“If I receive a good, interesting project, then I’ll definitely consider it,” he said at an event in León, Mexico, during the off-season.
“For now, my priority in the months ahead is to have fun, do what I haven’t been able to, travel, be with my family.”
Zhou Guanyu has also been connected to the seat. The former Sauber star has secured a reserve role at Ferrari this season, and the Cadillac team has engaged the Scuderia with a technical partnership for power units and gearboxes for the first few seasons of its existence.
Tsunoda could also be considered an option if he were left without a drive at the end of the year — and it would be surprising if there weren’t talks between his new management and the nascent team to save his career.
Cadillac’s could be the lifeline several drivers are counting on — but the team has only two seats, and the queue is already out the door.
The auditions start this weekend in Melbourne.